Kullu Dreaming on NOWNESS ASIA
-
View this post on Instagram
Showing posts with label Books of Exile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books of Exile. Show all posts
3
Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The book starts with an ending; Eddie, the protagonist is going to die and the reader is taken along Eddie’s last hour as he goes on doing what he did for the last significant portion of his life, working maintenance in the Ruby Pier amusement park. It is also his 83rd birthday. Eddie is popular amongst the children, they like his non assuming self, while he evidently dislikes the ones who’d crossed the threshold of teenage, they gave him headaches. It is when a cart comes loose from a ride and is about to crash into a little girl, does Eddie’s end seem immediate. He tries pushing the girl away from the coming end and gets killed himself. And here ends the first chapter.
Eddie, as is evident from the title, goes to heaven and then meets five people, in five very different places, whose lives intersect with his in ways different from eachother. To reveal the persons and the different settings would be taking away of a lot of the joy of reading the book. Now, a lot of people've found happiness in annoying the heaven out of me by planning landmines of spoilers in the past (yes, I meant you. And you. And you.). But I'd be the better man and let it be. The book excels in what it seeks to do, which is tugging at the heart strings and making you cry. It is not of the tribe of Nickolas Sparks but something more bittersweet. Almost makes you wish that heaven were real, along with Santa Claus and angels and God... I digress.
What I loved the most was the part non-linear narrative. The independent accounts of his other, significant birthdays from the past and the memories awakened by the different people he meets in heaven. To sum up the book in two words, the book was 'heartfelt-ly pleasant'. It's a book which one could finish in one sitting, thanks to its size and content, but still would go back every now and then for some, let me say it, corny sweetness. My copy was bought from a second hand bookshop and it's previous owner left a lot of scribbling and underlining in the book. Now, I'm not the one for abuse to books, but it's always nice to find some humanising relics of previous owners in a thrifted book. The book's filled with thoughts inspired by the book. I don't get why someone'd sell a book so personal, but I'm happy he did (yes, I'm sure it was a he). The author employs no over dramatication, which'd've been very easy to fall into. The book tells you how everything is related and how all the different stories in the world're really just one long story. How one affects the other. I always wanted to read 'Tuesdays With Morrie', the writer's other book, and now I want to read it even more.
Maybe someday I'd find it in another secondhand bookshop with similar notes in the same handwriting and then, I can pretend to be in a Mitch Albom book myself.
***
I had this saved up for long and thought I'd publish this and get it over with. This is the official end of the 'Books of Exile' series. So many books were not reviewed and only my own lazy-assed-ness is to be blamed. The 'Books of Exile' series was also supposed to record my introduction to two of the greatest writers ever; Albert Camus and George Orwell. But A-L-A-S.
Expect random reviews from time to time though.
Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The book starts with an ending; Eddie, the protagonist is going to die and the reader is taken along Eddie’s last hour as he goes on doing what he did for the last significant portion of his life, working maintenance in the Ruby Pier amusement park. It is also his 83rd birthday. Eddie is popular amongst the children, they like his non assuming self, while he evidently dislikes the ones who’d crossed the threshold of teenage, they gave him headaches. It is when a cart comes loose from a ride and is about to crash into a little girl, does Eddie’s end seem immediate. He tries pushing the girl away from the coming end and gets killed himself. And here ends the first chapter.
Eddie, as is evident from the title, goes to heaven and then meets five people, in five very different places, whose lives intersect with his in ways different from eachother. To reveal the persons and the different settings would be taking away of a lot of the joy of reading the book. Now, a lot of people've found happiness in annoying the heaven out of me by planning landmines of spoilers in the past (yes, I meant you. And you. And you.). But I'd be the better man and let it be. The book excels in what it seeks to do, which is tugging at the heart strings and making you cry. It is not of the tribe of Nickolas Sparks but something more bittersweet. Almost makes you wish that heaven were real, along with Santa Claus and angels and God... I digress.
What I loved the most was the part non-linear narrative. The independent accounts of his other, significant birthdays from the past and the memories awakened by the different people he meets in heaven. To sum up the book in two words, the book was 'heartfelt-ly pleasant'. It's a book which one could finish in one sitting, thanks to its size and content, but still would go back every now and then for some, let me say it, corny sweetness. My copy was bought from a second hand bookshop and it's previous owner left a lot of scribbling and underlining in the book. Now, I'm not the one for abuse to books, but it's always nice to find some humanising relics of previous owners in a thrifted book. The book's filled with thoughts inspired by the book. I don't get why someone'd sell a book so personal, but I'm happy he did (yes, I'm sure it was a he). The author employs no over dramatication, which'd've been very easy to fall into. The book tells you how everything is related and how all the different stories in the world're really just one long story. How one affects the other. I always wanted to read 'Tuesdays With Morrie', the writer's other book, and now I want to read it even more.
Maybe someday I'd find it in another secondhand bookshop with similar notes in the same handwriting and then, I can pretend to be in a Mitch Albom book myself.
***
I had this saved up for long and thought I'd publish this and get it over with. This is the official end of the 'Books of Exile' series. So many books were not reviewed and only my own lazy-assed-ness is to be blamed. The 'Books of Exile' series was also supposed to record my introduction to two of the greatest writers ever; Albert Camus and George Orwell. But A-L-A-S.
Expect random reviews from time to time though.
3
I, Romantic – Rajeev Jhaveri
Now, this is not a book I’d suggest anyone
to read. Not that it is bad in a bad
way. It does not figure in the Chetan Bhagat category, much less in the Durjoy
Dutta one, but let’s put it in this way, for the 225/- that you’d spend on it,
you could find far better books instead. And as to why I bought it, the reason
is as simple as I didn’t know better and got carried away by all those one line reviews it had printed on its cover. They even got an US Army Iraq war
veteran to say “A timeless, beautifully written tale... Read this novel, be
changed...” How could I not fall for that, coupled with its promise of a doomed
love story laden with enough references to “Hayden’s symphonies, Yehoshua’s
poems and Einstein’s prose”. I’m so easily manipulated by book covers and
things written on them. K
‘I,
Romantic’ was supposed to be, in my head, a coming of age story about doomed
love and big literary references. What it turned out to be is a wannabe coming of age story about filmy doomed love and forced big literary references. Along with
a very disturbing explanation for Punjab being the bread basket of India (involves
sexually frustrated army men and porn and self gratification and the remains making
the Punjabi soil fertile. If you can't piece it together, good for you really). Also a
rape of a mute village woman in which the narrator, being a young sexually
frustrated army man himself, participates in wholeheartedly and the whole one
second it takes for the listener, supposedly a ‘liberated’, aaj ki Bharatiya
nari to forgive him.
The love track is so clichéd that the
million 90s Bollywood movies that came before it running on the same plotline
appear originals. Also the young stud suddenly finding his true calling while
wallowing in his depression and Bunuel’s movies and Begum Akhtar’s voice and
Hayden’s music and refusing to take part in the Kargil war and ‘standing up for
his ideas’ in front of his seniors appeared so filmsy, it gives one the idea
that Mr. Jhaveri wrote the book after getting inspired by back to back viewing
of 'Rang De Basanti', 'Lakhshya' and 'Wake Up Sid' (all very good films, no doubt) and
going on Wikipedia and searching all that he could of cultural big names. Because what’s better than a coming of age story? A coming of age story with generous mentions of European filmmakers and
random pseudo-intellectual blabbering by the ‘intellectual’ female lead.
‘I, Romantic’ could’ve been a better book,
with a better title. But it is not. It’s going to be a ‘major motion picture’
soon too, as the cover'll tell you. A book which appears suspiciously semi-autobiographical should’ve
been more honest and less soap opera-ish. I just hope the author gets to write
better books in the future. This one actually shows promise.
2
A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
This is actually a rehashed version of the book review I'd written for the magazine, Renaissance 21. So most of it'd sound familiar to ones who'd read the review back then. (And if you've not checked out the magazine, then do, now! It took many back-breaking hours before the computer and days of frantic phone calls, text messages and emails to bring it out.)
A Wild Sheep Chase was the first of Murakami that I read. And the reason I read it was because you couldn't move an inch in any direction without a dozen people waxing lyrical about Murakami and his writing, the cherry on the icing being a friend, VK, whose taste I can vouch for. And I'm only too happy that for a change I listened to people and picked the book up. The novel, set in Japan of the early 80s, does take its time to gain speed. The protagonist, an anonymous Japanese man, is tricked into a hunt for a particular and particularly mythical sheep, aided only by an old black and white photograph and an array of unusual characters; from his girlfriend with her magically seductive ears to a man dressed in a sheep costume. What comes off is a wonderful amalgamation of urban legends and more traditional myths.
Surely, this novel, like all other books of the magic realism genre, isn't for everyone. From elements of Shintoism to a post modern climax, this is a champion of its genre (I can talk like a real book reviewer! :'D). Translated from the original Japanese, 'A Wild Sheep Chase' is the second book of the 'Trilogy of The Rat' series. But it can be treated as a stand alone book too, which only made me want to read the other books in the series even more.
From the Japanese countryside in Hokkaido to the towering highrises of Tokyo, Murakami excells in his descriptions. Murakami writes lucid prose with the mark of an established writer who can afford to take his time building up the story. All thanks to translator Alfred Birnbaum for making the book read like English was the original language of the novel. Lauds to Murakami for making the storyline, otherwise seemingly outlandish in a three line synopsis, read like a masterpiece in the novel-form. Going with the flow of the words, even the climax seems possible in the world of the un-named narrator.
Despite its slow start, 'A Wild Sheep Chase' is a gripping read, staying true to its title to the last word. While the climax may leave some wondering about what just happened, it is not a disappointing read by any say. Read this one with no expectation of either the ordinary or the extraordinary. A tale of searching of more than one type, it's the perfect companion for a cold evening under the blankets.
A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
 |
| Isn't the photo giving an optical illusion or're my eyes finally going blind? |
This is actually a rehashed version of the book review I'd written for the magazine, Renaissance 21. So most of it'd sound familiar to ones who'd read the review back then. (And if you've not checked out the magazine, then do, now! It took many back-breaking hours before the computer and days of frantic phone calls, text messages and emails to bring it out.)
A Wild Sheep Chase was the first of Murakami that I read. And the reason I read it was because you couldn't move an inch in any direction without a dozen people waxing lyrical about Murakami and his writing, the cherry on the icing being a friend, VK, whose taste I can vouch for. And I'm only too happy that for a change I listened to people and picked the book up. The novel, set in Japan of the early 80s, does take its time to gain speed. The protagonist, an anonymous Japanese man, is tricked into a hunt for a particular and particularly mythical sheep, aided only by an old black and white photograph and an array of unusual characters; from his girlfriend with her magically seductive ears to a man dressed in a sheep costume. What comes off is a wonderful amalgamation of urban legends and more traditional myths.
From the Japanese countryside in Hokkaido to the towering highrises of Tokyo, Murakami excells in his descriptions. Murakami writes lucid prose with the mark of an established writer who can afford to take his time building up the story. All thanks to translator Alfred Birnbaum for making the book read like English was the original language of the novel. Lauds to Murakami for making the storyline, otherwise seemingly outlandish in a three line synopsis, read like a masterpiece in the novel-form. Going with the flow of the words, even the climax seems possible in the world of the un-named narrator.
Despite its slow start, 'A Wild Sheep Chase' is a gripping read, staying true to its title to the last word. While the climax may leave some wondering about what just happened, it is not a disappointing read by any say. Read this one with no expectation of either the ordinary or the extraordinary. A tale of searching of more than one type, it's the perfect companion for a cold evening under the blankets.
2
This was the first book on psychology that I ever read and I remember it was in November 2011 when I picked it up from a second-hand bookshop in Pan Bazaar – my most favourite area in any city, i.e. after Police Bazaar in Shillong and M. G. Road in Bangalore. The book belonged to a H. Das/Dass/Dhas of Dibrugarh who had bought the book for Rs. 3.00 (good old cheap days, I bought the same copy almost 40 years after for Rs. 30). There’s also a seal of the Dibrugarh Library, so it came into the library’s possession too some time before coming to the second hand bookshop’s in Guwahati. The amount of history one second-hand book can’ve! Also, this book had been one of those few Out-Of-My-Comfort-Zone books for me. Definitely Out-Of-My-Comfort-Zone.
The Three Faces of Eve is the real life story of Chris Costner Sizemore, a woman from 50s South Carolina, USA, who was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, sometime now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (hail Wikipedia). Her real identity was kept a secret from the public eye, from the book’s first publication in 1957 till 1975 and since my copy of the book is from ’61 (vintage!), she’s referred to as Eve White here, while the two other inhabitants of her mind and body’re called Eve Black and Jane. Eve White is a timid, hard working woman whose most defining role in her life is that of being a mother to her daughter, Bonnie. Her marriage is on the rocks and she worries for her daughter. After complaining of severe headaches and blackouts, she visits a psychiatrist, before whom Eve Black emerges and for the first time let’s her existence known, even though she claims to be existing alongside Eve White since childhood, without ever coming under anyone’s notice. Eve Black is the very anti-thesis of Eve White, a woman in sharp contrast to the later in her confident, flirtatious and frivolous nature. The psychiatrists believe her to be the manifestations of Eve White’s repressed feelings. Both the personalities’re thought to be imbalanced in their own ways, one overtly serious and maternal with her feelings, with no real love left for her husband and the other too frivolous than necessary, one who flirts with unknown and potentially dangerous men with subtle hints of ‘something more’, only to turn them down at the end. While Eve White has no recollection of what Eve Black does when she comes into dominance, she has to clear the many tight situations her twin leaves her in. Eve Black does not think of Eve White’s husband and daughter as her own and hates the restriction Eve White’s conventional life puts on her. After a few months, up to when Eve White has separated from her husband and is working and living independently, the third personality appears. She is Jane, the most well rounded personality of the three. Unlike the other two, she’s ‘born’ just when she appears before the psychiatrist for the first time. While Eve White can’t read Eve Black’s thoughts and access her memories, in turn Eve Black can’t do the same in Jane’s case, while Jane gets to know what the other two’re thinking. What later follows is how the three very different personalities cope with their very unique situation and ultimately who rises triumphant over the complete control of the mind and the body.
This is the first review of the Books of Exile series, books I read during my mini-make-belief exile in Guwahati. The reviews're in no particular order and I hope the publishers/authors of the books notice my reviews and send me gifts for pimping their books for free.
The Three Faces of Eve - Corbett H. Thigpen
and Hervey M. Cleckley
 |
| Didn't he've a fine handwriting? Was definitely NOT a doctor. |
This was the first book on psychology that I ever read and I remember it was in November 2011 when I picked it up from a second-hand bookshop in Pan Bazaar – my most favourite area in any city, i.e. after Police Bazaar in Shillong and M. G. Road in Bangalore. The book belonged to a H. Das/Dass/Dhas of Dibrugarh who had bought the book for Rs. 3.00 (good old cheap days, I bought the same copy almost 40 years after for Rs. 30). There’s also a seal of the Dibrugarh Library, so it came into the library’s possession too some time before coming to the second hand bookshop’s in Guwahati. The amount of history one second-hand book can’ve! Also, this book had been one of those few Out-Of-My-Comfort-Zone books for me. Definitely Out-Of-My-Comfort-Zone.
 |
| How did it travel all the way from Dibrugarh Library to a Guwahati second-hand bookshop? |
The Three Faces of Eve is the real life story of Chris Costner Sizemore, a woman from 50s South Carolina, USA, who was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, sometime now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (hail Wikipedia). Her real identity was kept a secret from the public eye, from the book’s first publication in 1957 till 1975 and since my copy of the book is from ’61 (vintage!), she’s referred to as Eve White here, while the two other inhabitants of her mind and body’re called Eve Black and Jane. Eve White is a timid, hard working woman whose most defining role in her life is that of being a mother to her daughter, Bonnie. Her marriage is on the rocks and she worries for her daughter. After complaining of severe headaches and blackouts, she visits a psychiatrist, before whom Eve Black emerges and for the first time let’s her existence known, even though she claims to be existing alongside Eve White since childhood, without ever coming under anyone’s notice. Eve Black is the very anti-thesis of Eve White, a woman in sharp contrast to the later in her confident, flirtatious and frivolous nature. The psychiatrists believe her to be the manifestations of Eve White’s repressed feelings. Both the personalities’re thought to be imbalanced in their own ways, one overtly serious and maternal with her feelings, with no real love left for her husband and the other too frivolous than necessary, one who flirts with unknown and potentially dangerous men with subtle hints of ‘something more’, only to turn them down at the end. While Eve White has no recollection of what Eve Black does when she comes into dominance, she has to clear the many tight situations her twin leaves her in. Eve Black does not think of Eve White’s husband and daughter as her own and hates the restriction Eve White’s conventional life puts on her. After a few months, up to when Eve White has separated from her husband and is working and living independently, the third personality appears. She is Jane, the most well rounded personality of the three. Unlike the other two, she’s ‘born’ just when she appears before the psychiatrist for the first time. While Eve White can’t read Eve Black’s thoughts and access her memories, in turn Eve Black can’t do the same in Jane’s case, while Jane gets to know what the other two’re thinking. What later follows is how the three very different personalities cope with their very unique situation and ultimately who rises triumphant over the complete control of the mind and the body.
Sometimes, facts’re indeed scarier than
fiction and this true story is one such example. The book reads like a
technical psychological manual at times, but it’s the personal story of the
protagonists which keeps the interest going for the layman. Joanne Woodward won
her first Oscar for portraying the role of the Eves and Jane in the film adaption of the book, the first for an actress playing three roles in one
movie. What was absolutely funny in the book though was how the authors, who
were renowned psychiatrists themselves, sarcastically write off Freud and his
interpretation of Dreams, vis-a-vis the dreams Jane used to’ve. Among the gems
that Freud’s school of thinking gave birth to is the belief that every little
girl of under 5 thinks of herself as a castrated boy who’s forever thinking of sexual intercourse with
her father and how snakes in one’s dreams represent male genitals (that kind
of reduces the creepiness of a few of the creepy nightmares yours truly had to dreams
of pure comedy) and father issues, all of which the book prawns at the end. Not
a light read at all and DON’T READ THIS IF YOU’RE UNDER STRESS AND LOOKING FOR
A BOOK TO LIFT YOUR SPIRITS TO MULTICOLOURED RAINBOWS. It just won’t happen.
Other than that, a good introduction to psycho-talk literature.
