The Pile of Books

I'm in a heady mood today and the weather is egging me on. Its been raining intermittently over the last week, and I've been dying to find the time to sit by the window, the rain lashing at it, while I sip my tea and turn the pages of the book at hand. Also, this weekend comes after numerous ones when both S and me have been extremely busy, so that relaxation seemed a distant luxury. Its nearing 6 in the evening now, the breeze is soothing and the sun is getting hazier behind the cottony grey clouds. I am thinking of all the nice little spots where I have managed to curl up and read, and then some more which I wish to come across eventually. 1. This is where I first dipped into the world of books; by the double-paned wooden windows was my single bed, where I lounged after school (back when additional tuition classes had not begun ruining my life). I remember reading my first Hardy Boys there there.To this day, the greenish, glittering beams of sunlight filtering through t...

Typically I've never been a recent-author person. I have survived (been overwhelmed rather) by writers gone by, with the exception of J.K. Rowling obviously, who, unfortunately, has dimmed everyone else's sheen who came after her. So, when my colleague expounded the benefits of keeping up with the times - particularly along the literary lines - I was forced to think of climbing out of my shell. So he lent me The Girl on the Train. This happened possibly a month back; it took me a couple of weeks to read the book, and my verdict is an uh-huh (or as Sheldon would put it as colon dash). I'll say upfront what I didn't like about the book. It seemed too cinematic in its veins - right from the plot to the way it unfolded. While being cinematic is what draws me to a lot of books, The Girl on the Train  also dabbles effusively into the deepest, scariest, ugliest parts of our minds, which caught my fancy in a macabre way. Somehow as the book was progressing - trying to ke...

I saw Mad Max today. I loved it, but S detested it ! We are still getting used to this difference in our tastes ! Either way, I felt that the movie had much to do with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) than with Max (Tom Hardy) himself, but well, Tom Hardy is Tom Hardy. I was gaping at his scenes throughout.  That reminded me of the first time I took him seriously. It was the BBC adaption of Stuart: A Life Backwards , which continues to be one of the few books that continue to haunt me. Thinking of Stuart , brought me to Birdsong . For both stories, the screen adaptations were very nearly as heart-breaking as the books themselves. Stuart: A Life Backwards  was a strange sort of book, dealing with the biography of a homeless man. Though the summary which I read before launching into the book, felt like it was another milking story, aimed at capitalising on the indifference of a man, but as I ploughed through the book, I found myself being drawn ino the life of a man...

Finally it is done. Don't get me wrong; I may sound unamused but I am happy having read the book. Well, not exactly thrilled maybe, but yeah, happy.  I began reading Phantom  in January. In coherence with my earlier trysts with classics, it took me quite a bit of patience to get through. In other words, it wasn't exactly breath-taking, but was interesting enough to tickle my imagination. I will begin by telling you what I like about The Phantom. The Opera house in itself, is a marvel to read about (the origins of which is detailed in an appended newspaper report that Leroux referred to for his story); all the columns and boxes and dressing rooms and shaded corridors, the roofs with the statue of the Apollo... there was nothing flowery in their description, but the architecture set the mood of the mystery-in-catacombs. And then there were the supporting characters: the incredulous managers, the gossiping dancers, the haughty Madam Giry and the lovelorn Raou...

All thanks to My Life in Books , I heard of Mitch Albom. I love the way  Jennine G.  writes about the books she has been reading and more often than not, I find myself elongating my to-be read list based on her recommendations. The discovery of Albom was perhaps a long time coming, since S and some of his friends had already read his work. So this last weekend, while we were browsing through the airport bookstore and I saw The First Phone Call from Heaven , I proclaimed that this is an author to read about and S said that he already had ! He has Tuesdays with Morrie which has had glowing reviews, as I discovered later. I do feel a bit like an ignorant fool to have completely skipped over an author of this reputation.  Source: http://www.bookworm.com.sg/books/first-phone-call-heaven/ Anyway, it took me a week of hard reading to finish The First Phone Call from Heaven . And my first impression of the book, once I shut the covers, was that it resembled, in...

Ahoy there ! Its been long enough ! I have so missed scratching at this blog; but then both time and opportunity were in marked abeyance in the last month. It took a toll on my reading habits, and February was full of me making frenzied stabs at reading a few pages and abandoning them within the hour to attend to some other chore.  Things are slowly getting back to the grind, and I have managed to sneak some time for my reading again. I cannot begin to tell how good that feels ! I am beginning to empathise with the agony of going cold turkey ! So, befitting a starving man at a buffet, I have reached out to anything within my grasp, which at this point in time, is a lot. So in addition to my existing work-in-progress, I have also picked up Eragon . I am actually glad that I did away with the reading challenges every month, because this pile of books will take some considerable time and patience, given that they all belong to widely disparate genres. But its a great feeling non...

I love February. It was nearly three years ago,a round this time, I remember venturing for the MyLibrary facility of British Council. I had first come across this concept of home-delivered library books, at the interval of some movie I had been watching at PVR. My mother had been a member of the British Council in her days, and secretly, I so wanted to be a part of it too, though why, I cannot say.  So I gathered some pluck, and asked for a membership in February. And boy oh boy ! Am I pleased ! I got my first two two books from the library - Brilliant Careers - The Virago Book of 20th Century Fiction and The Bottom Line: Business Finance - Your Questions Answered .  I ended up reading neither. I don't think I even touched the second one. It took me some time to navigate my way through their wonderful stock of books and figure out where to go to with regard to my interest. These last few months however, what with this thing and that, my dependence on British Co...

The first time I had read Kidnapped was the abridged Ladybird version at my school library. Those books were most beautifully illustrated and one particular illustration caught my attention and has held me still - a startled young man at the edge of a stair-step which ended in the open air, illuminated by a flash of lightning. I had pretty much decided then that I would read the whole book someday. A little over a decade later, I have fulfilled my promise ! And besides the vanity, I am genuinely glad to have read the full book, though even the abridged one had failed to dampen the high-octane spirit of the story.  The title is a bit of a giveaway for the first part of the book, though soon, the story takes the form of a cat-and-mouse game, albeit dated three centuries ago. The first part of the book covers the origin of the travails - the kidnapping, to be precise, and the settings shift on a ship. Through a turn of events, David Balfour - the protagonist - finds himsel...

I follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, though I had read only one book of his ( Coraline ) that my best friend had gifted me on my last birthday. I am quite ashamed to say that my first acquaintance with his work was through an episode of Doctor Who - The Doctor's Wife , that he had scripted, and to this day , it remains one of my most favourite, poignant episodes of the show. All I knew from the veritable literature and almost frenetic online admiration, was that this was a writer with some fairly impactful body of work to follow. Last weekend, I was at the bookstore, and despite the bulky backlog of books and work on hand, I ended up buying The Ocean at the End of the Lane .  Having finished it a couple of days back, I am the wiser to have given in to my impulse then. Like Coraline , The Ocean at the End of the Lane  was difficult for me to categorise. This was fantasy, but the writing did not suggest it. Not even remotely. The story is narrated through the eyes of ...

All hail 2015 ! Its been 11 days since the dawn of  the new year and I am already feeling a bit stupid for making the observation so late. Staying ahead of time or even keeping pace with it has never been my forte. That aside, it seems like a bright time, and my books have been keeping me good company, so I shall not judge or grumble yet. I've already begun on my January targets, and this is how it looks: 1. South! by Sir Ernest Shackleton: Ever since I read Shackleton's Way (it was given to us as a course material during my post-graduation; I never read it during my study years, but followed up a year later into my job), I was pretty curious about the details of the voyage. Shackleton's Way was a hugely instructive and quite inspiring work. So while I was browsing the Kindle bookstore, I saw this beauty, and penned by none other than Sir Shackleton himself ! There was no looking back. I have been at it since December though, and I must say its not as thrilling as Sha...