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.

Rama series (1 & 2)

I recently read Rendezvous with Rama and loved it. The prose read as any paperback, but I just loved the fantastic imagination.

A beautiful idea - and then it created a world around it. I have not read many literary science fiction, but the reason you don't miss the literariness is that the richness and the beauty of Clarke's ideas is amazing. Introduced for the first time, the concept of the alien spacecraft with its own ecology leaves you enthralled. Set in it is the wondrous cylindrical world described in detail. Through the book, it leaves your mind beautifully applied traversing concept such as, shifting gravity levels at different points in the craft (and how it would feel) or, wondering what would you see on the horizon if you were in a world which closed in on itself (inside a huge cylinder with scores of kilometres circumference rather than being on a sphere where the horizons tapers off and declines).

Your imagination works in tandem with the author's and you come out enriched from the read.  One realises in such books that narrative or characters are relevant only for the book to move forward. What you are truly after is the fabulous imagination. It was a short read with lot to think about. And had a positive feel good atmosphere around it.


And it really made me look forward to Rama II. I realised once I bought book two that Arthur Clarke had just provided the outline, the writing was not his. I still tried to stay optimistic remembering the science delights offered by the first book. But book 2 was a big let down. Earlier, I was keen to finish the series (there are two more books) but now, I give up. I cannot endure more of this. I need to recreate my AC image by reading some of his short stories or other writings.

What put me off Rama II? For one, Rama II had some really poor characters in the book. And also, it reads like some kind of Hollywood movie script rather than science fiction. There is very little science, and very little newness to the wonderful concept of book 1. All it does is some incremental build up. And worse, it becomes a paperback with series of poor characters. One is forced to wonder that what has the world come to, if within the sample of people selected to go to meet an alien spacecraft, only 20% are good souls or what you call excellent people or heroes. All other are self serving individuals, or more easily defined as villains in Hollywood terms. Their thought process defies logic. Situations are built up the way it happens in cheap thrillers.  May be, it was written as drama, but that is not what you wanted to read after the huge excitement of book 1. It does not make you feel very good, and is something that you can easily do without. It doesn't intrigue. It irritates. And I am glad it is over.


In summary,  Rendezvous with Rama (the first of the series) is worth a read. It had good characters, and anyway, the people are secondary in  that book. It is the massive idea and mystery of Rama that dominates the book.  From Rama I, I also had a list of things to further look up and understand including the double sunsets of Mercury (!?), Coriolis effect, further daydreaming about a cylindrical world, and a keener desire to read up all the sci and cosmos books sitting next to me.

But Book II can be easily missed. All the pleasures are well contained in book 1.


Another thought that I take away from all this is that when people write about ideas, and try to create stories around them, they are better dealt in short stories, or novellas (And AC's short stories are some of the best sci fi ideas). If you try to spin too much around one single idea (without any characters with depth), be it a book series or a television series, it is bound to disappoint.

One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

By Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn

I recently came across Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when I bought a book by him - August 1914, the first one in the Red Circle. I am yet to read that one. It is quite a formidable tome. I look at it and I start thinking of my failed attempts with War and Peace.

On one of my recent visits to a bookstore, I had picked up August 1914 with mostly an intent of buying it unless I came across something more interesting. As I was exploring the new (for me) bookshop further, this one slid behind and somewhere under the bookshelves that were connected and it took massive effort by the bookseller to get the book out again. So I thought I'll as well buy it for all the effort gone in retrieving it.

Reading through the opening pages, I realised that AS received the Nobel prize for literature in 1970. His was a life of imprisonment and exile.  This is how Joseph Brodsky (another author I admire) refers to Solzhenitsyn in his Paris Review interview: "I really think that in him the Soviet rule got its Homer: what he managed to reveal, the way he kind of pulled the world a little bit around".

So I was on alert mode for the author name, and in the library, came across this relatively small book - 'one day..'(150 pages) by the author. And I am glad that I read this book. One of the best books I have read in a while.

This book depicts a day in the life of a prisoner of a labour camp in Russia. This book was one of the first to talk about what went on in these camps (and is famous for that reason). But apart from the historical significance, what moves one is the way people live and the human spirit that survives. It is not a free life, but people find their daily victories in some way or another.

Sometimes it seems that human beings and human spirit are like water, just taking the shape of whatever vessel it is stored in. In prisoner camps, there is no money earned but people need to work hard in snow and cold without enough warm clothes or heating and without enough food in their bellies. Most of the people seemed to be imprisoned for political reasons -  for perhaps exercising a freedom of choice or that of speech. Since the sentences are for 10 years or 25 years, or more, there lives are more in the camp than outside it. They prefer work to not working; days pass quickly when one is working hard, when one is exhausted and there is not much thought left to spare or squander.  And you follow Ivan Denisovich for the day, and his ups and downs, and his thoughts and feelings, and his pursuit of whatever meagre he can get, and through him, you start pondering about life, happiness and what defines wealth and richness. It is not comfort but it is the content spirit that struggles and achieves or is defeated in pursuit but keeps on struggling.

Time and again, books that leave a lasting impression happen to be those that showcase the indefatigability of the human spirit. At times, this one reminded me of Motorcycle Diaries, but then only because of the wealth of spirit. The inmates have nothing, their daily struggles are around fighting the biting cold with literally nothing, and how to get perhaps 100 grams of more ration to survive.  And that is it.

You read about them, and you then look around you. It is a world apart. It is so very easy to forget all the good things in one's life, all the things one should be grateful for; personally, as well as human beings of this time and age or of a particular country. I don't know whether I can capture or express the thought well, but the feeling it left me with is that our happiness, contentment is a function of our expectations, our gratefulness and perspective. Recognising what we have. Our bars for happiness or unhappiness seem to be so different. Should I speak for myself here, as I have no clue? Or do I? Isn't the popular media, entertainment an example of people's thoughts and worries and what makes them happy and what makes them sad?  Most of modern day normal life problems and decisions sound so silly when you read these accounts. In trading for things, have we traded the depths of our lives?

This book leaves me with a lot to ponder about and takeaway. An awareness of all the privileges and freedom - and recognition of its value. The understanding of how 'things and stuff' and decisions around the web of 'things and stuff'  need to occupy only so much of mind-space and not all of it. And then, to retain the perspective, and to understand that happiness or peace is not an external function, but so much radiated outwards by our own thoughts and spirit; be it in a Russian camp, or in the microcosm of the world I live in which is full of silly mindless problems.

On reading what I have written above, I realize I sound like a preacher, but this post is as much a note to self. A way to preserve the way I feel after reading about a day in life of Ivan Denisovich before I trample into the shallow waters of my own modern life surrounded by stuff and choices which mock the very reason of existence. Pursuit of deeper, still waters, and a proper perspective, is what I wish to remember this book by. That feeling is worth saving.

Highly recommended to anyone interested.

The Search for Roots by Primo Levi

I like Primo Levi's writings. His prose is heart felt, flowing directly from his life, the vicissitudes he experienced beautifully meshed together with his scientific temperament and training.

Artists that influence you, your thinking, you try to read up around them and try to understand what all inspired them, what shaped their thinking and what led them to write the way they did. At some level one starts seeking a conversation with them who take up your mind-space and since the conversations are not possible, anything that provides more insights into their way of thinking is so much welcome.

Presented in this anthology are extracts of books that have influenced him with a forward/ introduction by Primo Levi. They go over different topics/ genres and most of them I have never read. Books that shaped him. Ranging from science to poetry mostly aimed at understanding the nature of human being and understanding his place in the world/ universe - through laughter, injustice or pursuit of knowledge.

I took my time reading this anthology - have been reading this one for the last few weeks while in parallel I dipped into other books (most of them seem like lit Sci-Fi or war histories).

This book triggered quite a few thoughts and I end up with a list of books to explore further. Book list for my ref:

• Charles Darwin - The origin of species. Here P. Levi picks up the section on beauty and the utilitarian aspects of same. And lays out in simple, clean concepts. Would someday love to read the book.
• Sir William Bragg - Concerning the Nature of Things (Lectures) - About atoms and how atoms arrange themselves including those in soap bubbles. Loved the read. Will look up the lectures.
• Jonathon Swift - Gulliver's travels. This section on immortality.
• Antoine de Saint Exupery - Wind, Sand and Stars (section on surviving in Sahara). Had some of the most pleasing and appealing lines and thoughts. Not sure if this one is easy to find. One of the bits from it:  "I can no longer understand  those dense crowds on the suburban trains , those men who think they are men and yet who are reduced like ants, by  a pressure they do not feel, to the use that is made of them. When they are free, on their absurd little Sundays, how do they fill their time?"
• Marco Polo - The travels
• Frederic Brown, Sentry, Galaxy (Sci Fi)
• Arthur C Clarke - Profiles of the Future: An enquiry into the limits of possible. I love AC's writings. And this one is more of future envisaged by him. Will look this one up first in the whole list.
• Hermann Langbein - Humankind in Auschwitz
• Kip S. Thorne - The Search for Black Holes. One of the most packed science passages in the book. A lot said in simple terms in a few pages. Take away fact - if we were to make a black hole out of  earth, then earth will need to be reduced to a circumference of less than 5.58 cm for escape velocity to reach 300k km/s.

The Handmaid's Tale

This Sunday, I bought Margaret Atwood's  The Handmaid's Tale.

It is great writing, but it is a sad book and quite despairing portrayal of an alternate future. It affected me. Most well written sad stories do. And I end up spilling over the emotional overload in my daily life. Irrational, and not a good thing for people around you!

It hits because it is so well written. But I do not understand why one would envisage such a bleak future. The book is more or less a diary, of a woman in some future where women have been reduced to nothing. It depicts the implosion of a society, how the hunger for power and control (it must be that, right?)  turns life and a country upside down; how systematically the females are cut off with nowhere to turn.

It portrays fanaticism - an unrealistic world which defies a logical justification - and it is like fanaticism of any type but the anguished ones here happen to be females and not a religious sect. The world has shown us in the past what low levels humans in a group can stoop to, and perhaps those doing it do not understand what they do; perhaps they create justifications for almost any crime, giving it some religious higher purpose, or they are just mindless sheep following random directions; perhaps. How can one otherwise do such things!

I do not like the book because of the heart rending alternate reality it depicts. What happens to all the spirit, spunk, the life in people? What do they then even exist for? They are tied down with machine guns, thoughts of their loved ones who might be jeopardised, and the politics of all - it all builds up like the water coming to boil around the gradually alarmed frog.

I know it is unreal. One of the more literary sci-fi they say, but this is some kind of return to blindfolds or some kind of savagery that only religion can bring out in people. Or some kind of deep, selfish, hunger for power.
It is all so, so sad and so wrong.

It is stifling. Finishing it, I seek fresh air, some nicely ending, some wonder lending sci -fi.



PS - and I got it. I watched The Martian last night. And loved it!! Way to go, human spirit!
Also, feel like seeking out next part of Rama. They talk about a world united (more or less) facing a new common challenge.

Bolano's 2666

Picked up the book in India. (That is what I remember now. Memory can be elusive). Had bought this one a while ago...the year it was released I guess. However, it lay there, big  and fat, in the collection that I left back in India (read and unread) that I couldn't carry back or wouldn't ship to myself across the seas.

So instead of reading the newly bought books, I picked this one up and read through most of it pretty quickly through year end holidays. The book is engaging read, and unlike many that I read - reminding me of Garcia Marquez at times, but much more direct. It is 900 pages long - five books in all, common theme/ characters. Three of them were good fun and almost page turning reads. Fourth one became a very difficult read - for the violence it depicts. So much so, that after I finished fourth, the book lay untouched for last six months since coming back from India. I tried reading/ re-reading but lost interest.

But I had to finish book five since the secret of how those different books link together is in the fifth one, and you don't leave engaging stories unfinished.  Recently, I picked it up, and I was delighted. I thought book five was the most poetic of all.

Starting with critics, book authors, artists, journalists and lots of killed women - 2666 is a mixture of fiction and reality-  and since it talks about an author and his works, it is sort of meta fiction as well. The aspects it touches are unbound. Reminding me of a more language constrained DFW at times, and in themes, as people point out - Pynchon (and I agree from what I know of him from Lot 49).  It goes from different parts of Europe and different times of Europe (war times to current times) and a bit of North Am to end up in Mexico of late last century or earlier this century in all five of its books. Some people say it is one of the greatest novels of recent times...I can just recommend. If you can go through the detailed reportage of scores of women (or was than hundreds) found dead in a town in Mexico over a decade, everything else in the book calls out for reading.

A Moveable Feast and The Paris Wife - Hemingway and Hadley

Husband narrates one (real), and the wife narrates the other (fiction), and the reader is the lucky one - getting to experience this one of the most poignant real stories.

The Paris Wife reads like a bit of those quick read page turners (read and forget types) - you read because it is Hemingway and Hadley that the book talks about, you read on. I enjoyed it, but it reads like a soap script, and is fun, but just that.

A moveable feast is delectable - as a feast itself. His direct style. His clean composition - it all sticks so well. And you keep thinking about it for a much longer time than Hadley's narration. These are sketches, so they don't flow unlike the other one, still, you want to read more and the next one, and you finish them off quickly.

It is very interesting to see the life, to see the other famous artists through their eyes. And then, if you just read a few other Paris Review interviews of some of the contemporaries, you broadly get a good picture.

It is also interesting to read the world views - the vantage points being different. What floats at the surface of people's mind, what touches them deep. I liked it.

What I didn't like was the general helplessness, or the lack of independence that Hadley has.  And I don't like Hemingway for it. She has a lot of grace, but I just don't like and don't want to accept the way things turned out for them.

However, people do what they do, and they choose what they choose.

The books touched me - the heartbreaking end that it leads to. You want to hate Hemingway, but Hadley doesn't and Hemingway partly redeems himself in the last few pages of Moveable Feast.

What I liked - his discipline, work ethic of sorts. Groundedness until the 'rich' come in their life. The intensity. The very live/ very sharp/ very intense living, observing, experiencing.

The other thought that stays - people don't really know where life can take them ten years down the line. It is interesting to see the young Hemingway struggling...especially in their case, life changes so much and so often..so many people come and go, and sometimes you start feeling...if only they had known!

I have not read much of Hemingway. A book or two I guess. I tried to read his stories, but you need to grow up to them was what I thought. I'll look for them now, and try reading them.

I am really glad I read both the books together, and that I read these in the first place. It's quite something to note that they were the happiest when they were poor, and young. Its a good pairing (them, and the books) - and you see one better for the another.

Wishlist 2015

As of right now.
My pursuits tend to get modified as time dulls some of their sharpness. Some of these titles might get replaced as my mood changes.
Like today itself, I added a couple more to this wishlist  - history and some more essays.
The stack is a bit taller now.

Moments of Reprieve

Collection of Stories by Primo Levi. I have been thinking about the Periodic Table on and off. This one is similar...sketches of people drawn from his life. He sketches himself for you as he portrays the world around him. Grounded, humble...a life that has gone through so much injustice but the prose does not complain about it, it just shares his life with you. I am glad that I read this book. In the mad rush of things, such thoughtful prose, drawing all sorts of insights and perspective from a life that has seen the peaks and troughs is a valuable, peace lending thing. 

In many ways, Primo Levi and Ernesto Guevara sound similar - their prose, thought process. One had the wanderlust, and the other a very open observant heart, but both have a humility, groundedness, an innocence, and belief in the goodness of people individually (even though as a group, people become fanatics and thoughtless), and hence, a prose which restores faith in humanity. Their books always a good idea when the world seems a dark place - the lightness of these spirits sure can lift one up.

After reading such accounts, I sometimes wonder if my generation or a previous one had to live in the world of wars where almost every house had somebody out on front fighting or if the world were changing significantly from day to day, month to month, such that there is nothing long term, I am not sure how we'll cope.  It is not about the war, it is about behavior in face of an ever changing landscape. Our world is so stable (for most of the people), and life's aspirations so mediocre (for most of the world) - that there is no higher purpose left except to settle and aspire to little luxuries and little victories. A couple of generations ago, it seems people had much more to deal with and many more difficulties to surmount. There is no major issue in most people's lives these days, and then smaller things expand to take that place instead. Such degradation of the quality of lives lived! Even though the world becomes more stable, it is important to retain the perspective of what is worth fighting for and what is just mindplay since mind has no better problems to deal with.
Easier said than done I guess.



PS: Picked this one up in the library. Fast read. I tried to look for more P. Levi books during my vacation but couldn't find any. This one hence as soon as we returned. Again for this one, this is time taken out from 2666. It is almost a month since I started reading 2666 ..it still continues. I have reached the last book. Hope to finish it in January. (Didn't like book 4 - it is very saddening, very wrong, and  unlike the first three - but am too deep in the book and quite curious to understand how it all ties up, so finish it I will)

2014

Happy new year!
Time to close year 2014 on this blog.
I don't read as much these days. Below from my closed page. A quick recap of what I read in 2014.

1. Periodic Table by Primo Levi (deadtree). Beautiful sketches of people! And you get to wonder so much more about Turin, chemistry, War, prejudices, with the author's very clean succinct writing...it draws you in. The curious in me got really intrigued by Chemistry and geography - and noticed what the author says about the land on my recent trip to Italy and the Swiss land. Keen to read more from him. He shares so much more on the world around him in those times...enjoyed it, and would rate it ****
2. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (January) - deadtree. The book gladdened my heart! The middle one third might seem like a drag, but the different culture, different landscape, makes it so much more interesting!) My recco to anyone who wants to learn a bit more about Japan in a fun way.
3. Raised from the ground by Jose Saramago (April/ May) - deadtree (picked this up on vacation in Italy. Was trying to pick up something more local but ended up with Portugese. Liked it much better than the other Saramago I've read - Seeing or Blindness, one of them)
4. Clifton Chronicles - 3 - Best Kept Secret by Jeffrey Archer (May; quick read, airport buy; deadtree) - its more like I had to read it. A very quick unput-downable read - both of them)
5. Clifton Chronicles - 4 - Be careful what you wish for by Jeffrey Archer (Kindle (finally!!). . And I have promised myself not to read any more page turners until I finish a couple of proper lit. (So Stieg Larsson 3 has to wait)
6. An artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (May, deadtree). This was bought long long time ago, but finally got read in almost one go. I realise for whatever I might have said in the past, I am not an Ishiguro fan (this is my emotional self speaking). The book is another amazing piece - on Japan (and different times Japan than deZoet's - this one is around the wars, and just post war), and the changing mindsets. In its heart the book carries a sort of disappointment - in the autumn of your life if you realise that you have lived your life for a wrong cause, its not highly heartening. Read it for understanding the land and what shaped some of its people some more. But try to read something happy soon after. (I am reading Science by Asimov - have been learning all new sort of intriguing facts. Sometimes, a dose of wonder is good to kill disappointments; it brings back a lot of perspective)
7. Circle by Dave Eggers (May, deadtree) Concept is intriguing, but there is a lot that I disagree with. But as K says, you can't disagree with people opinions or judgement, they are true for where they come from, they are not universal facts...but when people make such bad choices in the book as if they are helpless...when they clearly have a choice, and they do not stand for themselves or speak against the issues ...that's where I gave up on the book. Then it becomes just about the drift of the story, and like any other fast read/ not lit page turner - I don't think it claims to be serious lit anyway. Very interesting premise, but the writing is non remarkable. Read it for the premise and what it portrays. (Emotions post reading - unresolved. Didn't like the choices and the weakness in people, disagreed, but I was hooked)
8. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson (June, deadtree). We read the part 3 after reading the first two parts 3 years ago. So it was good that I watched the Part 1 movie recently. I had Daniel Craig as Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth in my head...and yes, Robin Wright as Erica Berger as I breezed through the book. Well, its the end, and it ends the thriller...it leaves you wanting to read some other thriller... but I guess its shortlived feeling. I'll watch the other two movies sometime. How to rate it - read it for the thrill. Rest its the same feeling I got last time...its very transactional text.
9. Murder in the dark by Margaret Atwood (July) - deadtree. Short, poetic book. Seems like I might have read this earlier. This one is akin to a series of blog posts with interesting premise and thought flow and sketches. Playing in mind - "How does it feel to play God - even for five minutes"
10. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (September, kindled on idevices)...quick notes: a bit of a let down like his other books...don't know why I expect more from him. As I begin his books, as in the last two as well, generally I like the premise and hope and wish that he would deal with them better. Its a good very fast read, but then I wasn't hoping for a page turner...Don't expect greatness, awesomeness...'read and forget' category, like so much of the fiction I read this year.
11. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. (September, holidays)...really don't want to say much about this one. Goes in my 'read and forget'...I just didn't like the characters...the book asks for no empathy...its not even like Archer or Larsson kind of thrillers. Picked it up from Sydney airport before the holiday - was in the rank 1 box.  
12. The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara (November) ****. Loved the book, pleasantly surprised by it. Che Guevara is adorable. I am not sure many people will begin with that. But first time ever in my life I actually gave thought to learning & practicing medicine (as a would have been!). And given that this is the same weekend as watching Interstellar, I am quite enamored by the whole 'explorer' spirit. 'Old men should be explorers, here and there does not matter'.  (Am really glad I finished any book after a long while. The book came as a gust of fresh air which I was seeking badly at some level - lifts me up a bit, and am thankful for that.) Will recommend to anyone keen to know more about Latin America, probably supplemented by one of the fiction accounts of those regions, and then just for feeding the youth within us. And before this book, I had never thought about Che. Now I want to buy a Tshirt with his image (and a beret ;).
13. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (November, deadtree, ***). My first Pynchon! Not a long one, this one is a novella. It has been with me for a long while, and I have attempted many many times to read it (given the length, it was a very attractive target to kickstart reading), many times reaching almost a third....but finally, managed to read it. It reminded me of DFW...in the way subjects are touched and woven together...the thread through the books is that of mail delivery/ and I was intrigued to look at how messenger services were so central to the rise and fall of empires...in this age and time, one forgets! Good to imagine an older world.... Someday I might write about the book. Not today. Other things beckon.
14. The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith (December, deadtree, ***) This is a longer short story than a book. Different to what I have read recently. I feel at times that I need to grow up to some of the books. May be read again later to see how they end. I end up feeling that I need to know more about those characters..and understand what happens next rather than let the story end where it ends. This took less than an hour...and is time snatched from 'On the Road' by Kerouac which I have been reading for a few weeks now. Somewhere midway.
15. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Nov, Dec - deadtree ****) Just a couple of words: 'beat' and 'dig it'! Later - writing this after a few weeks of reading the book...as I travel through India right now, I get reminded on and off of the author's road trips...and the objective of finding oneself through the road trips. Nothing so dramatic here, but still, as they say, some books stay longer with you...this one is surely one of those.
16. Guerrillas by VS Naipaul (Dec - deadtree ***) Picked the book at Lucknow airport before boarding a flight to Mumbai. Glad to get back to reading with this one. Sounds so much like Nadine Gordimer. May be, its the description, the struggles...but this one had so many dark undertones...so much of despair floating around in the book. Books like these though give one a lot of perspective, and at least some understanding of how the world lives, breathes, functions...the rest of the world, outside of the homogeneous world that we occupy. These are good to ground one...to remember that life can be so different,..its just by fluke that I am writing this and you are reading this. It could have been very very different. And then, a gratefulness that we have what we have, the resources, the thoughts, and the most important thing - freedom to think, say, write, read...it can be such a different life. The book is set on a Caribbean island, and runs through a few episodes over the course of a few months. Lots of immigrants, and struggle to control resources, and probably, some struggle for freedom...some politics...(it would be a different world if politics were devoid of personal ambitions)...I didn't understand the exact struggle completely...and may be some of that was the point of the book. 

Takeaway: I read quite a bit of non lit/ fast read/ page turners this year...so 16 is tainted. Need to read more but then need to do so many more things as well! For a moment I thought I'll be able to read 3 books a month...but it seems difficult. Still, lets strive for it. And then, to read from different countries...there is something about books and fiction which portray the daily life at a particular point in time in a particular country, it can lend you a lot of thought fodder..and a lot of perspective. And then there are some high RoI books and articles....sometimes people spend months and years writing those books and essays researching, thinking, and you can get so much out of them just by reading them. When the time which you can spend on reading is limited given the 100 different pursuits, the time is better spent on reading such high impact/ efficiency writings...the idea is to collect such books, authors and essays...explored separately in the other blog which I hope to bring live some day.

As always, here's hoping that we read more and better this year. Happy 2015!

The motorcycle diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara

I picked the book up in the library during one of my jaunts with A to find his stuff...all the beast quests that he is reading these days! I end up picking essays, some random book here and there, and all the time, very ambitiously hoping that may be this time, I'll read and finish a book.

This one is a fairly quick read, Che Guevara's notes on one of his first trips across Latin America. He was 23/ 24, still studying to become a doctor, when one day, with his friend Alberto, decided to take a trip across the continent on Alberto's bike. The book spans over a few months of their journey, written from Che's notes for the period, is not too long, and is very engaging, very youthful! The young explorers. They begin in Argentina, from their home, on to Chile, the mines there, the lakes, then on to Peru, where they see the Inca homeland, Colombia (Marquez's land), and then Venezuela. While talking about his journey, he sketches the land, the life, the way things go in those countries, and  while doing so, he sketches himself for the reader, and the reader is engaged with the fresh, honest account and since it is Che, tries to read and may be reads more than necessary between the lines. Either ways, the freshness, optimism, and the life in the pages is inspiring and uplifting.

Ernesto/ Che is adorable, charming, and the boyish beginning turns gradually more thoughtful, and the fun of exploration, the joy of faring onward, seeps through the pages and takes hold of you. Most importantly, the faith that all will be fine.

Loved the book, pleasantly surprised by it. I don't read much non fiction,...they need some kind of mental readiness and enthusiasm which I reserve only for fiction. But after this one, I am keen to read more of him. It takes a certain kind of spirit, a wanderlust, an explorer in one to go on like that! And I respect that spirit...to settle is not ideal, to fare onward is what life is all about.

One of the places, he mentions about how when people (as they grow to middle classes), the small victories they collect go to their head...the things at stake stack up higher...and people becoming more cautious, more chained, less spontaneous, more settled. Not an ideal state at all. And if you think about it, an anti-thesis of an explorer...who moves forward as if there is nothing to lose.

This was the same weekend that we watched Interstellar.., I am quite enamored by the whole 'explorer' spirit. '
Old men ought to be explorers, here and there does not matter'.

It's just fitting that the music currently playing in the background as I write this is Metallica's 'wherever I may roam'

...and the earth becomes my throne

I adapt to the unknown

Under wandering stars I've grown

By myself but not alone

I ask no one

...and my ties are severed clean

The less I have the more I gain

Off the beaten path I reign

Rover wanderer

Nomad vagabond

Call me what you will

Discovering Joseph Brodsky

One needs to find inspiration. To do new things, to take leaps of faith, to get onto uncharted plains. And one finds them unexpectedly. Here and there, life becoming a trail of new discoveries and new inspiration, your leaps of faith become the shining guiding lampposts of your life as you look back and think of the vector path of your own life.

Unrelated thoughts, but they surface together right now...intertwining themselves. As Eliot wrote, there is a time for an evening under the starlight, and then there is time for an evening under the lamplight (the evening with the photograph album).

How is this all related to the title of this post?

On my recent vacation, I bumped into the essays by Joseph Brodsky ('On Grief and Reason'). And then I looked him up further. He won the Nobel for literature in the eighties. He was a poet.

And like observed earlier, poets writing prose are a world apart from prose writers writing prose. They operate at a different level, the intensity, tempo of their world is different. All the rest of the writers reduced to mere mortals in front of these Gods of written word. Few words, but then they don't need more to exactly say what they need to.

The prose speaks directly, urgently to you. Cuts through the clutter. 'Precision' is the word. 'Precision' is his advice as well, as he speaks to a graduating class...his advice to make sure that one knows the words for one's feelings. His observation that life grows and people grow, and so should the terms in which we express ourselves...the same old words are outgrown. You need more precise words to exactly know and understand your mind, your moods, your thoughts, their changes...precision.

I had come across the essay sometime back...during the commencement speech season. There is some other advice as well (be no victim...if I were to summarize it, I'll borrow from Shakespeare..."the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings")
The referred essay/ speech by Brodsky (full text here)

I am yet to read his poems. I read a couple, but poems need so much growing up to. They need patience, they come to you when they come to you. They are not like fiction that you sit down to read and then you get captured, glued to a page turner ignoring everything else. Poems come to you. You read them once, you read them again. You soak yourself in them...sometime they are like songs on loop...which come with a season, like a fever, like rain, like a wave...and then they pass. But when they are there, the poem, the song is the only thing echoing in your mind.

These days, months or should I say, years, it is Eliot for me. It is his Four Quartets currently which provide the background hum ho of my existence. A few years back it was EE Cummings. Frost is always there, some of his poems which are relatable, accessible. I discovered Wislawa Szymborska as well. But Eliot it is currently. And it is growing by the day. Until probably I understand or remember all of the Four Quartets.

Brodsky makes a case for poets and poems, and you nod. There are few better writers of prose than some of the poets that walked this Earth.

I am still working my way through the essays...they lie on the same side of my bookshelf where Borges' non fictions, DFW's essays, Kundera's non fictions, and my current issue of essays/ non fiction writing by Woolf, Susan Sontag, Atwood get stacked. It's inspiring to go through these words, the inner workings of these minds, how they looked at this world. Its always a pleasure and to me, a privilege to dip into a few pages, re-read and glean newer meanings out of these texts. They end up uplifting, inspiring, guiding the path, and at times infusing much needed courage in the reader to go ahead and get going with things, with choices, without bothering about any other thought save that of better realizing the self. There is probably no better place in this post to say, you only live once.

In the larger scheme of things, there is probably nothing that matters. And since it is nothing that matters, we need some other criterion for making our life's choices. Poetry perhaps provides those dimensions...to measure, to consider, to choose and prioritize our lives...it inspires, it sets us on some path...a push here and a shove there to the vector that life charts, as we zoom through the varied intensity planes of the world around us.

I don't know, but how can one not love this:

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning

(Four Quartets)

So here goes my rambling post. I feel better having written this. The inspiration from Brodsky was to try to capture in words the hovering cloud of thoughts around my head. I have tried to pull them here...some of them, like a thread through the eye of a needle.

I'll post this today, edit this some other time.

Bookstores

I picked up a page turner recently. Some way into it, I didn't really 'feel' it. But I kept on, not sure what to look for on the kindle. It was from an airport book store. One of the top rated books. I, in my holiday mood, 'I want to be surprised' mood. Keen to pick up something new..(I was already feeling proud of myself for not making the cab turn back on our way to airport upon realizing that I left my specs behind. Brave, new, adventurous me says, lens should do for now. Let's depend less on stuff! I am holding up fine...probably a first in years or decades, shall I say) So book purchase. Just three shelves devoted to all the fiction they have. More than two of them were thrillers, novels, fiction of the 'read and forget' types...quite surprised to see that half of the book store was just 20 boxes of top 20.

How does one then 'stumble on' something awesome?

Anyway. I finished the book earlier this week.

But meanwhile, in Hobart, in the general square, after a late afternoon lunch, on a warm, sunny day (its the same afternoon of the airport book store), I walk into this small bookstore (small, as in good enough for neighborhood, but small for city centre). And this neat little store just wins me over. It contains a universe within. The variety, the color, the diversity of books on offer. I wanted three books in the first minute (contrast this with one in ten minutes at the airport bookstore). It was just awesome. it was as much meant to educate, inspire, with all the great ones lined up book after book, such that even if you disturb one book, you didn't know how to put it back...treasure trove.

It was a small lunch break at Hobart...I'll be there soon. Hopefully, I'll buy more, and more than that, be inspired more.

Book stores influence how people read. You offer thrillers, quick reads only, they read those only. You expose them to the subtleties, the intensities, the depth of thought, the pleasure that only the great ones can provide....they read that, and then want more of that. In a small space, this book store had poetry, short stories, science, all the Nobel winners, all the visiting authors, a variety of titles from the literary ones, and not just the top two of each...sometimes not even the top two, but the rest, even books from Barthelme's list. I don't know how one does that in online book store. I have all the top 100 lists, the barthelme list, the DFW list running in my mind, but online is not a stacked little universe of wonderful titles tightly packed. I want to discover, and be surprised and 'stumble on' as well, and not just get what I want...but probably get what I don't know I want. And when I see a book store with so much in it, I find myself in my little heaven.

Such bookstores are like faith keepers...they are like churches and temples, one can't let them go. Even if they don't make money. They make people.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Such a lovely title!

I bought this book at Dubai airport - early January. Limited selection, but the cover and the title, and given that this is from David Mitchell (I could not put down Cloud Atlas once I started it), and I had a long economy flight ahead of me, made me buy this. And I am very glad I did.
So this is a stumbling book, rather than a planned purchase.

This book raised several thoughts & ideas - one to do with historical fiction, and how insatiable our desire to know about the times past, the times that shaped the current world is. And as insatiable the desire is, the answers are impossible. There is simply no way of knowing how things were or what people thought about the world around them, or what stories and lives different from ours lived on this planet.

The more the world grows smaller, the similar we are becoming. But this book talks about 1799, about Japan, and about foreigners (Dutch) trading with Japan, trying to pry out the real Japan from the obscurity veils. And the peek inside is like Alice's party in Wonderland

The book pulled me in, and created this beautiful reality in a world two centuries ago which seems impossible to live in from today's stand point (but not as unique from the times I was born in)

The world still was unexplored, unclaimed by the Europeans and the English, and the people had much of their own original cultures and society with all their good and bad. And then there is this intersection, and the amount of learning, the bridges that those few individual must have crossed are big ones. It would be like coming across a new society on moon for us.

The first third of book was amazing, then a bit of a drag, and somehow the people I was rooting for, in the book seemed to go low in significance, and somehow, it felt as if there is no victory of good over bad (I have been fed on stories of good over bad since younger days - all with the mythology, even though everyday see circumstances to the opposite. But it is still gives hope), and the book puts the people in such hopeless places, it becomes unbearable for a little while before picking up again the fun in the last one third.

I was left asking for more in Cloud Atlas. the premise was amazing, but as amazing the premise was, I was seeking justice to what happens. It should have had some more things happen. which didn't
And so goes with this one...it tries to touch the grandness, and then it becomes the commonplace.

The title is drawn from one of the lovelier names of Japan - the land of thousand autumns.

2013

This blog is becoming more of an annual feature. I should record more thoughts and convert more drafts to posts. Probably that could be one of the new year resolutions.

Anyway, time to take stock.Read fewer books - and most of them were library issues. The  good thing about living here in S, and earlier in M was the proximity to libraries. What happens then is I spend a lot of time browsing for the kid and myself. And keep making resolutions to read more. Issue a few books and read some of them. Even this is better to discover new authors, to stumble upon oft heard names and just to browse. So here is the list of books I read.

1. Goodbye to Berlin (Novel/ SS) by Christopher Isherwood (June) - deadtree
2. Too Much Happiness (SS) by Alice Munro (Jun) - deadtree
3. Mr Norris Changes Trains (Novel) by Christopher Isherwood (Jul) - deadtree
4. Life and Times of Michael K (Novel) by J M Coetzee (Jul) - deadtree ***** wonderful read
5. Of Mice and Men (N) by John Steinbeck (Jul) - deadtree
6. Arne - a sketch of Norwegian Country Life by Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (Nov) - deadtree. ***** (Lovely book, lyrical, poetic, uncomplicated, minimalist. )
7. Dear Life, Short stories by Alice Munro (Dec) - deadtree ***** Lovely read.

I am also reading the Hunger Angel by Herta Muller, and essays by Kundera and Atwood, but I never finish essay books, reading them like a fruit - the juicy, fleshy parts first and then finishing off the fruit is more of a chore, and most often I don't.

The Hunger Angel - Liking it. In some ways, it has a haunting feel of something I have already read. Probably the land of green plums followed similar themes. This used to happen a lot in Marquez fiction - the deja vu feeling.

For 2014, I wish to do something different. Amongst others, I wish to read some of the following:
- War and Peace
- Shakespeare- one play
- Wallace - a collection
- Ulysses?
- Science fiction
- Nabokov
- some European (Swedish +
- a book from China
- Biography of Wallace

Its good to have a wishlist, a board to look at when feeling lost. Hope to follow some of what I write here, and hope to write more often.

Here's to a great 2014, and reading more.

2012

Closing 2012 on this blog. After August, I don't think I've read anything. Its been a whirlwind from September, with visa, moving and settling down in M. This is the first week since then that I feel like catching up on blogs, books and columns and get that feeling of lying down on the lounge in the balcony, staring at the ocean, wind in my hair and hopefully, my finger holding the book spine at somewhere in the middle...I like the vision more than the reading itself. But like writing, one never knows, till one actually starts reading. Its been too cold and windy summer to try it yet - soon.

Anyway, the point of this post was to close this year, taking new resolutions for new year. Not sure what I want to read next - but would be good to begin at one of the favorites. And not to keep a too ambitious target. But keen to read lots of long form, more of weekend newspapers, and some fiction. Should we say, 12 books? I know it sounds low, but am being realistic here, given that this is going to be a work year, things are going to be busy...and I have other resolutions as well, to revive running, to learn to ride the scooter....lets start easy, and then we can always drive up the targets if we are over achieving :)

BTW, I haven't bought any new book here - haven't seen as many bookstores yet. And one of these holidays, I should make it a point to go to the bookstores here - wherever they are.

Gatsby vs Babbitt

Gatsby vs Babbitt

I read the Great Gatsby long time back. And this is the first book that I have ever re-read. I just finished reading it again. Babbitt - I began this book a long time back, but could not proceed beyond a few pages then. I picked it up again this month, and finished it just before the re-reading of Gatsby.

Both are set in America of 1920s, the First World War or the Great War was over, American economy was booming, the decade which preceded the great depression.The difference being that Babbitt is set in the American town, a general American concept of a town, it could be any town, in the book, it is Zenith. Whereas, Gatsby is pointedly New York, and specifically "West Egg"and very much a book happening mostly at the tip of "West Egg". So though, the period is same, the sensibilities are as different as current cosmopolitan cities and provincial towns. Also, they both deal with different age groups. Babbitt is middle aged, has a daughter who is the age at which she can get married, son going to college, a well established business, and his worries in life for half the length of the book are average middle class worries about money, status, position, reputation, and then as the book unfolds, gradually he starts facing the deeper questions of life, which being an 'average' person in an 'average' city, and all the ennui of the average invokes. The book peaks a few pages before end, when he faces these questions, and hastily wraps itself into a happy ending, as if, whoever thought that those questions can ever find answers. But here we have Gatsby, and the narrator, Nick, both almost 30, much younger, and sequences of seemingly comic, mindless, arbit-random bullshit conversations when they are in the moment, contrasted with the deep thinking narrator, Nick, who with his wit and some mind blowing sentences wins you over and you feel as sad about the life that that Gatsby lives as the narrator himself. This one is a book about the un-average, it picks the most random circumstance in people's lives and multiplies it with ten and makes it happen in the book. It is a book about the peaks and the troughs, it is the differential, where Babbitt was the average. Babbitt touches such a life briefly in the book, but it becomes a detour for him. Babbitt was about the hundreds of dreams, and all about the means. Gatsby is about the end, a simple, single end, a single dream, however silly it may sound, and the means become inconsequential. And it is about the silly, random things which like the flutter of a butterfly's wings, wreaks havoc upon a faraway country, and in this case, somebody's life. And this is just comparing the stories. 

In terms of how both books are written, they are both a showcase of what average and the un-average look like and both flow in lucid language, a straight narrative and with so many sentences that you want to highlight for later reading. I enjoyed reading them both, and I guess by reading them together, I get a much fuller picture of what each of them portrays.

Infinite Jest

I write here after a long time. I have added a page which records the books I’ve been reading. The reading logged is not as much as I would have wished, initially due to work and of late, I have been trying to limit the amount of time devoted to reading .

Background on the opportune time for reading IJ: I have tried quite a few times since I bought IJ to open it up and read - always devoting broadly a month of my time. But with work, at times I would get into the book but realize that it is too involved and intense and I would then drop out and forget the context just because of being away for long. The most I had reached like this, after trying a few times was some 200 pages. And we are talking in years here. The book is 1000 pages long with some 100 pages of footnotes. Enter, sabbatical break. Still, I was tentative in my commitment. Then, one inspired day in March, I decided to read this book thinking that if I can’t read this now, when I have much more control over my time, it is unlikely that I’ll read it in the near future. And hence, on the same day, I decided my major targets for April (which in non-sabbatical state would be difficult to pursue). And these were – run 100 miles and read IJ.

On my targets - I am hopeful of closing the month with the run (And I have not been a runner before Feb 2012). On IJ, I linger at 700. But I have reached that much loved stage in those few good books that one reads where you want the book to continue for long, may be forever. You wish that you could read about the people on and on. You savor every page and despite the target achievement question mark, you will the book to slow down just to be with the author and the ideas longer. This happened recently with Murakami’s ‘What I think…running’ book, which is a quick read – if read in one go, may be a two hour affair but I allowed myself to read only 10-20 pages daily so that it could last longer. So effectively, I am having a lot of fun reading IJ.

The book rewards you with lots and lots of thoughts daily. From a peep into the materialist, entertainment addicted future, to the pursuit of excellence(in a sport), to the soul-help dashed out in ladle-full, to some really insightful essays on topics which just make you wonder at the author’s depth, complexity and width of thinking. From the concept of wheelchair assassins to the hideous and deformed, to 12-steps, and an alternative reality for the entertainment industry, to all the probing into the happiness pursuit – is it the want or the have? Or should one take targets and live by them or just move between different paths, and view one’s life as a set of lines moving from one point to another (that is not stop at the target point). It asks some of the basic questions of life and makes you think about them. It is as much about the 1000 pages as it is about the amount of your waking hours you keep thinking about the characters, their choices and all the food for thought dished out in the book. It is enriching, enlightening, and as Virginia Woolf says, like a good book, makes you ask as many questions yourself, explodes a huge number of thoughts in your mind. I am very glad that I am reading the book, and yes, looking forward to completing it, and looking forward to reading it again sometime soon, and looking forward to reading all the ideas and thoughts that IJ readers have spread across the internet.

Another note – on record keeping and target setting; Instead of targeting 52 books or 30 books or x number of books a year, I now plan to devote a limited amount of time to books. Otherwise, it becomes an all-consuming pursuit esp when I am in second half of books and I then ignore many things, and as a result, once I finish them, I stay away from books for a while, and also, I ignore non fiction, long form, essays which I wish I could read more of, which normally get second preference because of a faulty metric of counting only the number of books. Humbling reminder that the plan stage and set-the-target stage is by far the most crucial stage, after that, its about execution and following your own commands. So the idea is to read better.

November

Quick one this

• Infinite Jest - reached 200 pg and then stopped. Need to revisit when have a longer slot of time available. Love the book so far. Need his tennis in my life now
• Any other reading?

1. Alice Adams short stories
2. I am Number 4 (Ipad)

Rest - am a bit lost. Soon.

One more

Sunday spent at home - I finished reading Diamond Dust by Anita Desai. (Unkindled)
Collection of short stories set across the world. Somewhat page turners, fast read. Quite interesting people fuill up the pages. Still, would rate average on a comparative scale (compared to what I've read recently - Matisse stories and In Other rooms, other wonders being case in point.)
BTW, first Anita Desai book I've read. I remember Games at Twilight - a story in one of our classes (school) - and I remember getting that knot in the heart when the protaganist is not missed (if you know the story). You feel similar knots sometimes in your heart while reading this book - but very few, maybe a couple of instances bring you down to it.

Reading 7

This post updates my readings in 2010 so far. I realise this figures as my first post for 2010. I guess, I must have updated my earlier Jan post in the Dec 31 post itself. anyway, on to the count:

Seven books read so far
- 2010 by Aurther Clarke
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- In Other rooms, other wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Short stories)
- Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (Kindle)
- The Matisse Stories by AS Byatt (Short stories)
- The Tent by Margaret Atwood (Short stories)
- The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger (Kindle)

2009 - The kindled and the unkindled

2009:

Total 32 books. (Yes, happy. :) )

Since the kindle arrived - 6 kindled, 4 unkindled.

List follows:

1. QnA - Vikas Swarup
2. Nine Stories - J D Salingar
3. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
4. Love, Again - Doris Lessing
5. To catch a butterfly - Vivek Kumar
6. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
7. Curious Case of Benjamin Button - F. Scott
8. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
9. Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
10. The runaway Jury - John Grisham
11. The Dip - Seth Godin
12. Paths of Glory - Jeffery Archer
13. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
14. A room of one's own -Virginia Woolf
15. A room with a view - E M Forster
16. The Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
17. Three Guineas - Virginia Woolf
18. Identity - Milan Kundera
19. The first Women in Love - D H Lawrence
20. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
21. Queen of Spades and other stories - Pushkin
22. Nocturnes - Kazuo Ishiguro
23. Howard's End - EM Forster (Kindled)
24. Murder in the dark - Margaret Atwood
25. The wife and other stories - Anton Chekhov (Kindled)
26. Selected Short Stories - Balzac
27. Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (KIndled)
28. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (Kindled)
29. Chariots of God - Erich Von Daniken (Kindled)
30. 2001: A space odyssey - Arthur C Clarke(Kindled)
31. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
32. The land of Green Plums - Herta Muller

So come to think of it, only a few - may be 4 or 5 are books which K would have read. This year, thankfully, he picks up his reading - and most of the times we read different stuff. Apart from the above there'll be couple of score of short stories - new yorker, elsewhere on net, once in a while ft exclusive.

A few points for 2010 -

• Read more. Yes, the one book per week has been a target for last few years - but, someday, rather some year. 2007, 2008 - I read some 25 odd books each. Halfway. So 2009 was better. But I have bought a lot more, so lots to unkindle and kindle.
• Read more K-read stuff - Larssen, soon. But somehow I and K meet only at a few authors. The people I like to read are quite different from K's style. But am happy to explore - that's one of the things about first few days in Jan - you are more open to considering new things, new ideas. Hope the attitude stays.
• Read more short stories - No problem with that. K has recently ordered more contemproary short stories from Flipkart. And I get my New Yorker gift - 40 odd assured apart from the fiction issue. I really love the short story form.
• Read diverse - New and old.

So far in 2010,

1. 2010 - Odyessey two: Yes, Yes, I spent the first two days of 2010, reading 2010. And as always, Arthur Clarke was fun. Unkindled. More on the book later

2. Still reading - Remains of the Day. I like the narrative style - fresh. More once over. Just 100 pages down. Hopefully as the second week of 2010 ends...

Next in line - Other rooms other wonders (short story collection), Steig Larssen :), And some more on kindle.

Score keeping over.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I do not remember reading much of Sylvia Plath’s poetry – She is known more for her poems than her prose – and then the way she died. This is the only novel which she published during her lifetime.

About her writing – Very involved, compelling, drawing you in. This is one of those books where my hypothesis that for the first 20%, you need to work on the book and then, the book works on you stays disproved. In this book – from the first page onwards, the prose draws you in. I guess, poets have a much better command over the language, the scene, the emotion – and in few words, they convey things and feelings which a routine author will take many pages for.

Her writing is beautiful. When I started reading it – I could identify a wee bit with the protagonist – just a wee bit. Then the lady’s life spirals downwards into depression and then the book becomes a treatise on suicide or contemplating ways of suicide, then it translates into an inside out view on asylums and mental homes and the inside out view on the mind of a mentally deranged person – call it a person who has given up on life, because there is no other differentiating feature apart from that – between the normal and the demented, its just the will and the willingness to stay occupied and play upto the idiosyncrasies of life. The normal has it, the demented thinks it is fruitless. Who is right? – Who is to decide?

What I liked most in the book? Her analogy of her life as a fig tree – where different figs represent different things that she wishes to do with her life – one fig about her turning into a poet and a professor, another fig – going to Europe and studying further, one fig – to get married and have children, another one – to stay unmarried, one more fig – to live the NY life of a fashion writer. The point being, she is sitting under this fig tree, thinking of which fig to eat- she thinks hard because choosing one fig is precluding all the other figs so she should be careful. All are mutually exclusive events. She calls herself neurotic because she wants all these figs at the same time. She dreams that she is still trying to choose while the figs dry one by one, shrivel up, darken and fall down.

A poet writing prose is a treat in terms of metaphors, articulation, capturing the moment – they are so precise and they give you a full, sumptuous meal of emotions on so few words. Good part is that the book ends at a slightly hopeful note, otherwise it would have been difficult to bear.

This one is my holiday purchase, unkindled. Finished in one day. Am on to Herta Muller’s Land of green plums now- where the heroine again sounds a bit like Sylvia Plath’s - just a wee bit. This one is more poetic, bordering on the styles of people like Marquez, Atwood (through whatever I’ve read of her) – poetic prose, disjointed pictures, portraits, landscapes, woven together – am just 50 pages in, yet to see how it turns out. Its set in Eastern Europe, sometime around the world war, in the times of dictators and innocent people in torture camps and in times of curtailed freedom. The strife for life is so different in such times – its not about the pay packet, the next car, the next holiday, but about the whiff of free air when the mind is without bonds, and a longing for the times when the sky can be seen through unmeshed windows.

The one by Sylvia Plath is set in post war US – females have just started going to work, just started to be treated as almost equals, and they arrive at the same conclusions about life as the Wheelers in Revolutionary Road did – its tough in these less interesting times – the present times, no wars, oppressing mediocrity and strife to equate oneself with the rest of the world. Isn’t this whole drive to improve the per capita GDP so that rest of the economy would flourish - another kind of socialism in capitalism’s disguise? Losing the individual-ness, missing the point, toys again to keep ourselves occupied and away from the unanswered questions. And the tough part is one has to deal with the ennui and the boredom without sounding bored, otherwise the risk of being tagged a demented in this world of normals. Good book.

2001, 2010, Odyessey and Holidays

Reading updates and...well, book buying updates. I wish all the book buying updates get quickly translated to books unkindled. But no, they take their own sweet time and there are 100 other things which need to be completed before one can relax and curl up with the book or the kindle. No cribs. Year end time. Time to reflect, time to get cliched and think of all the good things you have and all the good things that you'll do with your life. No cribbin can sure be one of them.

Finished reading a small one - 2001, a Space odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. On the kindle. All this while, I have been spotting 3001, 2010, on bookshelves but somehow 2001, the first of this series was always unavailable. So when a friend shared this book, the soft copy, I started reading it and this one surely didn't fail to impress. Somehow, since I watched Avatar also during the same time (One real fun movie. Hats off to imagination, to the shoot - at one point, I stretched out my hand to touch the jungle foliage. What I liked most - screwed gravity, magnetic mountains or floating mountains). So, the point is, some of my 2001 is mixed with avatar in my mind. But what I liked most about the book - the way Clarke approaches the prehistoric era - the learning ignited by external forces, or rather the idea of engineered learning rather than human beings inspiring themselves to evolve. The real fun part is when you try to juxtapose the situation in today's times. What is the situation? - this really really old times ape -man who can just think of the immediate thing, food for the day, fearing the night, the wild...and nothing else. One fine day, the monolith arrives - and this ape man gets hypnotised/suggestive hypnostism by this monnolith which gives this being a new idea, a new desire for a healthy, safe life and literally was putting concepts in this ape-being's head. Even things like throwing a stone or eating meat to save himself - which the ape man couldn't even imagine he could do....freeze frame. Now, try to imagine all those things (out of the box) which you wouldn't even imagine you can do...difficult, but still try doing it. And then imagine you can do all those things. the potential, the power, the power of potential. Deeds cant dream what dreams can do. Time is a tree, this life one leaf. Mr EE Cummings, you were never more right.

So thats the beauty of these books and people like Arthur C Clarke. Content apart, even concepts like these act as a spark for the firepowder in your own head - and the extent of the imaginations is Beautiful. I really like such books. Douglas Adams, Clarke, Cameron, yes, Avatar is beautifully imaginative, its a fresh way of looking at things- you just have to be ready to believe anything and leave all the earth given prejudices, nay, civilization given prejudices behind.

All this - just for that sweet sense of wonder - and that overpowering sensation that one doesn't know who rules, who runs all this, one can't even imagine what lies beyond this small little planet of ours. Happy with our toys, occupied, living life as people ask us to do it, lost in this huge random web, made complicated by our own choice - and not even a second spent to justify all this! Not many people feel its wonderful, but that's ok, wonder and awe, like beauty, lie in the eyes of beholder.

What happens after 2001? Next book is 2010. I don't have it on my kindle. The one which I have is 3001. So - next visit to airport for the holidays, I buy it - and not read it. And meanwhile, given its holidays, more coffee and bookshop stuff - and i end up buying more stuff - latest ones are Herta Muller (land of green plums), Sylvia Plath (bell jar) and Ishiguro -remains of the day. So yes, all these about toys and life on this planet -me too away from my wonder stuff. You need the right setting :) Not sure whether I'll finish anything in 2009 - if I do, it should be one of the above...that reminds me, I have to do a book count for 2009. Don't have my notebook on me right now...those updates saved for later.

Looking forward to 2010 (the year, the book), and more reading. Happy New Year.

Cosmic Latte

Finally finished something.

Finished reading the Chariots of God by Erich Von Daniken (Kindle). I have written enough about my thoughts on the unexplained...but to talk about the author and the book, definitely interesting.. but dated. Talks about certain things again and again. The weaving together of misplaced artefacts with conjectures on early astronauts is awesome. But still, it just opens a small channel. There are still so many possibilities which are not captured.

When I was younger, in my teens, I used to dream about writing a book - 101 ways of interpreting the universe :p. The sheer number of probabilities and possibilities make 101 a really select set - let the imagination go wild types. The desire is still there - the execution is missing. I remember I even started a blog - cosmic latte - inspired by the 'color of the universe' but could not sustain it. Someday :).

What I liked about the book - the fantastic-ness, the creative thinking, the research, the disruptive/ out of box thoughts, the humility

What could have been better - Am biased here, but more on the Asian culture and the rituals. Come to think of it, all the symbols in the Vedas and the epics...they refer to such fantastic thoughts but given our abilities to accept and to not accept certain things, we ignore them completely. So many more ideas can be developed just on those lines.

Too tired to do so right away :). Finding it difficult - to recapture my earlier thoughts. Too much of readings on Markets, Investments, financials, Visa docs and too early in the morning i guess. More sometime soon.

BTW the count on kindle is 5.

Unleashed horses of the Chariots of God

Saturday night. One of the very few Sat nights when K is away, kid is asleep, and have taken out K's Mac rather than picking up a book or the kindle. Spent time browsing, what all - FB, some music, some poems, some bit of non-serious pending reader updates, some book blogs and ...nothing else and hrs lost. Why am I not writing about the kindled stuff...? Nothing much to update.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. As I thought, finished it pretty quickly. Interesting way of writing the book...been a while since I finished the book, don't remember my exact after thoughts, but I do remember her acute descriptions, the stuff that she captured so sharply which actually sets up the time and place in front of your eyes. Regarding the emotions...somehow, post the book am left more with wonder rather than sympathy for the characters.

What else? Started reading the Catcher in the Rye and Chariots of God, and Fever and Cloud Atlas. Yes, I am not decided yet and haven't been reading. For the first 1/5 of an average book, its an active effort - you have to pick up the book and put in some reading work. For the rest of it, the book captures you and difficult to leave it till its over. So am nowhere near the first 1/5 mark.

Chariots of God - this is non fiction, book about the kind of things and thoughts which are my favorite time pass and a continuous source of wonder. Pondering about life, God, stars, UFOs, aliens, our place in the universe, here and beyond, beyond of beyond, what are we, were God aliens? This book (on kindle) ties up some of these thoughts beautifully with some actual evidence and tries to weave them together to lay out a beautiful mish mash of imaginations, new thoughts - some new, some corresponding with my own conjectures. The other day I was looking at the Hubble Photographs at the Big Picture...and it left me thinking - but there is just no way of knowing who we are, or how we came to be or why is this universe so huge - and still whatever we seem to comprehend of the universe may be a dot in another such universe. Or maybe as soon as we are able to comprehend something, we realise we have just started to imagine, and its like looking in a mirror which looks into another...to infinity. Imagining infinity. Difficult. Another way to look at it, think of the known world, known human powers, known capabilities...the ability to think is the best of all abilities maybe...still it is just the first step in an infinite ladder...the next ones may be telepathy, teleporting, or may be all this is just a drop, a ripple and we are existing in something locked in time and space...looking up at stars spread across the sky, each one at an expanse of a few million light years...it is like looking at time itself. May be some day, it would be easier to comprehend that time is just another axis, and that there are more such things. It is like there is some water trickling down a huge wall, whatever we think and know is that trickle of water. Somehow we do not realise that the trickle is from a huge ocean behind that wall...we hear it all the time, but since we hear it all the time, we do not think about it. Anyway, does thinking about it helps? Our daily problems are very very different...and maybe a way of keeping ourselves busy so that we do not think about the ocean beyond. But sometimes, just sometimes it surfaces, gives a hint, a glimpse, and there is a flash - you can see through and through and then you realise - all this is a mirage.

Depressing, K says, when I talk like this. But think about it, this is more like possibilities..a promise beyond this pale blue dot of ours, a promise that all what we go through is insignificant and there is a world, where all that matters to us is intact, or all that matters to us cease to matter to the universe. But yes, this can be depressing to think that the human species, the earth - with our sense of self importance, of our love of treating ourselves so seriously, the war, peace, money, economy, gold, oil, coal, love, hate- are just an accident in a massive scheme of things and the universe would have been no different even without us. Huge blow. But we need our own anchors, and our seriousness is our anchor.

To life. And to its inexplicability. It sure would have been boring if we knew everything. More fun like this. Rest - keep guessing.

Reading Update

Two books currently. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (Kindle) and Fever - by Clezio (Unkindled). Both the authors - am reading for the first time. Have wanted to read them for a while. But the book jacket of Beloved - another Toni Morrison stuff , which I pick up almost every time when I am in a book shop but end up not buying because of the heart breaking story it promises. Clezio - wanted to read his works since the Nobel last year, I couldn't find anything in Bombay, picked up some books in KL, but my KL book buying overload means I have got a lot of unread stuff on my book shelf.

Fever - Realised once in the book that it is a collection of short stories ...describes pain and the discomfort that a sick body goes through...what better time! Into the first story - and I got my firsthand experience, the kid, and myself down with fever and all the related side effects - and no better time to appreciate the beauties of good health other than when you are down without. It really mars your world, sullies all hopes and tinges the horizon with darkness...all the lush, healthy, bright stuff vanishes and one just sits pondering about the funny taste in one's mouth and the utter hopelessness of life and things like spring in the step and even talks of a lap of swim sound otherworldly. But things pass, that is the beauty if life, isn't it? And the sick days pass, am back at my desk, writing stuff about the readings I should have done over the weekend...and with some hope twinkling in the eyes, horizon is back bouncing with possibilities. And at that note, to K, and to the thought that he shared...The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; They just make the most of everything :) - but I tell you, the lens changes totally when one is unwell.

The Bluest Eye...am 40% deep (the Kindle ticker keeps the progress). Pretty short book, the last one was 3,500 locations, this is just about 2,000. Should be able to finish it soon. I quite like the writing. Don't know where the story will take me...but haven't read anything of this type....closest was Faulkner but a totally different time. But Faulkner was slightly inaccessible at times - I seem to follow Ms Morrison (or so I think). I like her vantage points, perspectives and oh-so-true capturing of thoughts. More once I finish reading.