Day Eleven: A book you hated: 

I'm not saying I was a tough unprincessy kid, it's just that Sara Crewe has always struck me as exactly the sort of girl who gets a raw deal because she's such an annoying little martyr. To cut it short, this book bored me senseless. Of course, there's always the possibility that I might learn new things about how and why it was written if I choose to pick it up now, and view it differently and all that jazz, but that's not bound to happen anytime soon ever. I hated it thrice as much as I hated Noddy, and that's saying something.

Favourite classic book, but of course - To Kill a Mockingbird.

9

Day 9: A Book You Thought You Thought You Wouldn’t Like But Ended Up Loving 

                               

I've two stellar examples here because Vernon God Little's another story altogether. Anyway, if you have a choice between swatting books away nervously because you know they'll drive you into darkness for a while, and reading them in spite of, uhm, abovementioned knowledge, it helps to not be a cretin. Always remember that darkness is a small price to pay for beauty. 

(If that wasn't a loaded sentence I'm a baboon.)

7 + 8

Most Underrated Book:

I think calling The Beetle underrated is a little off, a better word would be neglected. I have these pulp phases where I read purely to feel the satisfaction of being fed a ludicrous story, so imagine my wide, wide smile of happiness after I finished reading this for our secondyear course on Popular and Genre Fiction in the 19th Century. I'm prone to thinking that most pulp authors are underrated purely because they're pulp (and because I am unwaveringly supportive of flagrant drama) so this shouldn't come as a surprise, more so because all of this book is sheer stupendousness. I realise this tag's become a reiteration of things I've already written about when it comes to books I like, which is why I should've saved myself from agonising over this and done the one on movies instead.

Most overrated book:

Agh, I don't know. I'm more often disappointed with the inability of a writer to sustain one brilliant book after another (what, and you're not?) than the reading of something unsatisfactory, so while the standard answers - Love Story, A Passage to India, and English, August - all stand, may I please take a minute to point out the sheer ghastliness of everything Zadie Smith has written after White Teeth? I couldn't get through either The Autograph Man or On Beauty so I doubt this applies as an answer. Doesn't mean my heart remains unbroken when this happens, though, I love the way she writes. 

TDBC VI

Day Six: A book that makes you sad.

As a companion piece to the last, also the last really sad book I read so no point trying to think of other sad books. Or attempt to describe exactly how it broke my heart. So devastatingly perfect. And vice versa.  

Day Five, Belated.

Day Five: A book that makes you happy, Or, Sohini already took Durrell.

From such a long time ago. The first Wodehouse I ever read. A friend of my mother's gifted it to me on my thirteenth or fourteenth birthday, and it's still my favourite book by him for purely sentimental reasons. I know every story in it by heart but I never talk about it and I never bring it up because I love what it's about so much - twelve vintage cases, as the cover says, of good eggs and decent chaps entangled in snares of young love. I still think Wodehouse does the best job, without hamming it, of making gawky love feel happy, no that's not the word, quietly joyous, and I can't help but appreciate that because it adds much to the moment whenever I pick it up. But this book isn't even completely about love; I keep getting the feeling it's more about those much-required instances, those I Feel Just Like a Child moments. So there, defeat awkwardness with maximum ridiculosity. This is where it all started.

30 Day Book Challenge, Day Two

Day Two: A book you've read more than thrice:


First-choice standard replies:

 

Because, as has already been established, pithy twisted wisdom is one of my things. I'd throw in Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Little Prince and To Kill a Mockingbird as other standards, but since this is a, uh, challenge, I wanted to think of a book I've reread these past five years. Which is futile because there's nothing I've reread fairly these past five years from start till end. True story. I've only picked up already-read books to reread favourite chapters or scenes, but Bradbury I return to because it's something I puzzle over and like puzzling over. Not because dystopian premises are another one of my things (who're we kidding, of course they are) but because of the deceptively terse sentences and the way it progresses and the way it ends - I don't think this book will ever cease to fascinate me, so my cheat answer would be Fahrenheit 451. 

I'm skipping Day Four and Five. There aren't many series I've completed reading (another thing, kill me kill me carnage carnage aaaa) so no point. Plus I'm a Discworld noob, here's outcast material for you. Off the top of my head I loved His Dark Materials and the first two Bartimaeus books and Artemis Fowl till he went sappy and I stopped reading Colfer, which I should probably rectify because I could very much do with a Fowl book now. But I diverge. Favourite book of favourite series, why the hell, please, don't test my patience. Everyone knows I have a thin with the middle books of trilogies, and I have my reasons for obsessing over this, witness The Golem's Eye and The Subtle Knife - optimum length due to excellently estimated imaginative reign leading to restrained maudlinness leading to the right twist ending paving way for the last book (which is always so grandiose it trips over itself) - they always have just the right amount of everything. But not The Two Towers. Ride and rest. Ride and rest. Ride and rest. Eat elf bread. Ride and Rest. Ok I'll stop now.

30 Day Book Challenge, Day One

Day One: The Best Book You Read Last Year:

I can't explain why exactly I loved this so much, maybe because it's about old people. I love old people. And little children. I love the fact that they're unafraid to be brutally honest about the world, it's like they're one step closer to absolute wisdom when compared to the rest of us. Goes to prove we're born with it and die with it, only hindered somewhat in the middle by a compulsion to act like first-rate morons. This book has an exceedingly smart old lady in it and there are strange animals and buildings and lots of craziness and an inexplicable nuclear winter, but then Carrington wasn't exactly your standard Surrealist. What I love most about it is that it came to me at the right time, just when I needed to read something short and unconstrained. I haven't read as much as I'd wanted to since college started, I've become crabbier and intolerant and impatient and abandoned more books than I care to admit, but this one got me started on a reading spree all of last December and I'm grateful for that. My best read of last year is therefore a choice based purely on serendipity, but the best part is there's nothing you can do about it. So there, watch me grin.

*grins* 

Man, On Chesil Beach is really pissing me off. It was too rainy again to do classes (yeah, I use that all the time) so I thought I'd read instead, one plate of apple-cinnamon pancakes and three hours later I can safely say this is the last McEwan I'm reading. Amsterdam was ok and Atonement good for most of the first half, but this one's proof enough, I can't read poignant meaningful books anymore. I appreciate the writing, I appreciate the gravity of a generation without contraceptives, blah blah, I just don't like the book. Maybe I'm dumbing down, maybe I like wars better, maybe, hello, maybe it's just that love wasn't meant for me (cue heartrending sob) but whatever, perhaps when I'm fifty I'll see it otherwise. I should have read this at fifteen. Seriously, a couple who can't have sex, what a tragedy.

Next, I read American Psycho.

I'm half-afraid of reading Villette again. I read it when I didn't understand most of it but even then it seemed so overwhelmingly mad in its despair. Also disjointed. Also whimsical. Wuthering Heights is mad in itself but it's the obvious kind of mad, it's dramatic and passionate and tempestous, yeah, but it could push itself into becoming cumbersome, or maybe that's just me. The quieter kind of mad is scarier, Villette scores there.

Earthsea will not get read. I'm not a good reader when it comes to long sea voyage descriptions and all this sailing's reminding me of Old Man and the Sea. I badly want to read something funny and decadent and utterly brainless. Auugh.

Must list:

The Pilo Family Circus
Toystories
Mango slaw! (Yes! Yes! Mango! Slaw!)
Bookshelf
Ghost

In spite of what I sound like, things are not what I sound like. Drift. Get. No? Double auugh.

The second-hand bookstalls in Gariahat are bittersweet because it always hurts to come across a book you like, someone else didn't think much of giving it away. There are some authors that keep reappearing, though, I located no less than twelve copies of War and Peace. There were a lot of orphaned Dickenses also in addition to the usual thirty-buck pulp. I wanted to buy a bunch of Tarzanses but I was looking for a volume on Milton's poetry instead so I desisted, then I saw a couple of Penguins that I'd read a long time back, tiny pocket classics that came in boxed sets, Kipling's Baa Baa Black Sheep and Herriot's Yorkshire Tales, but I have the Herriot so I kept hoping Gigi would turn up. Nothing happened. No Milton, no Tarzan, nothing. I ended up buying a copy of The Little Prince because it's been a really long time since I owned one, I lost the first copy I had and the second never came back to me after Sonali or Puja or someone else borrowed it. It's Second Unluckiest right after The Catcher in the Rye.

This copy has a dedication inside in blue and green ink that reads,

To
My one 'n' only
Dada
With lots of
Love 'n' hugs -
Koko
Tokai
Puchku
Bujbuj
February 4th 2k2.

Right, so, my point is, at least I lose them. Some people just seem to have strange priorities and yes, this is supposed to be a layered sentence.

Second pointless book tag.

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror?
Dunno. Haven't read enough of each.

Hitchhiker or Discworld?
Don't remember Hitchhiker much, but I loved it. Haven't read Discworld. Yet.

Bookmark or Dog ear?
Flip through till I find my page. I keep losing bookmarks.

Asimov’s Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction?
Haven't read Asimov Proper. Now I'm rethinking this tag.

Alphabetize by author, Alphabetize by title, or random?
Used to be by author. Now it's books read, half-read and not read.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell?
Keep! What a question.

Keep, dust-jacket or toss it?
Keep.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Haven't read Snicket. Used to be a Potter fan, still am in some ways.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
When tired, sleepy, or distracted by shiny objects.

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"?
Anything.

Buy or Borrow?
Both.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse?
Browse, what a nice word. Also recos.

Lewis or Tolkien?
Love both, refuse to choose.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading?
No specific time.

Standalone or Series?
Standalone, mostly.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
The Gipsy in the Parlour - Margery Sharp

Top 5 favorite genres of all time?

Mystery/Detective
Speculative Fiction
Historical/War background types
Exotic locale/Adventure types
Regency romances :D

Top 5 favorite genre books?
Making this list will be excruciating. I'll pass.

Currently Reading?
Dracula. And bits of Doonesbury.

Pointless book tag. Taking a break from Dracula. Popfic exam tomorrow will most likely be a disaster unless I finish the book and move on to actually studying. But lets do this first.

The following is apparently a list of books, "most of them sitting unread in people's bookshelves to make them look smarter". The rules are: bold the ones that you have read and italicize the ones you have started but didn't finish.


1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi: a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs and Steel
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler's Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assasin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales
38. The Historian: A Novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault's Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula (COMING SOON! Dracula in bold!)
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible
53. 1984
54. Angels and Demons
55. Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (This was so fabulous, I don't know why I stopped.)
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver's Travels
65. Les Miserables
66. The Correction
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People's History of the United States: 1492-present (Not happening anytime soon)
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces (Reading this now. Apart from Dracula, I mean)
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughter House- five
83. The Scarlett Letter
84. Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Never actually began.)
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake
87. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity's Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
103. White Teeth
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers

Ok. Why multiple Atwoods? Now I feel like doing another tag.

The more I get into High Fidelity, the more convinced I am that the House MD soundtrack's using it as its Bible. I mean, Solomon Burke? Al Green? Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding, Rolling Stones? All together? And look, look, Wikipedia has all the lists nicely written down so I don't have to go back and flip through and hunt, which in retrospect is somewhat pitiful. But no matter. Love and Happiness, you bet.

I see you baby (Shakinyerass).

I can't remember when and where I read this, or why I'd forgotten it till today, but, fact is, someday I shall have a Gorey shoulder. Mark my words.

"...dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die."

-Rudyard Kipling, Namgay Doola

Old-Fashioned, Bored and Sunday-Stricken. No, this is not an advert.

There is a Fifteen Books in Fifteen Minutes thingie on Facebook, but I don't want to write a note. So I'm doing it here, mainly because I had plenty of time and knew this would take up a nice chunk. Always happens when I make lists. It's been a full hour and I'm still agonising about all that I left out.

All are books I read in school, I guess those are the ones that have stuck the longest. So there, real reason for post - nostalgia. I wanted revisits because there are solid reasons for all the books being on the list. Proper memories and events and things.

Three books I refuse to include are Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World and 1984. Because they're unlistable. They just are. Also to narrow the margin, no series or comics. Except Sherlock Holmes. I'm sorry, but the first man I fell in love with has to be on the list.

1) Peter Pan - J M Barrie

2) The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

3) The Prodigy - Hermann Hesse

4) The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

5) Candide - Voltaire

6) The Sherlock Holmes stories - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

7) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

8) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

9) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

10) The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories - P G Wodehouse

11) The Moon and Sixpence - Somerset Maugham

12) The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

13) Adrift on the Nile - Naguib Mahfouz

14) The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

15) The BFG - Roald Dahl

I miss all the old-fashioned books I used to read. Now everything is avant-garde and analysable and therefore one book blends into another. Disgusting Nonsense. Time to bring out the MacLeans again.

Yesterday I happened to be reading Switch Bitch on a bus that was stuck somewhere in Santoshpur at ten in the night, while a dozen bhashaan parties danced their way by. Having shiny pink hands pass you by just outside the window is unnerving, so is the fact that there are forty grinning faces in every truck with the idols, so forty expressions flash by under the streetlights, one after the other. Somewhere down the line I put the book down because I felt all Victorian and didn't want to be the girl reading dirty stories in a bus while goddesses rode by. And it was much too noisy. But then someone flung a handful of flowers into the bus so I picked one up. It was small and white and smelled good, and I put it in between two pages and forgot all about it.

Today I picked up the book again and there it was, the flower, wedged into the best passage in the entire book, only smelling slightly funny. And it made me smile, because it smelled funny, and then I read the passage. If you've read Bitch you probably know why. I don't believe in coincidences, but there is always a pattern to unrelated events if you stretch it long enough.

Contrary to all expectations, I shall pull this blog through for an entire year. And I shall write almost everyday. So there. Make ninety-nine red balloons go by.

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man’s distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:    
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.

Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal…

- Gerard Manley Hopkins.