Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Very quick read. Page turner. 200 or so pages.

It is a long short story kind of sci-fi. A single interesting idea, which could be the starting point of so many different ways to develop a story. The idea of a planet size other being/civilization - what to call it? And then, the anthropomorphic contact from a different intelligence is reminiscent of my other recent read, Sagan's Contact. 

There is a George Clooney movie as well on the story. Haven't watched the movie yet.

The book was very interesting. However wouldn't rate it at the top with the best kind of sci-fi. Great idea, but there could be so much more. There was a lot there, but somehow, I ended up reading quickly over the bits about the other world's history, and the politics of the science etc. There were some brilliant concepts, and insights about human approach to new exploration. Some ideas that I quite liked:
- the single consciousness lost in some sort of contemplation about the universe and its own nature?
- the frequent expression and destruction cycle - the creative representation, the art, the math.
- the idea that it copies, replicates to try to understand the other
- the way of contact - of literally reading the conscious and subconscious thoughts, of communicating through dreams.
- the general approach and discussion around contact, and the human aspiration of contact. And the general idea of a consciousness which is not human.

I enjoyed reading it, but I guess I am biased when it comes to sci-fi. I expect so much more! And forget that it is fiction. And end up getting disappointed. However beautifully or brilliantly written, the fiction cannot quench the thirst of needing to know what is out there.

Still, we seek.

PS: Normally I do not link other external articles here, but for a good quick read on Stanislaw Lem, and Solaris and the movie, visit this article from Wired. As to linking external blogs - there are hundreds of places I can begin, but where do I stop? So, as a matter of keeping it simple, will remove this external link once I have done my reading around Lem.

The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clezio

Loved this book. Beautifully written. Haunting imagery. Stays with me even after the story has ended.

There are so many different emotions that books might leave you with. Books and good stories. Some happy, some satisfied, some sad, some angry, and some making you want the story to go on and on.
This particular book, leaves me at peace, quiet and calm.

It is a beautiful, slow, rich in its sparseness kind of narrative. Serene, poetic, lyrical.

This is my first complete read from Le Clezio. I have a couple of other books from him, which I tried to begin reading a few years ago, Fever (stories), and The Giants. I left Fever on its first story since I felt it too closely for comfort (I got temperature around the time of reading it). And I hoped it was not psychosomatic. Some day, I'll read it. The other book, The Giants is very different. It does not look like a narrative, and I don't know how to approach it.

When I picked up The Prospector, I had confused Le Clezio in my mind with Patrick Modiano. For the first few pages, it even read like a Modiano narrative. And then it dawned on me that I might get to add to my 'Read the Prize' page. It is so very different from the other two books that I have from the same author.

On to the book - This is a translated book. This edition - translation by C. Dickson (Atlantic Books imprint) seems like published this year itself. Set in early twentieth century, this book is based in Mauritius and we travel with the narrator as he grows, on his journeys, in Mauritius, and its nearby islands (Rodrigues), and a bit of First World War action territories.

I have never read anything from Mauritius earlier. And this book is a book of the islands and the sea, and journeys, and a quest - seeking something, may be some treasure or may be peace, which we seek and seek outside like the narrator, but which we invariably, in the end, find within.

It is interesting how stories of so disparate times and lands can resonate with people across the gap of time and place and culture. In the end, the questions we all seek answers to, we are on our own journeys, and the derivative/ the setting may change, but the underlying emotion stays the same, and that is why perhaps we love such stories.

Like the 4 chord songs - everyone loves them!

Enjoyed every moment of reading the book. Not in a rushed, or 'what's the next page' kind of way, but 'I'm quite enjoying the journey' kind of way. Off to look for more from the author.

A good read. Definite recommend.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and other related books

This blog post is a different exercise. Free writing all my thoughts after reading Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, and then supplementing it with Stephen Hawking's lectures (The Theory of Everything).

I read Rovelli's book twice in the same day. It is a tiny, 70 page book. A series of newspaper articles. The book beautifully simplifies the complicated concepts for a layperson - boiling them down to essentials. Hawking's book helped me in further understanding some of the questions raised by the first one. But I have not completed it yet. Read through most, and got a big list of things to look up further and ended up reading a lot of other science sites/ books and wikipedia.

I often start reading science books. As they say, they are good for the soul. To instill and reignite that sense of wonder, awe and humility. To realize that how tiny a speck we are in the grand scheme. I start reading these science books with high aspirations and then at some point, when the things I do not understand become greater than what I do understand, I end up giving up the book, instead looking up the not understood. My bookshelf is full of tomes which have been lovingly collected, but never fully read. Carlo Rovelli's is a finish in a long time.

After every such full/ partial read, I come away brimming full of ideas and notes, and following is the spillover. Indulging myself and putting them here. Bear with me

~ The concept of  'here' relates to space. The concept of 'now'  is similarly related to time. Carlo Rovelli notes that past is different from future because of heat. Only because of heat. If you take heat out of equation, one cannot figure out the arrow of time. Or something on those lines.

~ Space is made of quanta of space. Joined together. Einstein's second relativity paper - the general one, not special.

~ Bulges in the space-time fabric because of mass. Earth makes a bigger bulge than moon. And sun even bigger. So the space is bulged and curved because of the mass of so many different bodies. And so is time. For a moment, I can grasp space being curved, the same way that even though all around us we see flatness, we know and can understand that we live on a curved earth.

~ As someone said, we learn the unknown in terms of the known. Or the new in terms of the known.

~ Gravity is part of the fabric. The space time fabric. The bulges are the reason things move. Sun bulges the fabric majorly, and teeny-meeny earth is sent on a forever kind of roll around the sun’s bulge's funneling incline - what we call the pull of gravity. (There is no up and down since we are already in 3D, and all this bulging is happening in 4 or 5D) So it is up and down both.

~ So space being curved means what we see is not straight out there, but somewhere on a wavy thing, bobbing up and down if the waves move swiftly, or just hanging there if the waves move slow. And as the bulges curve the space, what does it mean? And now, trying to picture time being curved.

~ I once saw negative space chessmen. Where the chess pieces are cuboids. And the emptiness inside them is the shape of the chess piece - a pawn or king. It is the void which defines, not the substance. So gravity is akin to negative space. What we think is empty and pulls, is full of space quanta and is bulged hence the pull!

~ And now, coming back to time. Time passes much more slowly near the surface of earth.

~ They say time inside a black-hole will pass in an instant (a black-hole being a rebounding star), the time outside, or as for us, as observers, it will take forever. Because the space-time near and at singularity is fully curved. Nothing escapes, no light, no time?

~ Another interesting fact – the bigger the star, the shorter its life.

~ And a speck of dust is to Earth as a subatomic particle is to speck of dust!!! I still can't get my head around it.

~ Are blackholes some kind of punctures in the universe?

~ Everything swooshing out of them. Going where?

~ The universe is somebody’s big tyre.

~ And blackholes are the puncture.

~ Coming back to time. How does ‘now’ relate to 'here'? When I go away from 'here', I am the one gone, ‘here’ still stays as such. I can come back to 'here'. And I’ll find it so, at least what is perceptible to me. The placement of atoms and quarks may be different.

~ When I go away from ‘now’ can I come back to now? Will 'now' still remain as 'here'?

~ Or the 'here' is the planet

~And 'now' is the time scale of this planet

~ To a bug, a full life is a day. The timescale for a bug. 

~ To humans, life is several decades. Still, nothing.

~ To human species, life is a few million years?

~ To the sun, life is 10 billion years. Middle aged Sun.

~ To the universe that we know, since the big-bang, life is 14 billion years so far. Young or old?

~ Expanding, wavy, rippling away.

~ What we see is there and not there.

~ We move through space, and time moves through us?

~ Another amazing fact: All elements are possible solutions to a single equation. The whole periodic table.

~ And that is what all the reality that we see is made up of.

~ Different possible solutions to a single equation!

~ And at the heart of the solidity of what we see, the predictability of interactions of these elements that we have based our lives on, there is a probability function.

~ An electron can be there or not there. It ‘manifests’ itself doing quantum leaps

~ So we are probability manifestations. So there'll be a probability manifestation where the non happening events exist. Or it doesn't matter. We are all hypothetical.

~ How does this differ from the old Hindu philosophy, that everything that you see and understand is some sort of illusion, Maya. You need to step up and away from the manifestation of the form, to see the content.

~ Like the 'ineluctable modality of the visible'  as James Joyce notes in Ulysses (my other current aspiration read), so in our life, we are forever doomed as a species to see form over content - the illusion?

~ In universe, in a way, everything is super simple. There are just a few basic alphabets. And they combine and manifest in myriad ways to form this book. This saga of universe? Or this little Koan?

~ So are we some kind of expression for someone with multidimensional capabilities. Here, Exhibit A is Universe, Exhibit B Black Holes, Exhibit E Earth and here be consciousness in living matter.

~ Should we meditate on this, and wonder, or keep trying to push the boundaries of our understanding. May be that is the purpose of consciousness. Do you ever get to fully comprehend what is it that you are?

~ We understand the new in terms of the known.

~ So there were times, when Earth was thought of as flat. Then times when everything moved round and round the earth,

~ And now we do understand that we are in some far flung arm of a mediocre galaxy

~ And we are just one set of representation of chemical equations

~ Have we, as human beings ever tried to form something as elegant as this universe? Basic few blocks, a beautiful equation with multiple solutions and then each solution so different from the other?

~ Or the difference is just a small block on spectrum? Like visible light on electromagnetic spectrum. We think we see everything, until you see the wavelengths that are visible. It is a revelation. A humbling experience

~ And so the chemical solutions of equation, is it all we see because that is what all we can see?

~ Coming back to the slippery slope of fathoming time. How do you figure it out?

~ Imagine a big massive ceiling fan, with really long blades. We are on one blade, at the very far end, towards the edge. And a blackhole is in the centre. In one second, say (or what? I thought one second is one second wherever it may be). But say for a recorded period, we move the arc a particular distance, since we are tracing a bigger circle, and for the same period, someone at the centre, moves a lesser distance since they are tracing a smaller circle. Now suppose the distance we are covering is that of time. Then does it make sense? The time we cover is more for the same recorded measure as the centre traveller.

~ But then how can we measure time both for marking the experiment and for the distance!

It is frustrating. What constraints does human mind and lifetime have! So much, so much, out there to understand, and we get limited by our visible spectrum and whatever chemical elements made us and left us floating in this bubbly bulgy space quanta ocean of time where the ladder of the known leads us only a little bit further, to larger and bigger unknowns.

The supreme perversity of the ineluctable modality of the visible!

This doesn't even make any sense.

I know we have come far from the days of flat earth. It is just another sand particle worth of distance covered on a mile long beach. Here's wishing with all my heart that we get to understand some more of this amazing wonderland that we live in!

Collected Stories by John Cheever

Like a kaleidoscope running through suburban America of mid 20th century. Like Revolutionary Road, or Rabbit Run or Updike’s stories. What is described as the American way of life. Interesting stories, but dysfunctional families. Most stories have the man going out to work on the morning train, and wives at home, their suburban lives, them picking up their husbands from the station in the evening. Their lives not happy. But the stories do not showcase angst the way Yates did, these stories are more matter of fact.

I took my time reading this 900 page tome - a couple of months. 50 stories or so. One can read them for the description. Or read them as good stories, short, contained, well sketched out characters, straight narrative. Or read them to get transported to the place where the author places the story and empathize with the characters. Do not read seeking epiphany.

Not sure whether I’ll read any more of Cheever in the near future.Even though well written and enjoyable, somehow, they leave me with an unhappy aftertaste. They leave me with some unease, some sort of discomfort, wondering how much of ourselves do we lose in the humdrum of everyday. And that for some, the humdrum becomes the mainstay! (And when this happens, there is little left in life). 

And may be that is where the author succeeds - creating that discomfort.  However, for the time being, pushes me away.

Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

For Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf notes that hers was the only writing she (VW) was perhaps jealous of. I had heard the name often, but never read anything. Finally, I got to read this small collection of stories in a beautiful Bloomsbury Classic bound pocket size book.

Born in NZ, she studied in England, and lived in France. And her stories seem to be based there (in France, and Europe). I loved the writing - charming is the word that comes to mind. Flowing, transporting you to the time and place where the characters are.

In terms of subject, she deals with those that seem non-conventional in her time. Or modern, then. The settings seem Victorian, but what happens is not. In that sense, she is more modern or further ahead of her times than VW or other contemporaries.

Emotional. Some of the stories just capture a span of few days or moments. But they present an undercurrent, or the view from very new angles (one which I am not used to reading). The power of surprise, in terms of content (not twists). The stories seem to hold a moment or two in the characters' lives as we hold a bauble, and examine it closely, minutely.

Engaging read.

The Favourite Game by Leonard Cohen

What do I feel about Leonard Cohen’s book? Dream-like, poetic, restless.

Listening to his music, and reading his words, you see him flashing through. Is it fiction, or is it part of him? His deep spring of ideas which flows through in his songs, his book, his poetry. The book is lyrical, rhythmic, poetic, slow, invoking rich images. Still, not heavy, light.

Had started reading this first book of his after reading his profile by David Remnick in New Yorker last month. Since then his songs are on a loop (Apple music playlist - Leonard Cohen Essentials). 

When I first began reading the book, was not very sure whether I wanted to continue it. It felt different than my other readings. It seemed raw, unpolished, dark in certain places, restless, and hence a bit ruffling. I realize, consciously or unconsciously, I avoid dark, loud, or ruffling – something that bothers, questions too much, is uncomfortably unfamiliar or shows scars. And this one felt a bit like that. Was going to leave it alone,...but then I heard about him passing away.

I began it again, with his music in the background. The book is episodic, building up scenes and scenes, dream-like sequences and lots of space to breathe. And you recognize his turn of phrase, his countenance and attitude. Divided in four books, and almost 20 chapters each over 250 pages, it is a delight to read.

The book seems autobiographical. It is not the kind of work I would read often, not a subject matter I would pick up. Also, it is not the kind of person I would read often about. But somehow, in this book, Breavman (the lead) does not come across as revolting. He comes across as a poet, a singer, Leonard Cohen in making. You can almost sympathize. It is not the world view you may have grown up with or approve of, in fact it may be something to be regarded as reproachful in people, but somehow, in an artist, in him, in someone in spite of themselves, it is forgiven.

I have always felt that books by poets are somehow better than those by non-poets. Be it Sylvia Plath or Joseph Brodsky. Or here, Leonard Cohen. The way they use words is lighter, more precise, how to put it best? They say much more in far fewer words. 

Enjoyed reading the book. 

RIP Leonard Cohen. Love your music – and for last few weeks, it has been the background music to my days. I can almost break into ‘Like a bird…’ in supermarkets, in libraries, while K and I have breakfast, while driving, while writing this and while not writing this, gazing out at the clear blue sky and the far away blue sea and mini clouds. It makes everything slower, richer, more peaceful.

‘…I have tried in my way to be free’

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis.

Graphic literature

As the author mentions, there are two distinct kinds of awareness – the sequential and the simultaneous. The comic form or graphic literature form intertwines the two: language providing the sequential thread and the images and the drawings provide the simultaneous input – the picture, for a fuller, better understanding and appreciation of what the author is communicating.

I do not often read graphic novels. Perhaps never consciously picking them up. Just a few loved comics and fun websites to visit (xkcd, smbc, zenpencils). Or what was read while growing up, or as I introduce the kid to some of the characters I read about growing up.

However, this book caught my attention as one of the new acquisitions by the library. Browsing through the pages, as I came upon the graphic representation of the well-loved tale of flatlanders, I wanted to read more. It worked that it shared profound thoughts on the blurb – ‘perception is always an active process of incorporating and re-evaluating different vantage points.’

It didn’t take long. The pleasure of knowing what was inside was all mine within a couple of hours. And I loved it.

Unflattening the sight

The central premise of the book stays opening yourself up to new ways of seeing, to new view points, to new vantage points – a journey towards multidimensional thinking, rather than staying trapped in confined ways of approaching the world. Which all perhaps springs from recognising that what you see is part of the picture, and hence seeking out better perspectives, better vantage points to fill in the gaps of understanding. Knowing that there are unknowns, and gradually gaining an appreciation of the unknowns and the dimensions not yet known.

A kindred spirit

When you start reading a work where you recognise some of your own thoughts and ideas, and when it resonates of your own pursuits of figuring out the world better, where the author believes in the same thing as you do, there is a feeling of finding a kindred spirit. A connection. An affinity.

Not saying that I am able to think and perceive at that level, but saying, that I am a traveller, a student of the same path* where perhaps the author is much, much further ahead. And that is why the book was so much more rewarding.

Quotes

Reading through, I noted down many points. As I believe it is a pursuit, a way of life to train one-self in – the art of seeing. A few snippets/ quotes from the book which I wish retain and revisit for future inspiration:

Flatness of sight – A contraction of possibilities. Lacking a ‘critical dimension’ of potentialities to transcend their existing state. So pervasive are the confines – inhabitants neither see them nor realize their own role in perpetuating them.

Disrupting these deeply ingrained patterns takes a profound nudge – like the sphere gave to the square.

Unflattening is a simultaneous engagement of multiple vantage points from which to engender new ways of seeing.

Nothing changed – except the point of view, which changed everything.

The fundamental shift of viewpoint irrevocably ruptured a stasis of thought, the implications rippled outwards.

Italo Calvino wrote – “ Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and recognition”

Distance between and differences of views are essential – as long as channels of communication remain open and alive.

We understand the new in terms of the known.

If we have a superpower, it’s the capacity to host a multiplicity of worlds inside us, all of us do. Frame of reference from which to see the same world differently, to make the familiar strange.

Would recommend it. Planning to buy the book for K and the kid. And for myself. Since this is a continuing pursuit - this improving the way of seeing - books like this accessed often, ensure the pursuit to continue.

(* My thoughts about seeing. I wrote a few months ago. In a different context, and from a different field, but the takeaways, or the way of looking at things is irrespective of where you apply it. Here.)

Contact by Carl Sagan

Nice well-rounded science fiction after a long time!

Written in 1985, the book is a long time behind the current world. But that does not hinder the development of the key plot in the book. The story pursues a scenario of contact by other intelligent beings in the universe.

Things that I love about the book -

• Its premise - it is not outlandish or fantastic as some of the other sci-fi books tend to be, but a hypothetical probability explored; one element of contact from extra terrestrial intelligence explored while being fully grounded on Earth and recognizing human capabilities and constraints.
• The lead - There is a strong protagonist, Ellie, sort of a rebel, searching for intelligence and decoding the message when one is encountered. One of the few books which have a strong female lead in non-conventional roles. There are many beautiful books with female leads but very few who have strong, rebellious female leads. My other recent read, Mill on the Floss had one, but her rebelliousness was constrained by the times she lived in. 
• Balance - Despite it being science/ imaginative fiction, there are enough snippets of history/ culture, stories and information on the key scientific principles, which leave you with a lot of things to think about. It was a well balanced read - giving the pleasure of fiction showing the interplay of characters set in the context of science and all the other extra-terrestrial elements. And most of all, it had a positive, hopeful tone. (Which I felt so lacking in Rama II).

However, as all such future focused/ speculative books and movies end up doing, you expect to be marveled, but they end up falling short (the end). Like Interstellar, the movie. Or Rama II. Even though the journey, the reading through, the watching is fun, the end somehow does not live up to the build-up. It falls short, feels silly. But then, isn't it bound to happen? It's not the author's fault. We are talking about the most existential questions we face as humans and hoping to find answers in scenarios. If somebody could or would have shown the answers, explained the universe, this life, then they need not be bound to earth. And in such cases, 42 (Hitchhiker) is as good an answer as somebody falling in black holes and sending messages to their family (Interstellar) or finding a circle in value of pi (Contact).

I haven't read Cosmos or Broca's Brain or haven't yet seen Contact, the movie. Will look them up. I like reading such works, for the feelings they leave me with. The questions and the sense of wonder which can never  be satiated in this lifetime.

What thoughts do I end up with? That we are so, so insignificant, and the time we have this consciousness is so little, the magnitude we live at is so tiny, compared to the vastness and the hugeness of this space-time. How would we ever decipher any part of this, or ever find out any answers? I just wonder while looking out at the dark blue evening sky full of early stars, and sometimes amuse myself with a hypothesis, that perhaps all the old stories we remember and retain in various cultures, at least a few of them happened because there was some contact from somewhere else (some other intelligence) ....and the collective memory retains some of those episodes, worshiping and mythologizing what could not be explained, ascribing powers to them which were perhaps not their's. May be, it was so. And may be, not so. Who is to tell?

Along these lines, one of the stories told in Hindu mythology/ Gita is about Brahma's age. Ignoring the part about what needs to be done to escape the cycle of creation-annihilation, it is quite fascinating to fantasize about the quantum of time represented in each day and night of Brahma (the creator) or his lifetime. At least, something I read on this planet which talks of scales comparable to this universe.

Reading update and goals

On trying to read better and more.

Reading is what they call a garden of forking paths. You read a book, you complete a bit, and then you get referred to hundred others. The more you read, the longer grows the reading wishlist. All the time, trying to make a dent in it and balancing it with all the other good things in life, and reading about reading and books and authors and their thoughts. And when not doing that, reading about the world, and watching and listening, and learning. Sometimes, I get this strange despair that even a lifetime of reading won't be enough time to read all the stuff I want to read!

Still, the way a good book pleases, very few experiences can be compared to it. So despite the never-ending reading list, I try to go slow, to get completely soaked in the story. Balancing these conflicting desires: one, to read quickly to get on to the next book, and the other, wanting the current moment to stretch and stretch to make reading a fully enriching experience.

These days, I have three open books. Was reading John Cheever's Collected Stories - a big book with lots and lots of stories (love the slow bit there. Savoring each one). Was reading this in September. Then came the holiday, where I decided to travel light and started reading Mill on the Floss on kindle.

I have been able to read some long-staying-in-thoughts books over the last few months. And each good book finished leaves me with this gaping, lost feeling. I want the story to continue and go on reading about the life of those well loved characters, or about that interesting world or sometimes just author's thoughts. There is this low that comes over me until I pick up something new and can immerse myself in. I loved Middlemarch and wanted a bit more of that world and time and George Eliot.

Midway on Mill on the Floss. And the third one is Contact, by Carl Sagan. Bought this for the plane ride back to Sydney. So much simpler to put on some good music and read a book on a plane than browse through the entertainment system and decide on which movies or shows to work through!

Both Contact (first 100 pages), and Mill on the Floss seem to have strong female leads. One seems to spot the rebel in both of them, and I like reading them side by side. And it becomes all the more stark given Maggie could not do what she pleased while Ellie (Contact), led her life the way she pleased. None of the Victorian heroines would have done that...could not do that. Even though there is still a long way to cover, world has grown up and come forward a long way from those times.

Apart from these fiction books, there are a lot of borrowed non-fiction books sitting next to me. I love the idea of exploring (without necessarily completing) a book. Especially those that end up being repetitive explaining the same idea over and over again. It is easy to speed work through them. There are only a few excellent NF books that you feel like not missing a word of. Hoping that sometime will be able to complete Antifragile and Second hand time. (Both are my recent purchases after repeated borrowings from the library could not make me complete them. They seem to be books which one can read only a little bit of everyday).

So, have been exploring and trying to improve my reading habits. Hoping that over the coming days, I'll have more frequent updates on this page. And even if it is a small note, I do hope that I write a bit on what I've read.

Happy reading.

(Draft from mid Oct)

Update (26/10/2016): Finished Mill on the Floss. And then, read the pretty much un-put-down-able Hunger by Knut Hamsun. And the bookmark is still almost at the same place on Contact. Reading Collected Stories on and off. Need to begin the aspiration list books (Svetlana A and Antifragile).

Notes on some recent reads

This is holiday time, break time, 'sabbatical' time. Call it what you will. For my part, I consider myself fortunate to get all this time, which I can use to do whatever. Glad that I have been able to read a fair bit during this time.

Here, I round up thoughts on some of the books read over the last few months. This post has been growing in my drafts for a while now. Publishing it finally.
Not in strict order, but more recent reads are towards the top.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk ****

I have read Snow and The White Castle by Pamuk in the past. I have tried to begin My Name is Red and the Black Book often, but they still stay on wish-list. This one though was an impulse purchase and a relatively quick read.

It is a sad-happy, bitter-sweet  story of an obsessive, and sort of - unrequited love. Set in Istanbul of the 1970s, it recreates the city, its people for you. In this book, Pamuk approaches story-telling in a fairly new way - creating an actual, physical museum of the fictional objects referred in the story as the story unfurls, and as he builds the characters. It reads at times as a museum guide, albeit a highly engaging one.

The book revolves around two central characters and spiralling around them, weaves the city of Istanbul and the life people led there from mid seventies to mid eighties. Everyday life of the relatively rich and well-to-do people. And at the crux of it all you get to see the Turkish society/ culture with different moral codes, and like most of the world, separate expectations and lifestyle for its men than for its women. Everyday normal life but such saddening emotional orientation of the narrator and the object of his affections! It is a different reading experience. One of a kind. And since it is Pamuk's writing (though translated), it works its magic.

Longish book, but I liked it. I have never been to Istanbul, but if I ever go there, then I think I'll go to the physical museum of this story.

(PS - I realised later on that the period in the book is that of significant political and financial upheaval in Turkey. Around this time,  after the oil price surge of 1973, Turkey became one of the first countries in the world to not properly honour govt loans, and economically, this was one of the worst times for Turkey.)

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie *****

Salman Rushdie is one of K's favourite authors. And this book as well. And in a way which only art can do - by trying to understand the art that people you care for love, you get to understand your loved ones better. The shared art then works as a shared universe of emotions, feelings, reactions, a chain of thoughts, context and wavelength accessed through the common trigger of the art in consideration. One of the things that only art can do when accessible and shared - lends you the common currency, or key to the cocoon.

This being the reason I finally read Midnight's Children in the past after several unsuccessful attempts. And over time, I have read essays and other writings from SR, and grown to respect and enjoy his writing. But unlike others, this one was a completely different reading experience. Either I have grown, or Satanic Verses is a completely different level of writing. Extremely engaging.

This was an autographed copy - autographed to the kid, when recently Salman Rusdie visited Sydney (Opera House - Dangerous Ideas). Loved the construct, the story. Reminded me of so many other authors I have grown to love - Marquez, Pynchon, Borges, DFW. Loved the brilliance of story-telling, and of language. It is set in London, Bombay and several timeless places in between.

There are so many other sub texts to reading this book, or writing about it. One gets tempted to research around the book, around the fables that underlay the cultural context, around the ideology that go on to constitute any religion in this world. And around all the controversy surrounding the book.  It is, after all, one person's take on the story, a version of fiction or fable, which can be as good as anyone else's. Since none of us was here centuries ago, no one really has the full complete story of how history, religion, people behaved. And as the author himself notes, "when you throw everything up in the air, anything becomes possible." And so it goes, surreal, steeped in magic realism and driving through some sad truths that form the foundation of our civilization.

One of the better books I read recently.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry ***

A saga of four lives. India - 1975. Emergency years. Quite saddening stories themed on the unfairness of life. Reminder of Slumdog (without the millionaire part). Reminder of Ivan Denisovich at some places. Reminder of all things that are not right, that are unjust in this world.

The period during which the book is set is more of my parents' teenage/ early adulthood years - when things were limited, resources were limited, and more than two billion people in this world lived very limited, confined lives. The period after the world wars, before globalisation, when most of the countries had their own independent worries, before the whole world became irredeemably interconnected.

Each country must have different stories of those years. At least the few Asian countries which form the population bulk in this world. I and my generation were not yet there, and if we were, maybe at the margins, perhaps as babies and just had a partial view into that world. Hence, it stays an enigma - that period of recent history, not as well documented as the wars before it, or the period that came after it. One then reads about Pamuk's Turkey, Doris Lessing's England, and Coetzee and Gordimer's Africa, Iyer's Japan, Paul Aster's NY and Rushdie's S Asia from that period to get a sense of how lives were being lived then. 

Language wise - after Salman Rushdie's brilliance, this one was very paperback styled, fast read. But then I don't think the idea was for it to be a masterpiece. The idea was telling of a tale of four lives from that era facing so much unfairness, and writing about that time when the world was still quite closed - it has several coincidences like a Bollywood movie. Unlike as I do with most other books, I do not feel happy after reading this one. It is the unfairness without any easy way of resolving it. And for that very reason, I realise anew that I refrain from reading fiction about India. Or around India. Guess too close for comfort!

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy ***

A massive book. Read on kindle. Has been on my reading wish-list for a really long time. I guess the suggestion of BBC War and Peace ads all over the city for the last few weeks nudged me gently towards finally picking it up. Haven't seen the show yet. It took me a couple of weeks to finish reading this tome on kindle. (Goes on to some 23,000 locations - over 15 mini books).

It is a saga of a few families from the Russian elite (counts and princes and the like) - not the mass Russia - set against the backdrop of Napoleon's pursuit of Russia during early 19th century. The world was very different -  a world sans any technology and an army of 100,000 marching from France to Russia at the onset of Russian winter with cavalry, infantry and all the old world ways. Today, they find place only in period dramas. For a war to be fought like that, it is perhaps not possible any more. And when it happened, it affected millions of lives.

I quite liked the way the context is set, and conveys the slow development of history, and author's reflections on the war, history and leaders and leadership. But most of the time, I was reading to move forward. It is fairly straightforward translation, with average language, and sometimes extremely repetitive . And approaching the end, I had little patience for the un-refrained, essay-ish writing. To pace myself, and for another flavour, I was alternating this book with Janet Malcolm's essays, and her writing was so well worked with, so pointed and sharp, that it magnified the contrast to this rounded prose significantly.

It's been a long time since I read Anna K, but somehow I recall that Anna Karenina was a better book than War and Peace - in terms of the story flow. However, the key message is well delivered through the saga of War and Peace - that events happen, and history takes it course over time and ages, and individuals, be it Bonaparte or Natasha Rostov, with their short lives, and human capacities, have limited control over them, and are merely instruments.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster ***

This one is what they call postmodern fiction. Three pseudo-detective stories. Interesting premise. Written in 70s I believe. The time and age which is now lost given the constant knowledge and traceability of people that is the defining feature of current times. And the non-traceability is sort of the theme in these three detective styled, inward looking stories. Quite unique ideas, at times dark and at times disturbing. People trapped in diminishing time, in mirror stories, in language.

However, the way it is written, it is difficult to forget that it is a book. There are two kinds of books/authors.  There are books that make you forget yourself, and forget that it is a book, and forget the existence of the author. And then there are other books where at times, things seem forced and you start imagining the actual writer and are very much aware through the book that you are reading a book.  You are unable to lose the awareness of reading, and unwittingly, start thinking of the structure, the language, the way things are put together. This one feels like that.

The Lady and the Monk - Four Seasons in Kyoto by Pico Iyer ***

This book documents the author's early life (late 20s if I recall) - a year of that period spent in Japan. He just left everything and went to live in Kyoto for a year. Travel + culture intro + the author's love story. Zen, Japan, sketches of people, seasons, culture and lots and lots of adjectives.

At times, it felt quite adorned with adjectives. But it is a good look into Japan - an outsider's take of Japan who eventually married a local person and looks at this outsider view from a far away, insider lens. One of the things that struck me, or made me feel a bit hostile to Japan was the male/ female role divide. At times, Japan starts sounding like Middle East or the oil countries given this gender bias albeit much more sorted and advanced.

As a tourist, very keen to visit Japan. The book does not diminish the intrigue. It builds it and makes you wonder and imagine and day dream. Worth a read if someone plans to visit Japan soon, or wishes to understand the culture better.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ****

The book has been with me for years now, waiting to be read. Short book. Stream of consciousness styled. They say, one of VW's more accessible novels. I have read her essays and since I often fall back on her diaries, I was keen to read some of her novels. There are a few that I have collected over time.

Mrs. Dalloway is another day-in-the-life story. I recently read about Ivan Denisovich's day. This day-in-life writing is an interesting approach to characters, to slowly portray their world, their thoughts and what drives them, what worries them. The book is a wonderful sketch. I read this one pretty much as a day in my life. Had other plans apart from reading, but right now I have much more control over my days and can change gears as I feel like it. Love days like this when I can just sit and read.

This novel reminded me so much of VW's diary notes. It is her life, or people in her life it seems portrayed masterfully. The way she builds up the people, you get so much engrossed with their lives, their thoughts. And VW portrays the London post WW1 and the mood, the sentiment. It is a beautiful day in June, and as I sit here in Southern Hemisphere, in December, I go through a similar day (weather wise) and I try to mirror the hours and read and you get through the day with them. Not a routine day, since this is the day when Mrs. Dalloway hosts her party. And then we get to know her better and the few people that cross her path that day. And get a window to her life.  And you get to read a love story that has a lost kind of feeling to it, sweet regrets of things not going the way they should have and as real life goes, ends with a bitter -sweet, full of some expectancy and some kind of ecstatic vibe, conveying as it closes, that those who have loved and lost are perhaps richer in feeling than those who have not loved at all.

Enjoyed reading this one.

Hemingway ****
I recently got to read a fair bit of Hemingway. And pretty glad that I did! I read the short stories (49 stories) over a few weeks. Each story builds a new character (mostly) and a new setting, and even though they are short, it is difficult to read one after the other. You need to pause, break the flow, get away. The stories continue to play on in your head for a while, getting themselves a longer life beyond the time spent reading them. Hemingway being one of those authors that acquire mindspace even when you are not reading them. You keep thinking.

And I love his writing. To the point, bold, direct, succinct. He says so much in few words,, quite like the poets writing prose. I also read The Sun Also Rises. Loved it. Feel like visiting Spain!

After reading the Moveable Feast and Paris Wife earlier in the year, I was quite looking forward to more of Hemingway. Only if one could write like that! Plan to pace myself on reading more - difficult to put down those books. I read about his work habits as well somewhere and the effort he used to put in, the work he used to do shines through...even though the theme in his books and stories is effortless output, a lot of effort went in to make them look like that. It's as one realises, it is easy to complicate life and things, quite difficult to keep it simple, to reduce it to the essence. Inspiring.

Doris Lessing and African Stories ****
I enjoy Doris Lessing's works. There was a time a few years ago when I read through most of her  work that I could lay hands on. Still quite a lot to go I believe.

I love reading short stories. One could compare short stories to water colours and sketches and novels to perhaps oil paintings? You don't have much time and forgiveness in short stories to get things done. They also take longer on the reader's part to read since each one creates its own new world. Reading short stories by a story-telling master is like stepping into an art gallery full of author's work and perspectives. Takes so much longer to go through than observing mere single painting and can be so much more rewarding.

The other thing that makes DL so appealing is the literary sci-fi she wrote. However, this book here was very much grounded, about the human condition in Africa. These are snippets of life from a colonial South Africa -  people mainly based in farms and at times in the up and coming towns and cities - but the life is so different. Each story weaves the characters, the context, and the unjust situations that most of the characters find themselves in. Some read like novellas.

Thinking tangentially - there were people who came to Australia, there were people who went to Africa, and then there were different people who came to India. India were more trade/ civil servants. They were not settlers. But Africa and Australia were settlers and that changes the world view significantly of the first generation and the generations to follow.

As I lay Dying by William Faulkner ***

I had read Faulkner's Light in August long time back. And I guess then bought most of the popular titles by Faulkner.

One of the spellbinding thing in the book is the way it is structured. It speaks from  many vantage points. A family of five kids, and the father are taking the journey from their home in a village to Jeferson - to bury the mother. It is told from view points of the different people, the family members, the neighbours. The story progresses as people talk about the different happenings from their each vantage points.

The world seems so strange, so different in the book. Like those fairy tale worlds in a nasty way. It is a different age, different time, different place. The problems are different. It was intriguing, interesting. And the story telling is beautiful, but the miseries are very different from the current world. The active effort and the single minded focus is on getting the cart safely to Jeferson -  a distance to be covered in bad weather through overflowing river. They face a lot of troubles and misfortunes, and as they describe them, each in their own way,  you get to understand each one of them better.

Kurt Vonnegut ****
Discovered Kurt Vonnegut recently. Read two of his novels, apparently the two of his best - Cat's Cradle and Slaughter House Five.

Both have sci-fi concepts, outlandish concepts thread through both the books, but unlike other sci-fi authors, KV is very much a human condition explorer.

Slaughterhouse Five explored the involuntary time traveling protagonist, the planet Tralfamadore and the concept of  'so it goes'. At times, the disparate link-ups sound like Pynchon. Set during the World War 2 and drawing from the author's own personal experience, this is perhaps his way of conveying to the world the horrors and the absolute ridiculousness of war - the brainwashed people fighting and living unnatural lives for what? Around the time of reading this, I also watched Saving Private Ryan, and some of the imagery that came to my mind was inspired by the movie.

Cat's Cradle had this concept of a very different culture - the utopian Bokononism (which reminded me of Franco's The interview), and the element that instant freezes water (ice-nine) and starting off with the atomic bomb, goes on to an end where things change for the whole world. Similar concept and takeaway - we live in a ridiculous world, inter connected to the hilt and treading a fine line. Hoping that nothing unsettles the balance, because once it does, nothing much left for humanity.


V. by Thomas Pynchon ***
This one kept sending me back to Google. There are so many references. But then it is Pynchon for you. Half the fun is lost if one does not understand the context I guess. Enjoyed this book and I can just marvel and the depth and breadth of thoughts and ideas. How do people even manage to think like that?

I don't know if I understood it completely. It stayed with me for a while though. Set in the context of war, and flowing like a technicolour movie, I kept getting flashes of Inherent Vice (the movie) through it. I tried to begin another of his book, but gave up early on. Will grow up to it I guess. Good to have an aspiration list as well.

Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse ****
Another of those futuristic novels. I seem to have read quite a few of them last year.  But future in this case is just mindspace. It could be anywhere, it is some sort of timeless world. The idea of the game is much more central and important.

The book and the game describe culmination of art, culture, and all the knowledge in the world and several existential debates and view points. I enjoyed the premise, the set up of the book, the way it is built through, but I guess started losing interest in the middle where the dialogues become too long drawn. Picked up attention again in the end.

It is set up as a biography of a future leader, and then in the annexure, has some of the future leader's own writings as well. Sort of short stories - or where as an assignment the students of the game had to imagine lives lived - imagining themselves as some character in some different time and place and describing the life. Loved those three lives or short stories.

The book has a lot of ideas and fodder around mindfulness, around education, around empathy (the lives exercise is worth asking everyone to do it - kids and adults alike to inculcate empathy. (I'll begin mine as well).

My takeaway stays meditation, music. And the concept of deep still waters  - mindful, unruffled existence, empathetic human beings. The importance of collecting oneself and of always keeping the perspective. So easy to get lost in the shallow waters. If only one could find the depth and stillness, and simplicity in life. Too much to ask?

Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera ***
Last year, June. Milan Kundera's latest - first in ten years; airport purchase; short read.

Airy, light, breezy, sort of insignificant (which it celebrates),  and a few really deep thoughts that remain with you forever. I don't remember much of it now. But I had jotted down a couple of points - The note on 'infinite good mood' - and how everything can be hilarious. And the note on Joke/ Stalin.
Contrary to what I said earlier, as I look now at this second note, I realise I have forgotten the context of the Joke/ Stalin, and the book is buried deep in new books collected and reshuffled over the last six months. Will look it up next time I take out one of the older books. And edit this paragraph.


Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov ***
It is beautiful writing,  but the subject matter is just so random. It is like a caricature. I do not have any strong thoughts or views that I recall. I am also trying to read his collected short stories, but not really getting there. Will try again in a few months/ weeks. Another author that I need to grow up to.


Cloudstreet by Tim Winton ***
Loved the book. Was a friend's recommendation on Australian fiction. Similar to Faulkner, this one is of a time and land which seem so different in modern time and day. Even as people stay the same - emotionally, behaviourally. The world has changed but how we relate to each other, our pursuits, the human condition, continues to stay the same when one gets down to the brass tacks.

Reminded me of Steinbeck's California at times.  And at times, it revived the memory of the Thorn Birds...the story was around early settlers in Australia. I should look up that book again,  read it ages and ages ago.

Want to read more of Winton, and then another on wish list - Voss (Patrick White).

2015 in reading

Happy 2016!

2015 was a great year for reading. Could read a lot, perhaps most in a year since I have started keeping this blog. Read wide as well - some very interesting books, short stories, essays, sci-fi. And mostly loved what I read.

I recently took a sabbatical (should I call this holiday a sabbatical?) which allowed me to read non stop. Luxuriously spent this time discovering the beautiful open secrets of Sydney - parks and harbour views, walked and walked during spring when Sydney turned purple, clicked lots of Instagram-able pics, explored endless aisles in bookstores and the city's wonderful libraries and read to my heart's content. Half of the books I read in 2015 were read during this break - the last couple of months or so (15-20). I think I read well through rest of the year as well. The essays and 2666 were big achievements earlier this year.

Book list from my Recent Reads page:

1. Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi. (January). **** Short Stories
2. The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer 
3. Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano (March) **** three short novellas
4. Emerald City and other stories by Jeniffer Egan (April) **** short stories 
5. One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (April) 
6. Drown by Junot Diaz *** short stories
7. Both Flesh And Not, David Foster Wallace ***** essays
8. Less Than One, Joseph Brodsky ***** essays
9. 2666, Roberto Bolano **** 
10. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain ***
11. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway *****
12. The Festival of Insignificance  by Milan Kundera ****
13. My Struggle 1 - A Death in the Family - Karl Ove Knausgaard ***
14. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov ***
15. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton *** 
16. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou *** 
17. V. by Thomas Pynchon *** kindle
18. The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald **** Oct
19. Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace *** short stories
20. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut ***** 
21. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut **** 
22. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke ***
23. African Stories by Doris Lessing **** short stories
24. Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu **
25. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood ***
26. The Search For Roots - A Personal Anthology by Primo Levi ***** (anthology/ extracts - essential reading as recommended by P. Levi)
27. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn *****
28. Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee *
29. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ****
30. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse ****
31. The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway **** short stories
32. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner ***
33. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ***
34. Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari ****
35. Between You and Me by Mary Norris ***

A few notes:

• This is the year when I read Hemingway and around Hemingway and enjoyed his works a lot. Hope to read more.
• Happy with the number of short stories I could read. 2016 - I have started reading Borges to keep up the tempo. Loved some of the short story collections I read in 2015. They were worlds in themselves. Esp, African Stories by Doris Lessing and Hemingway's pursuits and life depicted in his stories. Love both of their writing. Sketches; Like an art gallery - a short story collection.
• Lots of essays. By the masters. My notes on them are long overdue, but I am glad that I read through them. They were savoured, read slowly. Both Wallace and Brodsky are masters, and written words from them are worth their weight in gold. (That would make Infinite Jest very expensive!) They dive so deep and still maintain a lightness, poetry - quite a privilege to read these authors.
• 2666 was one surprise book of the year. Quite liked it - the structure, the way it gets tied up (though the violence was a lot to deal with).
• Lots of science and future fiction too. Discovered Kurt Vonnegut. Liked the novellas. Loved Rama by Arthur Clarke even though the series was disappointing. Was saddened by Handmaid's Tale. 
• Tried reading Knausgaard, but not sure whether I want to read the next books in the series. During the year, I tried reading book 2 often but could not complete it. Yet to try Elena Ferrante. Another similar book was the one about Hadley and Hemingway.

I love these breaks whenever one can get them. This year holds a lot of my aspirations and ambitions. The future is still hidden, a yet-to-be discovered territory ...we'll get there when we get there. Until then, we try to read more and read better.

Happy new year, and happy reading.