Reading, at the moment

This year has been a slow year compared to last in terms of count of read books. But it has been an interesting one. I am picking up nonfiction more often. Mostly essays or collections of longform writing (Stephen Gould), or engaging autobiographies (Doris Lessing, Simone De Beauvoir or NF related to reading and books or authors I enjoy (Knausgaard’s or reading memoirs).

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Non-fiction and Instapaper

With non-fiction, the books either need to be something exceptionally A grade which I am happy to read cover to cover – and if not, then my attention is much better held by essay collections which require engagement while on the topic, but you can happily disengage between two pieces. The effort of the author for each individual piece is normally quite high and read with concentration, a set of 15-30 pages of well-written essay can be quite rewarding experience. Also, at times one might not be interested to read books about interests which are yet to be stimulated, but very happy to read well-written 30 pages.They can serve as a beautiful gateway. And depending upon how interested one is, one can keep digging deeper.

The other bit is that the quality in Non Fiction is highly variable. NF is very different from fiction. For fiction, I go for the author or a well-acclaimed title, and sometimes impulse, and then there is all these past centuries and several countries to pick a reading experience. There is an unending list. And for me, most fiction is pleasing, time well spent.  NF on the other hand, the topic and the author both need to win. Sometimes, even if the topic has not been on agenda, it wins in hands of a masterful author. But the moments of dazzle that I seek are limited, and the probability to find them is higher in shorter than book length (long essays) rather than books.

Apart from books, this year, I rediscovered Instapaper a few months ago. And since then, my delight has found no bounds. I think I have always wished that there be an app that would allow seamless offline reading experience; If I knew how to create apps, this was the kind of app I would have liked to create. But Instapaper goes beyond my humble dreams of one device saving and clean reading later. Some apps are just so good and simple. If one were using only one device, bookmarks are good. But, with instapaper, comes the ease of saving and reading later, from whichever device I happen to be browsing or whichever app/magazine/ newspaper I am in, and then reading wherever I am offline, and queuing up my reading, again, from any device. The ease and simplicity with such seamless integration has made me a big fan. A lot of  my phone time is on instapaper now. So, at the cost of sounding like an advert, I recommend Instapaper to anyone interested in reading longform writing or any writing from different sources and wishing for a method to keep them organised.

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Reading at the moment

I recently finished reading Arthur C. Clarke (3001 – The Final Odyssey), and my bookmarks are at different places in a few other books. Some notes and thoughts:

3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (SF, kindle)

Have been keen to read this book for a while. Over time, I've read others in the series (2001, 2010, 2061). And this is the final installment. Not too many pages. Read it one day last week.

I generally enjoy good science fiction. However, this book was just alright. No mind-blowing stuff. I blame this feeling partly on my recent state of bad cold and low energy. I swapped my essay read for a fast sci-fi nothing else appeals much. And part may be, may be (and I hope not), that I am growing old?

At what point does the age shift start to reflect in your reading? Is it when you start reading too much non-fiction? Is it when you enjoy the sci-fi less? It seems to enjoy fiction heartily you need to suspend belief and logic and many other things, and immerse in the world created and unfurled by the printed words, and go for a jaunt in that world. I hope it is not the age or the feeling of knowing better. Most of the books I read, I enjoy and am able to take a jaunt in their world. Just sometimes, the veneer is too thin.

Again, I blame it on my current temporary state of physical energy for such bleak thoughts. Hope this will pass soon. I quite look forward to new books, and come to think of it, the sci-fi stuff has always sort of been slightly depressing – not because of any specific book but just in the general sense that they create and raise hopes of possible scenarios and answers and only very, very few of them can actually see them well to the conclusion. And one can’t blame the authors. They are dealing with the fundamental questions of existence and science and knowledge which, as human species, we are still nowhere near the answer and perhaps, even a few lifetimes are not enough. So, it can't be a new feeling, this existential and random angst that sci-fi generates.

Maybe it is this particular book. The premise of all the four books in the Space Odyssey series was pretty much set up in the first one, 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the first book and the movie by the same name, both are enjoyable. (Although, I remember dozing off during the movie the first time I tried to watch it – I was on a plane and the turbulence, the gentle rocking, and the long stretch of space on screen with nothing happening for a really long time with some gentle music in my ears was a good way to nod off.) But like the mystery genre, the joy lies in the first read, and in this case, the first book. After which once you know what it is, it gets a bit boring. And this is no literature. And the series from book 2 onward dissolves to a page turner - just any other novel – with much weaker plot lines and characters. Nothing much to write home about.

The other reason is that when your instagram feed shows a close-up or never seen before shots of Jupiter, any silly, implausible stuff about Jupiter/Lucifer and its moons as referred in these books, starts sounding too inane. We don't know much yet, but we know a lot more than when this novel was written. Although Arthur Clarke uncannily has been very close to truth in many cases. And that is why we continue to read him and be awed by his constructs.

The best part for me were the final few pages of notes in my version of 3001. There the author has given more details about the thought process behind some of the assumptions and how he visualizes the future. And he refers more to the science, which serves as a good gateway for further google searches.

So my final take, do read 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first book in the series if you have never read it. But if you are not in science fiction, the rest three in the series can be easily skipped.

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Currently reading: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

This one again has been on the kindle for a while. But I recently found a hard copy in a book sale. And it has moved up on my reading list. However, as soon as I read the first few pages, it took me back to Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children - the writing style, the punctuation, the by-the-way references continuously interrupting the linearity of the narrative, the derision and volubility in the language, the autobiographical nature which is not really the point of the novel (of both the novels). I read Midnight Children a few years ago (after repeated attempts previously), and enjoyed it so much that I read more from Rushdie soon after.

Seems like I am not alone in thinking that Rushdie was channeling Sterne. There are many others. A google search will reveal even papers written on this.

Since this one is a book of my own, and not a borrowed one, it is one of those books that can wait, and keep getting pushed to the bottom of the pile by new interesting attractions. Hence reading it between the other few. Still early pages, but quite engaged with the book now. Currently bookmark is somewhere in book two. More, later.

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Currently reading: From Silk to Silicon, the story of globalisation through ten extraordinary lives by Jeffrey E. Garten

Impulse pick. Fun, page-turning read. Loving it, and recommending it to whoever I am meeting.

The author has picked and profiled ten people who have been instrumental in changing the way the world has been connected before their time. Be it the empire of Genghis Khan, or the marine travel and African shores before Portuguese entry under Prince Henry’s influence, or telegraph cables that connected Europe to America through the efforts of Cyrus Field, or the interconnected financial world created by Meyer Rothschild, or the Europe of Jean Monnet’s vision. The stories left me spellbound. I am currently in the last third of the book.

It is another perspective on world history which always stays an interesting and intriguing topic for me. The more vantage points or ways you can learn to see, the better you see, and understand and fathom. And this book helps.

As the author notes too, that they are not all heroes in the virtuous sense. Some of these people have left a lot of misery on the paths they have trod, but the impact they had on connecting the globe was phenomenal. I found the tenacity, the perseverance, the single mindedness and the general level of hardwork in these people’s lives quite inspiring. I was hooked from the first chapter on Genghis Khan.  

However, the chapter on Robert Clive was difficult to read. This book is written from Western perspective and mainly Western Sources. Having grown up in India, and hearing the story from India’s side is a different experience. Some people’s heroes are other’s villains. And as they say, it is complicated.

Trying to reduce lives and histories of a period to a few pages is a difficult task. But overall, I come out richer; so many things I didn’t know, and these chapters serve as a portal or departure point to so much further interesting questions and readings and google searches.

One of my favourites in the book so far is Cyrus Field (he envisioned and executed the laying down of telegraph lines between America and Ireland and connected the world like never before). His is a story of tenacity unparalleled.

This book is well written, an enjoyable reading experience. One of those books where you want other people to read them too, so that you can share and discuss. In my case, since my child is interested in history too, he gets prodded to read along, or ends up being the audience to my enthusiastic recount of these people’s lives and so far, he seems to be enjoying it.

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Since I quite enjoyed this way of looking at history – as a cross section and a different perspective, a lot more specific than general, and illuminating in its specificity, I am supplementing this book with a couple of other books. Stefan Zweig’s (translated) Shooting Stars. These are ten historical miniatures - stories about specific moments, sort of turning points in world history.  I have enjoyed his short stories. And these pieces seem to be written in a similar manner. I have just begun reading the book - read one about the first sighting of the Pacific Ocean by a European.

Also picked up 1688: A global history by John Elliott Wills.  Specific to the world during that year, and hence seeing the world from a year where the author reckons quite a bit happened. Just read the preface and intro so far - sounds promising.

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Currently reading: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (on phone)

While looking for some fiction pages to save on instapaper, I came across the Gutenberg page on Sinclair Lewis. I have read his Babbitt. And hence, decided to pick this one, amongst a few other books and essay collections I have on my instapaper reading queue.  Babbitt was about a town/city. And about a man, mainly. This one is about a village/small town. And a woman. A wife who cannot work because she is a wife in early twentieth century America. And her ideas. I am somewhere midway in the book. Enjoying the portrayal of a different time and life.

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Another current read : What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

This is the sort of book I have in mind when I say I prefer a collection of well written essays on myriad topics over a long book on one topic.  I started reading this last month, but a holiday trip came in between where I didn’t carry the book, so the book is still somewhere midway. But the thing about his essays is I know that I just have to read one page, and I am pulled right in. 

The book has long been on our shelf. Guess from the year it was released. I never came around to it. This is a selection of author’s writing from New Yorker (?). Each essay is a delight. The topics range from Enron to periods, homelessness to N N Taleb, and advertising and demand creation, and most of them are fun reads. This book too goes in the category of ways of seeing. Refining and continuously refining the way we perceive the world.

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And a closing note. 9 years of this blog.

As the year approaches close to its end, and this book blog enters its tenth year, (On and off updated. But the ‘recent reads’ page stays a good log for me), I am thinking of ways of measuring.

I have at times been tempted to put up a page of current reads. But as I often dip into books without finishing them, I am not sure how to measure the interrupted reads. The engagement level with each such dip is quite different too. Some are gleaned well for the key idea, and some abandoned after a few chapters. 

So, finished books continues to be the easiest, cleanest metric. Still, once in a while, I’ll try to put up “Currently reading” posts (yes, of all my past aspirations, writing regularly has been the continuous list topper).

Another housekeeping matter – one thing I’ll perhaps change is the way I record my recent reads. I’ll shift the order from next year with the most recent at the top, rather than the incongruous way it is currently done (sequential in individual year, but going down the years).

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So long. And now back to the bookmarks.

Second-hand Time

A very sad, emotionally draining book.

I had bought this a couple of years ago, after Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel for Literature. But I couldn't get too far in it. That is until I watched the movie, "The Death of Stalin" a few weeks ago. I felt it was a satire. But you read the book, and you realize that it was not. The movie set the background, the context. I haven't read Russian history in detail and most of the Russian authors that I read are from over a century ago: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin. Their Russia is different. Then there are Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, who talk of the last century. Or from more recent times, Brodsky, or for that matter, even the Russia recalled by Nabokov. Still, amongst all these, the movie was the best departure point for this book.

Second-hand Time begins where the movie ends. This is about Russia after Stalin, more recent, now; in eighties, in nineties, and until a decade ago.

What do I feel?  Emotionally drained. Sad. Angry. This is not an uplifting or feel-good read. It is about reality. And to that, a gory reality. Saddening. And I don't like it for that.

One wonders why does the world keep going to war or strife, at the global level or these pockets spread out across the world. Or what the solution is? So many, so many lives ravaged across the world in different civil wars. How come we as human beings have not been able to win over the demons of our own making? It is as if we have not found a way of living with each other still. What is the reason? Revenge? For something someone else did? What causes trouble?  Having too much? Having too little? We keep stepping on each other's toes? Or that greed has no end? Or we don't like people who don't look the same? Or we don't like people who don't think the same? Intolerance? And to think that we live in 21st century. Wouldn't evolution mean that after living together for centuries, people will realize that generosity of spirit, generosity in tolerance is what makes life livable. People need faith. They don't need any religion which makes you wish to change the world or converts out of others. It needs faith that lets you contemplate, look inside and conquer your inner mountains. And come out victorious, more generous, more tolerant, more peaceful.  But what if life gives no opportunity to even generate that faith?

What about the unwitting participants in strife? The exploited and the one exploiting, unwillingly following orders. Those who would happily have stayed away but who get unwittingly pulled in just by the accident of being born in that ravaged place; get scathed, burnt by their life in such torn places. It is not easy for anyone. There is no choice for them. No choice to get away, say no.

It is as if somebody just clipped the saddest stories for days and days on end and put them all together in a book form. And to think that this is the way people get forced into living. It is all very, very unfair, and wrong. And on one's fairness scale, one recoils and finds it tough to understand that how can we all go on living our normal lives when the world is full of this much insanity. We do. As I know I do.

The book becomes darker and darker as it progresses. There is one thing to be poor, and not have enough, but it is completely another to have lives destroyed, people killed, families broken, and people psychologically becoming inadept to live, to love. There is little that life holds after that.

While reading about Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn), I at least felt a root of love, hope, joy, or being able to find the life spark in the most difficult of circumstances. Some ray of sunshine. But here, no, it is just a lot and lot of sad bits. And that is what is the difference, it is reporting,  journalism, as is. No value judgments. Where journalism reports, literature goes on the meta level, or a level deeper and raises the more basic question of existence and all its paradigms and what all it means and perhaps tell a story to an end. Here, there is no end. Just strife everywhere.

And that affects me. When there is no author to show that ray of sunshine, you need to create it yourself. How? To remind myself that wherever and however one lives, the thoughts and the outlook is perhaps something that no-one can take from you. However bleak it is - the one luxury, the freedom of mind is individual and personal. And that can perhaps never be taken away. And that is perhaps your choice. Perhaps. And maybe, there lies the power of human thought. That what you choose to do and think is you. To never be a victim.

I am nobody to say anything in all this. May be, all this to just arrive at a personal manifesto. It is just a way to find that ray of sunshine. Else, if you look down, there'll always be a reason that you cannot look up. Unless you choose to. And that choice is not easy. We are fortunate enough to have it. This is a reminder to not squander it.

Stephen Jay Gould

I got nudged towards him through Atul Gawande's essay in New Yorker, which for some reason came up in my feed recently. It was "Letting Go - what should medicine do when it can't save your life?" He refers to Stephen Jay Gould and his essay "The median isn't the message" - when Gould found out that he had cancer and then lived long enough to beat the median. The essay was about statistics, about medians, long tails, and about life, and his struggle to not get bogged down by the median, but to rage mightily against the dying of the light.

I was hooked. Got his collected essays, "The richness of life - the essential Stephen Jay Gould". There are quite a few essay collections and books, and this seems like a good starting point.This collection selects from a wide range and has apparently some of the best essays. A curated view. Good to get started.

Stephen Jay Gould was a scientific essayist. A paleontologist. A naturalist. A scientist. He, along with Niles Eldredge, talked about 'punctuated equilibrium', and along with Elisabeth Vrba, about 'exaptation'. The writing is selected from his different essays written for Natural history magazine (he published 300 essays in a continuous streak over 25 years!), and from his books. Some of the essays are autobiographical, and a pleasure to read. Some are biographies of people he reads and revers. Others then get to Evolutionary Theory (the most difficult part oft he book for me). And then delightful readings on size, form and shape (including an intriguing account of Zebra stripes).  And some really wonderful writing on whales, insects, wings, snails.  Then the collection covers sociology, religion, racism - his essays linking everything to evolution and the misguided understanding of nineteenth and twentieth century evolution and survival of fittest.

One of those books that you end up being proud of yourself for reading. It took a long time. Almost two months. Over 600 pages, hardcover. And I read it along with other long reads which are still half way done. Not much other reading over the last two months I realize. But this one is a joyful read. Joyful in the sense it is science, it is thought, it is statistics, it is a way of looking at things which is not ordinary and humdrum, and you come out so much richer in thoughts on the other side.

Sample this from his writing on logical errors, and here, he is similar to Kahneman, Taleb.

"Our minds are not build to work by the rules of probability, though these rules clearly govern our universe. We do something else that usually serves us well, but fails in crucial instances. We "match to type". We abstract what we consider the 'essence' of an entity and then arrange our judgments by their degree of similarity to this assumed type. ...This propensity may help us to understand an entire range of human preferences, from Plato's theory of form to modern stereotyping of race and gender. We might also understand the world better, and free ourselves from unseemly prejudice, if we properly grasped the workings of probability and its inexorable hold, through laws of logic, upon much of nature's pattern. 'Matching to type' is one common error; failure to understand random patterning in streaks and slumps is another."

Some of the writing was quick to read, and easy to follow. But some was dense, difficult, full of terms I didn't know. But I am not complaining. I enjoyed it. Except one essay - "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory: Revising Three Central Features of Darwinian Logic" (an extract from his book of similar name), which I struggled with thrice but could not fathom. There were so many words/ scientific terms that I didn't understand. I have finally given up on that one. Sample a few words: Hoxology, ontogeny (I understand that now), insect metameres, rhombomeric segments, dorso-ventral inversion, parallelism, coherent clades. I can figure them out, and I sort of understand them in the context, individually, but I just can't follow the argument completely. More patience needed on my side.

But I did read rest of it, and I loved it. Another place where I came across 'stasis' a lot. And in its original scientific sense. The other bit, about insects and how their world is driven more by surface tensions than gravity - if one loves science fiction and imagining what alternate life looks like, this is so much fun fodder. Add "Other minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith to your reading list for a sense of invertebrate intelligence. Another book which I have read only halfway.

What appealed most to me in SJ Gould's essays was his way of looking at things. The joy of science shines through. And a humility, sense of respect, and clearheaded dissent with stuff he does not agree with (Dawkins views for instance). The book is full of quotable quotes, and my reading journal is full of words to look up and understand better and paragraphs copied for future. Books like these, like his, like Carlo Rovelli's, like Nassim Nicholas Taleb's - they either lend a new way to look at the same things or they just open up a new world to think about. And for that, I am grateful to these authors.

Sharing some of the copied quotes from Stephen Gould's essays below. From my notebook,  may not be exact.

"The brain, like the eye cannot focus on all depths simultaneously. One can lose important aspects of the general pattern by concentrating too strictly upon intricate details"

"Darwinism is a two part theory of randomness for raw materials and conventional causality for change - Chance and Necessity"

Hadn't thought about this - "the world's oceans form a single system and transport of heat from tropical areas guarantee that no major part of open ocean can freeze"

"Scientists have a terrible tendency to present their work as a logical package as if they thought everything out in careful and rigorous planning beforehand and merely proceeded according to their good designs. It never works that way, if only because anyone who can think and see makes unanticipated discoveries and must alter any preconceived strategy. ...Projects grow like organisms, with serendipity and supple adjustment not like the foreordained steps of high school proof of plane geometry."

"We are prisoners of the perceptions of our size and rarely recognize how different the world must appear to smaller animals."

"A system that seems to us stable, perhaps even immutable, is maintained by constant turmoil. We who lack an appreciation of history and have so little feel for the aggregated importance of small but continuous change scarcely realize that the very ground is being swept from beneath our feet; it is alive and constantly churning."

"Darwinian evolution cannot be read as a theory of progress, but only as a mechanism for building better adaptation to changing local environment."

"History is a series of irreversible changes yielding a series of unique states."

"The history of a species, or any natural phenomenon that requires unbroken continuity in a world of trouble, works like a batting streak, All are games of a gambler playing with a limited stake against a house with infinite resources.The gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he's at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor. The best of us will try to live by a few simple rules: Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God and never draw to an inside straight."

"Our world workson different levels but we are conceptually chained to our own surroundings, however parochial the view"

"The comfortably familiar becomes a prison of thought"

Finding the next read

When you are not trained in literature by experts, you try to find your own teachers. Guides. For me, a way to find new work has been prizes. Nobel prizes for one. And once you start reading of, and around the author, you find their essays, their influences, and writings they enjoyed. And that leads you to more books and more authors. And then there is something to be said about serendipity. You follow enough literary mags, authors, people, and you might stumble upon something that you wish to read next. [1]

In the same vein, books about books have been another of my favorite reading pleasures. Sometimes, I complete them. At other times, I just surround myself with them. Dipping into them, here and there, coming out inspired, and with a new list. You may not agree with whatever they say, still, it is like reading about reading from a fellow, more experienced reader. Always a pleasure.

I recently read Susan Hill's "Jacob's room is full of books". The title got me. (No, not yet read Jacob's room. This one, like The Waves, has been on the reading list for a while.)

Back to Susan Hill's memoir. The book is a journal or diary of a year, around and about books, poems and authors. About writing and prizes. And life. Sort of a year's collection of diaries or in modern world, blog posts. My joy was in the list making. Many of the authors I've read, and many I've not, but keen to read. Reading such books is like getting some sort of context and intro to new authors, and other books. Meta books.

Little else to say about the book except that I have a bigger list to read next. I have not read any other book by Susan Hill. Although I kept noticing "Howard's end is on the landing" in the book shops.

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Susan Hill's was a quick, laid-back read with a piece of paper keeping a running list. At the moment,  I have two slow-reads keeping me company.

One of them is Ursula K. Le Guin's, "Dreams must explain themselves". These are selected non-fictions - essays/ talks on different topics. So many thoughts get fired up. And some of them need context of her books. Still many to go.

The other is also a selection of essays - the Essential Stephen Jay Gould. Lots of essays clubbed across subjects ranging from probability to biographies, to his core, evolution. Reading these is not laid back for me at all, it can actually be a bit of work. But delightful work. So much to highlight, note down, and almost always, to re-read. It is a big collection, and I am just about a third in. But loving it.

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[1] I might have to rethink the title of this post. There is so much in my immediate reading lists, and longer lists, and just a general wish list of books to read, that it is not the question of where to look for the next read. It is a question of priority, of picking one out of the many. It is double-edged feeling - on one hand,  delicious, that you've so much, so much to look forward to reading wise. And on the other, the vita brevis feeling, so much to read, and so little time. How do you fit in everything? And why can't I read and think faster. Wish there were a secret time loop, where you are away for five mins in real world, and in the book-world, you could do five hours worth of reading. Wishes. Anyhow,  the point of the post is that if a book comes with recommendation, or an introduction, it helps at times. At other times, you don't need any recco or intro, the book just pulls you. Sometimes you push and work through a bit and then the book pulls you. But in most cases, the book eventually drives the reading.

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Some writers can go on and on about seemingly commonplace things, that have little left to be said about them, and still compel you to read them. As if hypnotized by their language. Or the meditative nature of these writings. Even the fluency of their thoughts can be contagious, showing the path, lighting it up with their coherence.They have this ability to pick up a seemingly random thread and follow it through, and around and before you know it, they have weaved it into a beautiful section of a larger rug.

I remember this rug metaphor, that life is woven like some sort of Persian carpet, of details building up over years. From Somerset Maugham's classic, Of Human Bondage. Read it a very long time ago, early teens may be, on my pen pal's recco. I don't remember it much except an aspiring, yet dismal, dark, unhappy life portrayed in the book. I guess it was too early to read it. But I do remember the carpet metaphor, that how life is like a Persian carpet, different things that happen to us making the colours and patterns. Not sure this meaning is what the author intended, but it is one of those things from a book, some image that stays with you, carving its own space in your head.

I have been reading Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard.  He is the kind of writer I talk about above - the ones who hypnotise you with their meditative prose. Compelling you to read the commonplace. But then it is not commonplace any more in his hands. As to his writing, I get repelled often and still keen to read more from him. Part of the reason I left his "My struggle" after book 2. Some books leave you feeling righteous, virtuous, good - ideally they shouldn't but they do however. And then some which leave you sad, bitter, petty, shallow, spilling over around you. His "My Struggle" was the second category. I know I'll read the next ones sometime, but not yet.

Winter is the second book in Seasons Quartet. (First one was Autumn) - notes to his unborn daughter. In this book, they eventually become Notes to a newborn daughter. A sort of personal mini encylopaedia but essentially departure points of what he wishes to share about himself. And it is not that he has not said so much about himself already. And said it quite vividly. For a while, I couldn't think of new year without thinking of Karl Ove's new year described in such detail in his My Struggle books. Such detail which goes on and on and on for pages. Recreating the reality by pinning down every little detail.

As to this quartet of notes, I like reading such writing. The pieces touch upon many related and unrelated things and people. However, one of the delights is the way he captures the daily joys and struggles of being a parent. Those things that leave you distraught because you wish to let the kid do what they say, and you know it is not right, and part of you wishes to stop them from doing that, and part of you wants the kid to let be, to go on being happy the way they are. Hence, both are sub-optimal choices. The moment that there is a choice, the outcome itself is sub optimal compared to earlier. Ideally those little struggles won't come up. But they do. And I am not sure that you read about them often - the little daily struggles that can tear you apart, and the little daily joys that send you to the top of the world.

However, I liked Autumn better than Winter. In some pieces, it starts feeling like work. And I feel that sometimes, the beauty of art is in making you forget the labour behind it. If you can feel the work, then perhaps it still needs some more pixie dust.

Notes from a Big Country

After recently reading Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, I was on the look out for some more by him. Picked up his Notes from a Big Country.

This one is not really a book, but a collection of columns about living in the US that he wrote for a UK paper after having recently moved to the US. Context being that the author has grown up in the US, then lived in UK for 20 or so years, and then moved back to the US. These columns are a picture of broadly a couple of years around 1996-1998.  Many sound like rants, some like anecdotes, but they are columns and hence fairly quick reads. The book seemed to live in my car for a while. It was easy to fit in a piece (just over 3 pages) in any short burst of time which I would otherwise scroll through. I am reading a couple of other books which seem to go well with the lighthearted break that this one provided.

The pieces are fun and delightful if read individually here and there. But too many in one go and you start feeling the way you feel after having too much of a snack. Not satisfied. Not good. And like wasted hunger. As if gorging on a lot of light reading. As if reading a bundle of magazines and calling it a book. Still,  it is over 300 pages and I seem to be low on my books completed count, hence adding it to the list.

I quite enjoyed the cheerful tone. It was good to laugh out loud at several points through the book, and along the way getting acquainted with several different aspects of the aforementioned big country, albeit that of two decades ago.

Remember seek (forgetting find)

Stasis. I first came across this word in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As some words do, this has found place in some corner of my mind. And like some stranded flotsam, comes bobbing up to the top of my mind often. The ‘often’ has become ‘more often’ these days.

What does Stasis actually mean? I’ll look it up and add it here in a moment, but then there’s something that it means which is how I perceive it, and perhaps it only means so for me. Isn’t that so with everything? Aren’t things or people something in our head, and something in the real world. How much of our lives do we live inside the head, exploring the depths and shallows, going through the flotsam and recreating reality in our head? One would think that the more we encounter reality, the more we correct the internal landscape, bringing it closer to reality. But what if we do not encounter enough reality? How disparate can the actual world be from the world inside your head?

Anyhow, Stasis is defined as “a period or state of inactivity or equilibrium”

Equilibrium. Isn’t it something desirable? Yes, perhaps.

The equilibrium where life is perfect outside, and the dreams or vision is perfect in your head. Is that an equilibrium? By doing anything, you introduce imbalance, and things might get off balance. Then what?  The equilibrium is so fine that you get caught in a really long stasis. Things are perfect in your head, why encounter reality?

We grow up with so much baggage. The way we perceive reality as human beings. The way we look at life. The different weights we assign to stuff. The way we seek from life; from ourselves. We seek, or we find? (K would say we find. But then he would also say, don’t stop seeking). I feel like I am caught in an EE Cummings poem.

You can spend your life unlearning, getting rid of the mental baggage, and not be able to get back to a clean slate. A mirage, this clean slate.

What is interesting is in Joyce’s book, the word is juxtaposed against “kinesis”. That is where I would like to be – Action. Kinesis. Movement. Motion. Working hard at something. Working so deeply and absorbed with something that the sense of self is forgotten. Such that the internal landscape and the external reality are perfectly aligned and one. When there is all foreground, the moment, and no background internal chatter, commentary or colours.

I manage to get there sometimes when I am trying to master a new skill. Say, new song on the keyboard. All that is then perceived is what I am trying to learn, and everything else is pushed out. It is like meditation. Or as a newbie tennis player, when I consciously remind myself to reset after every ball. There is nothing else then, the reminding and the ball. Or taken in by a curious pursuit until I find all the answers. Or a good book which creates such a reality that your personal internal realities are muted.

I then forget myself, or my internal landscape. Then all that is, is the real. There is no conflicting reality.

So, that is my objective. To get to kinesis. And to that self-forgetting, absorbed state of alignment of realities.

To do so, may be let go of the equilibrium for a little while, and seek kinesis. Once there is kinesis, a new equilibrium, a new stasis will follow?

***

Since we are talking about Portraits. And since this is about books, not an analysis of my internal landscape, I wish to write about my recent read, “The Portrait of a Lady”.

I tried reading this masterpiece by Henry James a few years ago. But I guess I had little time to read then. And I felt this book needed not some little time everyday but more time in a chunk. It is a portrait, and the more you can get in, soak in, the more you feel like and with Isabel Archer.

I bought this during my recent holiday. A small, sea-side book shop full of popular novels, and very few classics on display. And the only book I had taken for the holiday was Homo Deus (with high hopes. Sapiens was interesting, but Homo Deus gets too broad brush and over-simplified way of looking at things. Not fun enough for a reading by the pool). I was seeking something more fun. So, I picked up a gilt-edged copy of ‘The Portrait of a Lady’.

I feel like I am a latecomer to classics. Most people have read these books when they are young, and so the contexts, the actors, the situations presented in the book are already part of the inner landscape and popular culture, meanings of which perhaps I have missed. (but you never know what you miss, do you?). I have come to them late. And the encounter is a little different.

Similar to other Henry James stories I have read over the last couple of years, this is another international story. (I am referring to the collection “Daisy Miller and Other Stories”). Here too, in Isabel Archer, we have an American young woman in England and Europe in the late 1800s. There are a few enriching layers to the portrait.  First, the heroine herself, who is of independent thought (given the times she lives in), open, curious, full of life.  What she seeks from life, and the way she plans to live it, is her own, not like most other women at that time. And then there is this layer of circumstance, of interesting encounters that she has. Eventually, she takes a long-term call in a short-term mood, and finds her life limited, bounded, checked, reduced.

It is an interesting premise. Create an interesting character, bring them up interesting encounters, and how would they react? And it is done masterfully without judgement of her choices and her behavior to a large extent. With every choice, she grows. Even if her life becomes restricted, and fiercely quashed by the unspoken tyranny of Gilbert Osmond.

Great for the writer to envisage and bring about. But not so for the cousin (Ralph) who provides the means to Isabel to experiment. Watching from the sidelines, as if the only purpose Isabel existed or moved forward was to satisfy the entertainment desires of the rich, infirm cousin.

She seeks to soar. But then she settles. Or she doesn’t think she settles but believes that she is doing something which is bigger than her. Or as she puts it –she can’t escape her fate. (Of being unhappy? Of always yearning?)

I remember when I read it a few years ago, I left reading when I came to the part when she decides to marry the moody, dark, conniving, oppressive Osmond. So unlike Jane Austen. If it were Jane Austen, there would have been perhaps a few plot complications, but eventually the happily ever after would have happened with Lord Warburton. But then we wouldn’t be talking about the book. The reason it is interesting is because of these flawed characters, and their flawed choices and whims.

The book moved me. I quite enjoyed reading it. You get to think like Isabel Archer, with her follies and foibles. Stayed in my head for a while. I even looked up the movie. Watched it for a bit. But since the period drama movies I need to watch on my own (K wouldn’t be bothered with such), didn’t get enough time to move it forward. It is difficult to see Isabel Archer make those choices. And also, the undertones which are not so apparent in the book are brought out quite explicitly in the movie (1996 movie).

A fine read. Worth a re-read.

***

I looked up the E E Cummings poem that I am supposedly caught in.  Here goes:

in time of daffodils (who know

the goal of living is to grow)

forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim

the aim of waking is to dream,

remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze

our now and here with paradise)

forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond

whatever mind may comprehend,

remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be

(when time from time shall set us free) 

forgetting me, remember me

I would think it is a beautiful poem to be caught in.

Shakespeare

A couple of weeks ago I joined my kid's class excursion to the State Library of NSW. I have been to that beautiful building often, spending hours at times either exploring the new books that invariably land there (I was informed that any book published in NSW needs to hand over a couple of copies to the library), or just sitting there, working. However, this was the first time I got to know more about the library, and tour the hidden parts of the library. Such as the layers deep beneath the library. We visited underground 'Stacks' which are better than some A grade shelters, and which, all this while,  I never realized existed. These were full of old papers, books and artifacts.

The Shakespeare Room, State Library of NSW

Eventually, we reached the Shakespeare room. It is a beautiful, cosy little room with stained glass windows and a collection of Shakespeare books. It was great to see kids introduced to Shakespeare through drama, props and costumes, and with a context on the time and ages he lived in.  So much better than stumbling on Shakespeare through homework or a private silent reading of the plays. That was the highlight of the day- to listen to kids read and enact Shakespeare in that beautiful room.

The trip inspired me enough to visit a library on the way back and pick up something on or by Shakespeare. That is the roundabout intro to my recent read, Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, in the Eminent Lives series. I haven't read much of Shakespeare. But one cannot grow up in the current times without encountering him or watching shows and movies inspired by him, or hearing the famous soliloquies or reading some of the sonnets. He is too ingrained in the popular culture for that. My school's intro to Shakespeare was mainly through a couple of movies. I never read any of his plays for school. I recall using the 'Taming of the Shrew' story to write and enact a skit with my friends. I now cringe at the choice of the play and the chauvinist undertones! But one can't really change the past. It is what it is.

Eventually, I read As you like it . And more recently, I read Macbeth; the choice of the play being guided both by it being one of the complete texts in Norton's Leadership anthology (which has many gems, and a good way to pick up new books and authors), and oddly, equally by a Blackadder episode referring to Macbeth.

So I am at a beginner level as well. As to Bill Bryson, I quite enjoy his writing. He writes non fiction with such a flair that it flows and keeps you gripped better than fiction. His Down Under was a worthy intro to Australia before we moved here bags and baggage. There is a lightness of touch and a love for what he is doing that shines through his work which makes it so jovial and merry. And so  was this 200 page slender volume.

Given that so much is written about Shakespeare (there were 1000 books in the Shakespeare room itself), this book is unique in the sense that it tries to talk about Shakespeare from only what is known of him from original sources.  And in doing so, paints a wonderful picture of the times he lived in, of the way things were then, and how he was such an outstanding and pioneering product of his times. The amount of work generated by Shakespeare in a short super-busy life with constant theater and the related prep is awe-inspiring. Existing at the early stage of the printed book revolution, of limited paper availability, of records kept in hither- thither manner, and pretty much launching the theater industry, delivering hit plays week after week, and along the way, writing beautiful sonnets and poems, the young bard of Avon achieved quite a lot, inadvertently reminding me of the industrious radio scriptwriter from Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (by Mario Vargas Llosa).

Bill Bryson's book gives a lot of color around the whole Shakespeare industry as well. And is as much a story of Shakespeare, as a history of Shakespeare appreciation that has evolved over time.

A quick, fun read.

Fiction free days

I tried to keep the month of May free of fiction. Fiction engrosses me. Pulls me away from other things. Sort of a pleasure land. I can spend a lot of time there. I tried this in March too – the no-fiction month. It seemed to work out well, mostly. Of course, in March, there was the looking for and moving houses to be completed which left me with little time and energy to think too much about what I was reading.

May had other things. At the moment, tennis (May 1, Lesson day 1) has captured my imagination completely. It is exulting when the racket contacts with the ball with a beautiful sound, and so much better if it gets over the net. Such intensity of joy locked in so simple a thing! I ardently hope that my beginner enthusiasm will last long enough to pull me through the not-so-good days. There have been a few when the progress doesn't seem good enough. or when I feel I can't reset enough. It is still early days of what looks like a very long journey.

So, for the moment, I am satiated. I like it that I could read a bit all these months, and I like it that there is a limitless ocean of reading to look forward to. And I also like it that I can restrain myself (albeit with other delightful attractions) and not start running towards the tempting waves. What’s not to like?

Reading & Writing, continued

There are a few authors you read that seem to compel you to write. You read slowly, softly, feeling every word. And then you nod, you agree. The emotions are beautiful, at times you believe you too have some of them, but those words, that language, the way to weave all those things together, beautifully, poetically is a gift! After reading those authors, you feel compelled to try to write even though you feel short of words to express yourself adequately. And then it hits you well and truly that writing is difficult. And the more you read, the more you realize your limitations.

This must sound selfish -  this reading of books and constantly comparing, measuring myself against the level or intensity or clarity of their thoughts. Does it hint towards a deeper desire of being able to express myself as precisely and beautifully as all those writers that I read and admire? Or is it not just a way to appreciate the nuances better? Isn't it that when you pick up the pencil to sketch, you observe better and recognize the effort in a painting? When you begin to learn a sport yourself, you better appreciate the performance of its top players, and the super-heroic stuff that they manage to do. When you yourself try to cook, you better appreciate the mastery of certain recipes and chefs and the way they can make food intensely flavorful yet retaining its lightness. Or trying to learn chords on a guitar, you open up new heightened senses to the music you hear. May be, it is about walking in their shoes for a little distance.  May be, it is just that trying to write, makes you appreciate the terrain from where the writers send their messages better. Or helps you recognize that what seems effortless, is not really so.

It is ironic that these thoughts were inspired by a translated book. A few weeks ago, I read ‘Autumn’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It is a collection of little personal essays on objects, written to his unborn daughter. The collection is part of a Quartet. Perhaps the first one to be translated. He decided to write about something every day to introduce the unborn child to different things in this world. A sort of personal notebook, a mini encyclopaedia, a personal take on everyday objects. Most of the time the objects are sort of departure points to convey other thoughts. And it is beautiful.

Other couple of authors that evoked similar feelings recently are Elizabeth Von Arnim (my recent reads include Elizabeth and her German Garden, Vera, Solitary Summer, The Benefactress) and Simone De Beauvoir (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, again, a beautiful translation). Both of them are new discoveries for me, and very pleasing ones. With Knausgaard, Von Arnim and De Beauvoir, I can (somewhat) identify with the feelings they go through. Even if I have not felt it expressly, I seem to know what they are saying. Some of those emotions might be around me as a fog, but they have converted them into something physical, actual, real, tangible by verbalizing it. They speak to me, and they seem in a similar realm and world, although on a much different plane.

Contrast them with two other writers I revere, and read recently more from. Against a similar backdrop as Knausgaard's Scandinavien landscape, I recently read Isak Dinesen's collection of stories, Winter's Tales. A superb book. Similar to her Babette's Feast, the stories are not commonplace. They are filled with a lot of wisdom, and level of feeling and insights that make you wonder about how intensely a human being can feel, observe and recreate that reality for you. And you wonder whether you can ever do even a little bit of that?

Similarly, another of my recent reads - a collection of stories by AS Byatt – Elementals, was another other-worldly sort of writing. A unique set of stories, rich and colorful - a beautiful collection. It is similar to her Matisse Stories, delectable morsels of short stories.  There are water nymphs, ice princesses, people walking out of their own lives, and people lost in nightmarish realities. Dream-like low-probability sequences. The starkness of these stories pretty much keeps the excitement up throughout. Every emotion is heightened, deeply felt and seemingly new.

Where the first three (Knausgaard, De Beauvoir and Von Arnim) talk about life as we know it, or even if we don’t know it, my pattern-seeking mind finds enough in these authors to paint corresponding instances from my own life and colors in its paintbox. Smaller, much smaller emotions/experience, may be quite dull and blunt against their sharpness but corresponding nevertheless. However with Dinesen and Byatt, there is no pattern I can fit them in. And throughout the stories, my mind keeps working frenetically in the background, looking through the repository of lived experiences to find anything corresponding; but nothing emerges. Except perhaps a few dreams. But dreams are received, not lived through with any control of your own reactions, they are quite random, and weird and alien. So is in Dinesen's and Byatt's stories, there is so much alien emotion. And hence it is all the more wonderful. It is all the more engrossing because the mind has to work a lot to create the new frameworks and reference points for the worlds they portray.

Another way of looking at it could be that Von Arnim, Knausgaard and De Beauvoir are talking about personal experiences. About life as it happens to you, me or them. About the inner human landscape. While Dinesen and Byatt go into these specific realities, and worlds, that, I am sure could exist, but in a low probability/ unlikely sort of way. In the way that I am sure one could perhaps come across a beautiful blossoming pink tree while on a walk through the bush. You’ll be intrigued, delighted, full of wonder when you spot one. But more often, you'll be looking at greens of different hues, shapes and sizes. And green is what you end up calling the forest.

Elizabeth Von Arnim

I stumbled across ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’ while reading about one of those year-end weekend newspaper wraps where people talk about what notable or recommendation-worthy books they read in 2017. I had noted down the name in one of my many to-read lists. I eventually found the book at the library, in what they call ‘the Stack’. The Stack is where they keep those old or limited-edition books. This beautiful book was a 1915 reprint. So, over a century old! Bound, like a little notebook.

Intrigued and hooked, I read more about the author after finishing Elizabeth and her German Garden. As I was reading about her, and around her, I came across an interesting trivia that Katherine Mansfield is her cousin. (More on Katherine Mansfield later). Small world. And Von Arnim was born in Sydney; Kirribilli to be precise. So, there is the nexus element.

The book is a diary. An interesting one. It talks about her effort to make herself home in Germany. About her struggle with her garden and her gardeners, and her love of reading and writing along with her norm of being a sort of outsider, although a countess, in a foreign culture. And above all, her thoughts, her views of the world.

I wanted more. I found her books on Project Gutenberg. And then I had a new favourite open page on my phone. I read Solitary Summer which is in a way sequel to Elizabeth and her German Garden. I loved both of them. There are passages which I have clipped and saved. There is an articulation of feelings that I can completely nod and agree with. And feeling that nobody could have perhaps expressed better.

And then I read the next book, The Benefactress. Where the first two were inspired directly from her life, this one was fiction. The book tested my patience. Still, I wanted to read to the end because (a) It was an easy quick flip. And (b) I was hoping that it will redeem itself as it moves forward. I was genuinely surprised to think that people can have such saintly, unbounded generosity as shown by the heroine, accompanied with extreme naïveté. However, in the book, I did like the author’s meditation on what makes people happy, and lets them stay happy. It echoes with my own thoughts around human flexibility. I agree and believe that human beings get used to comforts and discomforts pretty quickly and re-adjust their norm, and what they define as happiness. It is during the bit when things are being adjusted where most of the emotional upheaval lies, or where lie the peaks of happiness or unhappiness, after which they lose the newness and become part of the for-granted. [1] [2]

After The Benefactress, I tried to read one of her later books, Vera. Like The Benefactress, I didn’t enjoy this one as well. But it was interesting to see where Daphne du Maurier draws her inspiration for Rebecca. It has been years since I read Rebecca, but it was an unforgettable sort of book. Where Vera revolves more around the couple, Rebecca was more about the new Mrs de Winter and the old one. Vera had a sarcastic, satirist comic element. Dark humour. A brat-boy-man who controls everything (a different shade of Huntingdon from the Tenant of Wildfell Hall: more about it later). One recoils at the dependence of women on men. You feel like wanting to reach through the boundaries of time, space and fiction to shake the person out of her misery, and to make them see for what things are.

And that is where I stopped reading Von Arnim. Delightful diaries. Loved her reflections and thoughts in her fiction books as well (though not the fiction per se). I would recommend the diaries to anyone who loves that sort of writing.

-

[1] A tangential thought:  Can we hence say that our quest should be to maintain the intense colors of new happiness and to not let them dim to the for-granted palette of beige and brown? Else, to match our previous levels of happiness, we'll always need something bigger, better, more colorful or new. Given the human capacities, perhaps we can say that to continue to derive high level of happiness from things that supposedly makes one happy, to preserve the intense personal happiness, you need to relive or invoke the initial encounter, the very first feelings of joy – to bring in the delight of the newly privileged, of the child. Being grateful definitely helps and should be a good starting point. As for the discomforting, and the not-so-happy things, may be, one needs to do nothing. Perhaps, just give ourselves some time. And the new realities will gradually become the new normal. There seems to be enormous flexibility and capacity in human beings to get used to just about anything. Perhaps that is what makes life bearable for many.

One of myriad ways of interpreting reality.

On a similar note, somewhere, in a poem (For E.R., translated) Joseph Brodsky notes,

“The future has arrived and it is not

unbearable"

[2] I was discussing this view ([1] above) with K. And he has a different view of things. He believes more in the stoical way of looking at things - to let emotions pass through you, wash over you completely, and to not resist them or push them, but let them take their course. That things shouldn't make you too happy or too sad. He is a believer in equanimity. About looking at the happy as well as unhappy stuff in life with a detached, a bit removed point. Somewhat like the poem If (Rudyard Kipling). 

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;"

A worthy aspiration to live like that. 

Not so simple, is it? - This trying to interpret life and happiness.

Reading & Writing

Reading is ephemeral, momentary, a transient joy. It is a journey, an experience that leaves you with memories, impressions, thoughts and questions. Compared to that, writing is much more work (for me), but after the arduous journey of sentence forming, you are left with something tangible. A completed piece of writing. To top it off, there is this beautiful feeling of the joy of achievement.

In a way, writing completes the journey that reading begins. Through the process of sentence forming, it crystallizes some of those vague impressions that reading leaves you with. 

A joy of its own class. All yours for a bit of effort and some discipline.

Wrapping up 2017

This wrapping up of a year : does it matter if I write about it 50 days after the new year has begun?  The joy of this blog is less in  the recount or the compiled list, but more in the journey. The slow, book by book listing on the Recent Reads page - every additional book a marker. And at times, although infrequently, the pondering and ramblings, which get triggered from those books, and get logged here on this page.

2017 -  One of my best reading years so far, in terms of number of books. And a good year in terms of diversity of books. An average year in terms of reading aspiration-set books.

I could read 53 books. It has been a long held, silly sort of milestone - reading 52 books in a year. Towards the end of the year, as the milestone became approachable, I might have favored 2-3 small books. But otherwise, it was the usual way of choosing the next read. Which is, open a few books, read them all in parallel for a bit until one takes over.

Here below is the list. (SS = Short Stories. NF = Non Fiction. SF = Science Fiction)

1. Tales of Love and Loss by Knut Hamsun **** (SS)
2. Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ***** (NF)
3. Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene **** 
4. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht *** 
5. The Europeans by Henry James ** (kindle) 
6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens *** (kindle) - finally a CD book read! Seems like I have watched countless movies/ shows 'inspired' by those themes. Entertaining, like a high drama movie. 
7. The Red and the Black by Stendhal *** 
8. The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola *** (Or should I call it an education in modern retail?) 
9. Animal Farm by George Orwell *** (Such unfairness, corruption, nepotism, politics! Heartbreaking. This book has long been staring at me from the bookshelf, for years now. Quick read, like a long short story. But packs a big punch, or satire showing how truth is created, recreated, and revised and created again to suit the ones in power. Good to read it as I pace myself through The Gene, and August 1814.)
10. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee **** (NF)
11. The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov (SF) *** Short Story like. Novella. (kindle)
12. A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Book 2 of My Struggle). ***
13. 1984 by George Orwell **** (kindle)
14. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway *** (kindle)
15. Jump and Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer **** (SS)
16. Foundation by Isaac Asimov *** (SF)
17. Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov ** (SF) kindle
18. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley *** (SF) kindle
19. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ** (SF) kindle
20. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis *** (NF)
21. The Duel and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov *** (SS)
22. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak *** 
23. Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life by J.M. Coetzee ****
24. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje ***
25. QBism - The Future of Quantum Physics by Hans Christian von Baeyer *** (NF)
26. Youth by J.M. Coetzee *** (Sort of Book 2 in Scenes from Provincial Life)
27. Summertime by J.M. Coetzee *** 
28. The Age of Magic by Ben Okri ***
29. Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah ** (Books that A reads and wants me to read as well). 29a. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeling L'engle. Enjoyed reading this Sci Fi. Another of Achi's term books.
30. Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver **** (NF)
31. Incarnations - A History of India in Fifty Lives by Sunil Khilnani  **** (NF)
32. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen ** (SS)
33. The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing **** 
34. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton ***
35. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson ***
36. Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric **** 
37. In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield **** (SS)
38. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein ***
39. The Faith of a Writer (Life, Craft, Art) by Joyce Carol Oates **** (NF | Essays)
40. Other People's Trades by Primo Levi *** (NF | Essays)
41. Daisy Miller and Other Tales by Henry James *** (SS)
42. Babette's Feast and Other Stories by Isak Dinesen **** (SS)
43. The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer ***
44. The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes **** (SS)
45. Tell Tale by Jeffrey Archer ** (SS) kindle
46. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver *** (SS)
47. This is Not a Story and Other Stories by Denis Diderot **** (SS)
48. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley ***
49. A Game of Chess and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig **** (SS)
50. Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman **** (NF | Essays)
51. South and West - From a Notebook by Joan Didion *** (NF)
52. Pulse by Julian Barnes *** (SS)
53. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres****

On creating, recent reads, short stories and podcasts

Here after a while. As 2018 approaches, trying to see if I can begin the year with some new habits. ‘Early resolutions’ is one way to put it. The underlying to this one is the desire to ‘create’ rather than just passively ‘consume’. Consumption is fun, and surrounded by all those books which compete for my attention, something difficult to tear away from. And hence, the need of a resolution, of habit or discipline to bring myself to write. If not written, the books read just stay with me as moments of pleasure, of intense enjoyment – existing at the time of reading. But if I write about them, maybe I get to stretch the pleasure a little bit more, and make it more permanent than the elusive, momentary thing that reading generally is. Another way to consider this is understanding how much sticks. And there are chances of more sticking if I were reflecting about it. And to write, one necessarily needs to reflect.

So, the means to reach the deeper end of reflection is to commit to write, with discipline.

**

It is the first weekend of December, and my count of books read this year so far stands at 44. Is this the year I reach 50? Who knows? I have a few open ones which I hope to finish before the year ends. Last year, I had finished some 42 books.

A good place to perhaps note that the number of books I finish is may be one tenth of the books I wish I finished, or books I physically begin reading, exploring, skimming, and thinking about. Some of them are nonfiction which I find difficult to read cover to cover unless they are engaging. And if I don’t read them cover to cover, I don’t count them as finished books - so, there. I try not to judge the reading year by the number itself, but still, it is a fun number to track.

**

What am I reading these days? A lot of short stories. I enjoy short stories. I like it that I can sit with new characters and new contexts over a cup of coffee and go on this journey with them. You can do that with longer novels too, but they work at a different pace. Short stories need breathing space. Each one requires afterthoughts. And each one is like a new present to unravel. Reading a book of short stories takes more time too I think. You spend a lot more time with the author when reading short stories compared to if you were reading a novel of same length.

I recently read Henry James and Isak Dinesen.  Henry James’ Daisy Miller and other Stories were about all these American women in Europe (most of the times). And the cultural disorientation that it brought. Equivalent today will be books where Asians, Africans or South Americans write about life in the US or UK. It is a different enough world, even in this time and age - a bridge not fully crossed compared to that between Europe and US I would think. Dinesen’s stories were fable like. Babette and her feast staying in my mind for a while.

My last read was Julian Barnes’ The Lemon Table. Unlike many other books, where the age of people is not as relevant (unless it is books with kids or young adults), here, most of the characters were people at the dusk of their lives. Old, with most of their life in their past rather than in future. And hence, in a way more grounded and real compared to other fiction I think. I guess at that age, eventually one comes to terms with oneself and lost dreams and promises not kept to oneself. Life’s accounting is much more real rather than forward looking then.  A lot of sadness in the book. It makes you wonder! Not a happy book, a bit disturbing. Still, enjoyed the stories and a couple of them – The Story of Mats Israelson, and The Things You Know stayed longer with me.

The books that I am reading currently include Katherine Mansfield’s Complete short stories, and stories by Denis Diderot and Raymond Carver. Mansfield is someone I have been seeking more of after reading Bliss and Other Stories earlier this year, or sometime last year. I read her stories from the German Pension recently. And finally found two more books. I love her writing, and do not want to finish it quickly - savoring them slowly so that they last longer. Mansfield’s short stories are quite haunting. I think of them at random times. They are very vivid. They make you wonder whether you saw a TV show that the images stay so vividly with you. Her stories are episodic, like instances, like a portrait, or a live picture of a very short slice of life.

The Collected Stories has all of Mansfield’s work in it (not much given her short life), including her unfinished stories. The unfinished ones are difficult to read since they are unresolved. Part of the reason I abandoned another book this year- Pushkin’s stories where the first few stories were not finished. And there are few things as annoying as reading unfinished stories.

Carver and Diderot are both new authors for me. I am enjoying Diderot. But Carver - I feel a revulsion as I read some of the stories. It reminds me of Cheever, of Updike, of the American suburbia and the subject matter of life with such bleak aspects, that it is a bit of work to read those stories, even though they are tiny. And is that what makes a good story? The way it can inspire those emotions in you? It is not like Henry James taking you through international episodes over 50 pages. These are 5 pages, and a life full of agony glimpsed through each story.

Incidentally, I heard Carver’s “Why don’t you dance” narrated on Paris Review podcast today – third episode, and since I had read the story just last week (it is the first story in the collection What we talk about when we talk about love), it was an interesting replaying at a distance of one week.

And? I know I am not borrowing more from Carver anytime soon.

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Getting on a tangent from the last paragraph – I have rediscovered podcasts. I have been occasionally listening to New Yorker fiction from its very early days some 10 years ago. But seems like right now is a good time to get reacquainted with the medium. There is enough good material created already, and enough coming from trusted sources, that you know your time listening wouldn’t be wasted listening to people go on about banalities. There is a huge library, and you can pick and choose and create a worthy playlist. My current list for books includes Atlantic Interview, Paris Review podcast (both new releases), BBC books, the New Yorker fiction and poetry podcasts, and Monocle’s ‘Meet the writers’ – timeless quality to most of them. Enjoying all of them - and hoping to find more.

What I love about podcasts is that they ease my chores immensely. While cleaning and tidying or tending to the laundry or the plants, I listen to them and don't feel one bit like I am doing any chores. Sometimes, in fact I look forward to the chores! I bet they wouldn't have thought of this happy application while recording those podcasts.

Most of my drives and workouts are still set to music. Not yielding that space yet. Yet.