The Pile of Books

Love is multi-dimensional; in the sense that it is a congregation of feelings, both good and bad. They all build up to something familiar, like an old pair of socks, and settles down snugly within us, without us much realising. The feeling of loss is also an indication of that love, and the only tragedy is not feeling anything at all.  Murakami's beautiful  South of the Border, West of the Sun is a journey of the heart. Nothing really is straight-cut when it comes to Murakami, but this is an out-and-out love story, as predictable as it can be in terms of the practical outcomes, while the complex turns of the heart are what makes this story so unique. Little Hajime is a single-child, who learns to live in his own quiet world, and befriends Shimamoto, another lone child at school. When both go their own ways as teenagers, Hajime still remembers her fondly, and moves on with his life , not realising how stuck he is. He is happily married with two daughters, with the...

Besides the pouring rain against the glass panes, the next best thing for me is a dry spell, with a shaft of sunlight escaping through the dark bank of clouds and illuminating a runway on my bed. These instances are rare to come by in the thick of the monsoons and so I relish them, as I am doing now with one or all of the below: A good book : The lighter the better. Or else something as engrossing as a Harry Potter or an Alistair McLean. The intense plot only ferments too well in the rain-washed sunbeams.  A good book and a takeway : A steaming box of wok or some incredibly cheesy pizza that dribbles on the pages. Nasty stuff, but there's no combination like comfort food and a comfort book.    Long-drawn out, ballad-like music : My husband is a connoisseur of good music, and more often than not I am listening to some heart-rending song on the loop. On afternoons like today, it feels like an ode to love and loss and all things bittersweet.  Watc...

Isn't that something to look forward to ?! An 8th in the line of the Harry Potter saga...Unlike when I was younger, I did not pre-book this one (sad what ageing does to you) but just tried my luck at the local bookstore and hit it off. Lucky me ! It went down in a week, which must have been the time it used to take me to tackle The Order of the Phoenix back in my schooldays. And it left me happy. Not delirious and confused, but happy.  Nothing wrong with the book at all; in fact the story was as tight as you could ask for, what kept nagging me was that I was missing out on some of the finest writings of Rowling herself. If only this were a 2,000-pager, I would probably have taken a couple of days off from work and gorged on it till I was bloodshot in the eyes. However, considering that a story as complex as this is written in a theatre-format, I am pretty surprised at how well it has come out. Admittedly, the movies took some time to mature (personally I started l...