The Pile of Books

Yes ! I started with Go Set a Watchman two days back ! My notes so far (I am a little less than halfway through): 1. There's no one cooler than Scout. Atticus maybe. But no one cusses like Scout. 2. Jem. Well, that hurt on page 13. 3. Jem, Scout and Dill as kids again. Oh the fun ! 4. Aunt Alexandra. And her corsets. 5. Maycomb. Nothing substantial has happened so far, which is OK by me. Reading about Maycomb is like going back to my childhood. Nothing beats that.

No. I never really got round to telling that I had finished this book. It happened weeks back, (even before The Good Doctor ) and I've been putting off writing about it, because frankly, I'm still figuring out what it was. This was my first Murakami. Rather than say that it was a good book, I would say it gave me a good feeling, like something born out of working hard. I have been reading up on what other people thought of the book (it's one of those times, when I really need to know if I know right), and its still vague. So I have my own interpretation, and it still needs to be worked upon, as there are facts that don't add up. Its like those 1000-piece puzzles of a landscape where even after you find the corner pieces, your work is about as hard as not starting at all. Right now, my understanding involves something akin to Hermione's Time-Turner, wormholes and Inception 's limbo.  In terms of the writing, it was so liquid that despite that e...

Well it's been some time. While my reading has been erratic (but adequate), my blogging has been reduced to a once-in-a-month do. But then who am I kidding ?! This isn't my first AWOL situation ! First things first. In the nooks and crannies of my choc-a-bloc weekdays and stuffed weekends, I managed to finish The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut. It's a short book and the economy of words justifies the taut story-telling of Galgut. Meaning, it should not have taken me a month to digest the book, but sadly, it did. Courtesy: http://www.goodreads.com/ The Good Doctor is based in a lawless hinterland of South Africa where apathy is the best way to survive. In a slightly uncomfortable realisation, it becomes evident that indifference is not always the worst thing around. The incumbent doctor Frank Eloff and a handful of other doctors man a derelict hospital. Frank is already too careworn to bother about anything by the time he took position at the hospital, which is s...

It was a wonderful, refreshing break after a few months. We went off on a trip to Mahabaleshwar and it turned out to be only a tad short of heaven (nothing beats Kashmir). We were continually surrounded by fluffy clouds, that kept rushing up at us and leaving our hair and clothes damp. Visibility could not have been more than 200 metres and with only my hoodie on, it was remarkably freshening. Naturally, reading wasn't exactly the topmost on my mind. It was good to be back on the hills. Sadly I'm now back, and before the grind could take over, my husband took me out to buy books (bless him !). We returned with a bag of tomatoes, a packet of flattened rice flakes and three books.  Go Set A Watchman : Naturally, it had been on my list ever since The Guardian ran sneak previews of the book. I had been putting off for the simple reason that our shelves are bursting with unread and half-read books, but what the hell now !its never too early or late to buy books. The Mart...

I can never have enough time for both books and movies in a day. For obvious reasons (not obvious to me though), I am constantly having to categorise and prioritise my free time. Its hardly unimaginable thus, that when books get converted into movies, it gets quite difficult to keep pace with both. I am left with a shamefully long list of movies I have put off for the simple and highly pertinent reason that the book-version is yet to be touched. Thanks to the The Top Tuesday feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish , I get to put a tentative number to my ignominy: 1. Pride and Prejudice: Well, yeah. I haven't read it yet. Please don't judge me. Yet. 2. Divergent series: I've had it up to here with YA novels. Most of them are actually nice, but I'm so done with having to nurse a bruised and battered heart every time. The only plus are the leading ladies, which make me feel utterly useless and super-inspired simultaneouly.  3. Eat, Pray, Love: I l...

Back in my schooldays, we did not have rainy days, quite unlike most of my friends and colleagues now, who reminisce about rainy days like some long-lost treasure. It did rain pretty hard during monsoons, but being a dry area in general, the water would percolate quite fast, leaving the soil soggy and squelching. But I have recollections of beautiful moments spent on my bed or my study tables, hunched over a book, as it poured buckets outside... The flickering flames: A heavy spell of rain inevitably meant a power outage. Back in those days, invertors weren't all that common, and we would have glass lanterns and candles lit up while I studied in its light ! Somehow, this always happened right before my Hindi exams, and I remember one particular evening, when the rain was lashing at our glass panes, while I was ploughing through a beautiful Premchand from my text book... The crumpling pages: As the drizzle just commences when the sun is about to set, the first few, fat drop...

Finally I have started on Murakami. Its been long overdue. So that day I picked Kafka on the Shore from Crosswords. I put my library services on hold and forbade my colleagues from tempting me into new books. I've got to say its a funny sort of book, and I hope I do not offend anyone by saying that. The best time when I read it is in the early morning with my cup of tea, just before the rush of the day takes over; it lasts barely 20 minutes I guess, but its a good 20 minutes. I am only 100 pages in, and the plot is still all woolly to me, but somehow its quite captivating. Maybe it is the simplicity of the language. And then there are cats ! Besides cats, there are some excellent lines I came across and have earmarked the pages, but this one bit hard... "I fumble around in the bushes, but all I touch are branches, hard and twisted like the hearts of bullied little animals " Also, there is a marvellous description of a personal library, that simply lift...

Read it. Just read it.  Despite his plots being aimed at the YA category, the books are amazingly appealing. I shall be honest upfront and let you know that I haven't read The Screaming Staircase , but I managed to lay my hands on this beauty and its been worth every penny I spent on it.  The plot and its flow is pretty much along the same lines as all his books (I'm assuming Ptolemy's Gate and The Screaming Staircase  are along similar lines as the other books): there is a mystery doing the rounds in a parallel London setting, which in this series is, is replete with ghosts, as numerous in variety and as well-studied as types of butterflies in the current day. The Detection Agencies (along the same lines as the Ghostbusters or the Supernatural duo of Sam and Dean) try to rid sites of the ghost infestation through their agents, who are predominantly kids and youngsters. Antony Lockwood's agency is a trio consisting of, besides himself, Lucy Carlyle and Ge...

So I stumbled across this blog The Broke and the Bookish  quite by chance (actually I was going through another brilliant blog  Fourth Street Review , which led me to TBB). They have an interesting section for Top Tens, and this time it was The Top Ten Authors I've Read The Most Books From . I'm not sure if I can name ten, but let's see here... Alistair MacLean: Give me a warm-hearted, yet cold-demeanoured, taciturn, multifaceted gentleman, who is also a juggler with words, and a plot set in a crippled ship in hostile waters or a ice-floe or on ragged mountains, and the only other thing I'll ask for is a cup of tea to read it with. James Herriot: I love animals. Enough said. No, but really, Herriot is the reason I took Library as my preferred choice of 'activity' at school. John le Carre: God, its depressing to read a le Carre. But its right up there with MacLean. There's something hypnotic about his work and there have been phases when I'...

When I'm by myself - that is when there's no one within earshot, I often read aloud dialogues from a novel. Its a bit tiring after a couple of pages, and I find myself concentrating more on the modulation bit rather than the story. And I always voice the good characters, or if there are none in the scene, the snarkiest ones. Needless to say, my level of snark is blunted by my daily rigours, though in my head, I make up all sorts of highly inflammatory responses that could have been employed in a given situation. Never saying them out loud has helped me being tolerable for human companionship.  Nobody does snark better than Alistair MacLean. He is the king of snark. P.G. Wodehouse also dabbles in it, but the application is wrapped in such florid English, that it takes the snide to a whole new level of art. And then there are the modern antiheroes - the kind like Constantine; they are cynical and brooding and being impertinent is just a way of life. I'm yet to gather ta...