New Books

I have made a new resolution - a promise to my husband, rather, that I won't buy more than one book a month this year. In the interests of fiscal prudence. However, being the crafty soul I am, I've already come up with a great way to overcome that limit. Over the weekend we were at Om Bookshop which was having a post Christmas sale. I saw a really interesting cookbook on African and Middle Eastern cooking which I promptly picked up. It said Buy 2 get one free, so I quickly urged A to pick up a cookbook for himself, since his new resolution is to try and cook once in a while. So then we got a third book free. Plus, later when we waded into the fiction section, since I had cleverly forgotten my wallet at home, A got to pay for my book selections as well! I got an interesting historical biography of Boudicca, someone I have always wnated to know more about.

I also picked up a few books just before the last year ended, so I have all that piled up. First of all, Alexander McCall Smith, whom I've never read despite or perhaps because of, his amazing popularity. I've picked the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency to start with. Then I got a couple of edgar Wallace reprints since I collect golden age detective fiction. And lastly, the book I started this morning - Shakespeare by Bill Bryson. An interesting contrast between writer and subject and I can't wait to read more...

The Kite Runner

First of all, a Happy New Year, and to celebrate the new year, I changed my blog's name to something more appropriate for me. I'm a hungry reader and always three-deep at least in books of different genres. If reading were a sport, I'd be in the pro leagues. So I figured amateur reader just wasn't doing it for me. I'm a hungry bookworm. When I was growing up, my parents often had to scold me because I'd be so engrossed in whatever I was reading that I knew nothing about what was going on in the real world in front of me. When we visited family friends with kids, I was forbidden to take out any books from their bookshelves, because my parents knew that I'd be dead to the world, and highly rude to the host kid, because rather than play with them, I'd read by myself. I even used to smuggle a torch into my bedroom and read under the covers till late at night.

Of course, now being the sleep-deprived mother of two, I often wish I could get those sleep-hours back, but I have to admit, even now I often read until late at night. A often wishes he could get away for a reading holiday, but my idea of one would be to pack the kids off on vac and hang out at home reading through all the thousands of books we have collected. Yes, our collection does number thousands now, which includes many that we want to read but simply have not found the time for. This is what happens when a bookworm and hoarder meet a place with no decent library - they create their own!

In keeping with my resolve not to lazily fall into one of half a hundred easy re-reading books, but to actually read the 'recommended' new books, I finally read the Kite Runner when I was travelling on work. The book was gripping, and I felt I was meeting familiar characters because so many of the terms were the same as Hindi words, and so much of the culture seemed similar. The story was haunting, and yet had an inevitability about it - you somehow knew what was going to happen from page 1. Honestly speaking, the Afghan background was not required - the story could have happened in any one of a dozen places in the world, such are the times we live in. I guess it just had to be Afghanistan because tha author is from there.

How do I feel about the book? I liked it, though I saw shades of A Separate Peace in the story, which is a book I loved in high school. I also felt that many of the other characters remained shadow figures, apart from the protagonist. And I didn't really end up figuring out the protagonist either - who he was, what he was like as a person, apart from his guilt and the expiation of it. Apart from the father, who's easily the most complex character in the book and who yet never fully comes into his own, most of the characters are unidimensional and in a way functional to the story - it's as if everything in the story had to be tailored to build up to the particular climax. That works well for a thriller, but I'm not so sure it works in a character-development novel.

It was interesting to read the descriptions of California, though, as I believe Hossaini lives in Sunnyvale, which is where my sister and one of my best-liked Indian authors, Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee lives. Maybe it's something in the water there - will have to drink copious amounts next time and see if that propels me into best-selling author!

Poetry

A comment on one of my other blogs talked about Ogden Nash, and that has sparked off a train of thought about poems. I remember how, back in school, we all had to read and mug up reams of poetry, and it was usually up there with Calmpose for most people, because it's seen as 'culture' and 'intellectual' and all that. I've always loved poetry, especially the Romantics - Shelley, Keats and so on - as well as several other poets whom I've come across, and it seems a shame to hang the tag of 'arty' on poetry and so keep people from enjoying them.

Poems are really interesting, because, unlike prose, editing is the very essence of poetry. It's a very precise art. Prose is more forgiving - it's like painting with oils, where if you goof up, there are things you can do. Poetry is more like water colour - just the right amount of paint and water in just the right spot - and there's no repairing a mistake. It's delicate, it's precise..in a way it's like the work of a jeweller. Each word has to be the right size, has to be polished to sparkle in that exact way. Each and every word has a set place which, in the wrong place, would spoil the beauty of the piece.

I have been meaning to put up a wonderful poem I discovered recently about life in olden times, but I've left my poetry book in the car. So instead, here are some of my favourite pieces. In humorous poetry, the poet has to be all the more careful, because each and every word has to have an impact. Ogden Nash is one of the masters in this genre, and his poems are so droll and so wonderfully crafted that generation upon generation will get the same mirth out of them.

"Some primal termite knocked on wood
and tasted it and found it good
And that is why your cousin May
Fell through the parlour floor today."

This one is by a poet whose name escapes me for the moment. It was my favourite during my (neverending) ugly duckling phase:

"For beauty I'm not a great star
There are others more handsome by far
But my face, I don't mind it
For I am behind it
It's the people in front
that I jar!"

And here's a piece from one of my all time favourite poems, Renascence, by Edna st. Vincent Millay:

"I would I were alive again,
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine,
Of every slanting silver line,
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun,
Will shine above the rain-soaked earth,
until the world with answering mirth,
Shakes joyously and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grassblade top."

I think it taught us something ineffable, to have to by-heart some of the world's great poetry and to have it available as a ready resource at the back of the mind. It added a certain richness to the mind, and I wonder if schools still make you do it. They should - because sometimes poetry has a way of painting such a vivid image that there are no other words to describe the same thing when it happens in your life...'For oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude...' He could be talking about poetry!

Monsieur poirot

It's been a long time since I wrote about books, huh? Not because I never read - I'm addicted to reading, and am usually about 3 deep, but because I've been busy and writing about books takes time for reflection and analysis. Lately I've been doing a course of Agatha Christie - all the old Miss Marples and Hercule Poirots. It's always amazing to me how prolific some of the old English authors were - Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Enid Blyton, Noel Streatfeild etc. It's also interesting to note how many of them had a classical education, and how well they wove it into the stories they wrote so that while being erudite, they still appealed to the masses because their style was not erudite and forbidding, but warm and welcoming.

When you compare and contrast Sherlock Holmes with Hercule Poirot, it's almost as if Christie set him up to be an exact opposite. Holmes is tall, with a cadaverously lean face. Poirot has an egg-shaped head and vast moustaches. He leaps to conclusions quickly and gathers clues at the site of the crime. When something happens, he says, "The scent is up", like a foxhound at the hunt, whereas Poirot prefers to sit back in his armchair and use the 'little grey cells'. Holmes is addicted to opium and plays the violin. He is organised but untidy, with the tobacco pouch often in his slipper, whereas Hercule is precise, as tidy as a pin and has a mania for symmetry.

Yet they both share certain characteristics. One of the most humanising things about them is their love for their less cerebral friend - Dr. Watson/ Captain Hastings - both of whom are interchangeable as characters. They both have a touch of vanity, a touch of the conjuror about them - they like dramatic denouements and neither is above bending the law in certain cases. They both believe that "... when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." They both plan to retire to the country, Holmes to do beekeeping and Poirot to grow marrows.

Interestingly, the sidekicks are the same character, under different names. Dr. Watson is straight-forward, gullible and rarely sees what Holmes is driving at. Captain Hastings is straight-forward, gullible and rarely sees what Poirot is driving at. Both have a soft spot for personable young men and pretty women. Both hope their 'hero' gets his comeuppance some day. And both are, thankfully, indefatigable chroniclers of their hero's doings, without which world literature would have been much poorer!

Free Burma

Stories for Kids

I don't know why ( maybe a recessive gene), but I seem to have a fascination for the past, be it history, biographies, antiques...even my husband is older than me! Part of that fascination naturally spills over into my choice of books. I collect children's books, and the bulk of my collection dates back to what I would call children's classics. There is a certain innocence to the children and their problems in those books which is endearing and much easier to deal with than the modern children's books which deal with drugs or dating, divorces etc. Even books which do have serious problems at their heart feature children who are lovable and child-like in their outlook.

William has already featured in a blog. Another children's writer whose books I adore is Noel Streatfeild - famously referred to as 'the shoe books' in the movie You've got mail. Her books are set during WWII and thereafter, and feature children who face genteel poverty. There are several different themes, from show business, which she does amazingly well from experience ( Ballet Shoes, Wintle's Wonders, Movie Shoes, Curtain Up, Apple Bough) to catching spies, playing competitive sports (Tennis Shoes) and so on. There is a stock cast of supporting characters of the Nanny type , and the children also fit into broad patterns - there is the vain child, the one who worries about everyone and one with a chip on his or her shoulder. There is also the child who is always wholly, naturally himself or herself. Despite the recurrent themes, there is a universal appeal even to those children born today who may not understand the context of WWII in Europe or the concerns of those children.

Another children's author who is incredibly good at relating to and painting the world of the child is Beverly Cleary. I have just started reading her memoir, A Girl from Yamhill, and am enjoying discovering all the interesting stories in her own childhood that she later wove into the life of Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins, among others. She is extremely good at painting life from the perspective of the child even while she reports what is going on in the life of the grown-ups in the book.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is another favourite. Her books are memoirs, not fiction, and she has written about life as a pioneer girl going out West with her family in the America of the 1880s. As she grows up through the series, the perspective changes so the reader grows up along side. The language is simple yet evocative and is a wonderful record of life in those times. I am awed by her ability to remember the details of what happened when and where, since she wrote these books many years later - I'd be hard put to it to remember what happened yesterday.

Edith Nesbit is another children's author whom I enjoy reading, though I confess I usually re-read The Railway children more often than Five Children and It or the other stories. There is a certain resemblance to Noel Streatfeild in The Railway Children in the characters of the children in the book, and the issues they face, how they face them. The supporting cast is also similar, which may explain my fondness for the book.

What makes most of these books firm favourites for me is that the characters are alive. As a fledgling writer myself, I am going through the struggle of finding the 'voice' of different characters and differentiating one voice from the other. The plot and character development both complement each other; one does not compromise the other in these stories. And of course, the pay-off, as with Biggles - the good guys always win. Not a win as they would have pictured it, perhaps, but a win nevertheless.

Just William

William is an endearing child - though only from a distance. If he was my son, I'm sure my BP would be way over normal. He gets up to all kinds of mischief, from running on fences to letting sheep out of their pens. He is constantly into mischief. He loathes school and wants to found a society for suppression of cruelty to boys, abolishing school and baths, among other things. He is always the fearless leader of his gang, and is to be found outdoors, ideally as dirty and mud-soaked as possible. His imagination constantly runs away from him, and he cannot perform the simplest of tasks without injecting an element of fantasy into them. He talks endlessly, he can be shrewd and manipulative when needed, and has a secret soft corner for extremely feminine girls.

William Brown was the creation of author Richmal Crompton, who came up with the boy in 1919. From then until her death in 1969, she wrote 38 novels featuring William and his band of outlaws. What is incredible is that despite somewhat repetitive storylines, there is some twist or other to keep you engrossed through the series. She has managed to capture the mind of the child ina completely natural way, as the best of children's writing does. At the same time, her books are cleverly layered so that they appeal to adults as much, if not more. One of her cleverest stories, for instance has to do with a critique of communism. In it, William's elder broether and the brothers of his friends band together to create a bolshevist society and decide that since everyone should have an equal share of everything, they will ask their fathers for a fair share of everything their fathers own. William and his band naturally overhear all the rhetoric, and fired by it and believeing it implicitly, do their best to even up the injustice of the world by helping themselves to a fair share of their brothers' possessions. That's when the brother and his friends realise the weak spot - it's all very well asking for other people's things but it's a different matter when someone else asks you for their share of your things!

Richmal Crompton also unerringly puts her finger on the foibles of the older generation, be they parents, or youth - William's brother and sister, or the endless stream of relatives and neighbours who populate William's world, from victorian Great-aunts to the vicar's wife, to a nouveau riche culture vulture. The books are set in what I like to think of as 'Merry England', not Robin Hood's time, but a time before the two world wars, when life seemed to have a gentleness and an innately gracious rhythm the world has not seen since. Though several of the books do take place during WWII, encompassing some of the events that Britain went through, including air raids, bomb shelters and rationing, life is still a fun adventure, rather than something serious to be analysed and pondered over.

Reading William always puts a smile on my face, though I daresay I won't let my son read these books before he's in his teens (don't want him to get any more ideas for mischief). I'm sure if I were William's mom I'd go mad. But I do find it sad that we live in a world where I need to send someone to supervise my son, rather than letting him run to the park by himself, and envy William and his friends their ability to range across field and wood, at their will.