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!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, September 7, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Indian rib-ticklingly funny book
Forgot to mention one really funny book I came across a couple of years ago - No onions nor garlic. It's about caste-politics in a South Indian university. It's by an Indian author based in Canada and so funny that I actually laughed out loud more than once. I'm not sure everyone will get it, i.e. if you're not South indian/ clued into caste politics in South India, so I have given it to a friend as an experiment, but i loved it. Deliciously ironic and peppered with funny characters.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Indian authors
Let me, first of all, admit to my pretensions to non-intellectuality. That means I'm a little scared of books that seem difficult or intellectually challenging, and usually don't go there. By and large I prefer easier reading - classics like Pride and Prejudice, the whole genre of Golden Age detective fiction including Sapper et all, swashbuckling adventures and romances, fictional biographies etc. One genre that I have unfortunately never been able to get into is Indian Authors.
I have tried to read some of them, and my husband used to buy all of them once upon a time, but now we have decided we're too old to pretend to grey cells we don't have ( anyway post 30 one is supposed to start losing the few we had acquired till then!). I find many of them very difficult to read, angsty and depressing. The one I do like is Chitra Banerji Divakaruni - though she does get repetitive. I used to read a lot of Nayantara Sehgal at one time but not lately. I also feel that what many Indian authors write about hits too close to home - I'm an escapist when it comes to reading and would rather read about a better/ more interesting world than the same old - if I wanted reality, I'd curl up with the daily newspaper!
It's interesting - I had never analysed this before but now that I have and the cat's out of the bag, I feel happier - no more pretending/ feeling intellectually challenged for not wanting to read about the miseries of Parsis/ partition/ urban/ rural Bengal/ whatever!
Speaking of which let me also admit that I thought the book The Namesake sucked. What was the big deal - it was just another second gen immigrant's tale. Gogol never came to life! What was amazing was the luminous film Mira Nair crafted out of it, and the fact that she realised that the story lay in Ashima and her husband, their evolution and the struggle to adjust.
Also, I did not like The God of Small Things, apart from the last chapter which describes the affair between the mother and Velutha. The rest of the book was badly over-written and incoherent!
Liked: Swati Kaushal's Piece of Cake. Light, witty and charming. Contemporary.
Born Confused, I think by Tanu...Desai. Intelligently and movingly written 2nd-Gen tale.
English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Funny and heartfelt.
The Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar. Poignant and lyrical in its writing.
Chitra Banerji Divakaruni - Beautifully written, real characters, poignant moments
though I do wish all the Indian characters weren't from homes where women were
suppressed, and who found freedom and self expression once exported to America. There
are a few of us self-expressing non-suppressed types even back here in India. In fact,
going by reports about the Indian community in the UK, there may be more suppression
and oppression going on there!
I have tried to read some of them, and my husband used to buy all of them once upon a time, but now we have decided we're too old to pretend to grey cells we don't have ( anyway post 30 one is supposed to start losing the few we had acquired till then!). I find many of them very difficult to read, angsty and depressing. The one I do like is Chitra Banerji Divakaruni - though she does get repetitive. I used to read a lot of Nayantara Sehgal at one time but not lately. I also feel that what many Indian authors write about hits too close to home - I'm an escapist when it comes to reading and would rather read about a better/ more interesting world than the same old - if I wanted reality, I'd curl up with the daily newspaper!
It's interesting - I had never analysed this before but now that I have and the cat's out of the bag, I feel happier - no more pretending/ feeling intellectually challenged for not wanting to read about the miseries of Parsis/ partition/ urban/ rural Bengal/ whatever!
Speaking of which let me also admit that I thought the book The Namesake sucked. What was the big deal - it was just another second gen immigrant's tale. Gogol never came to life! What was amazing was the luminous film Mira Nair crafted out of it, and the fact that she realised that the story lay in Ashima and her husband, their evolution and the struggle to adjust.
Also, I did not like The God of Small Things, apart from the last chapter which describes the affair between the mother and Velutha. The rest of the book was badly over-written and incoherent!
Liked: Swati Kaushal's Piece of Cake. Light, witty and charming. Contemporary.
Born Confused, I think by Tanu...Desai. Intelligently and movingly written 2nd-Gen tale.
English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Funny and heartfelt.
The Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar. Poignant and lyrical in its writing.
Chitra Banerji Divakaruni - Beautifully written, real characters, poignant moments
though I do wish all the Indian characters weren't from homes where women were
suppressed, and who found freedom and self expression once exported to America. There
are a few of us self-expressing non-suppressed types even back here in India. In fact,
going by reports about the Indian community in the UK, there may be more suppression
and oppression going on there!
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Book-buying spree
I love it when I go shopping for books - and given my fatal addiction, that happens about once a week on average. It's ruinous on bank account and house space but certainly makes up for it by the happiness generated before, during and after the purchase. I was out for a meeting yesterday evening and found myself in a market I rarely visit nowadays because of its severe parking problems - Saket main market.
It has a couple of bookshops, but I headed for the big one, Om Book Shop, to check out their collection. I had been wanting to buy a cookbook by Jamie Oliver for a while but unfortunately they were all out of stock of those. I eyed several Culinarias wistfully - they look gorgeous and the pictures are wonderful, but they cost such a bomb. And weigh a ton, too. I finally bought Ismail Merchant's cookbook and another interesting one called Spices in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Spices one has lots of interesting recipes from Turkey which is a country I recently visited and have a soft spot for, and the pictures are great too. I find that in cookbooks there are 2 categories - the food memoir and the instructions manual. Tarla Dalal tends to err on the instructions manual side, and while I love her cookbooks, have most of them and admit all her recipes turn out brilliantly, I can't quite curl up in an armchair with her stuff. What I like to read ( even bedside reading) is the food-memoir - Shoba Narayan, Madhur Jaffrey et al.
I also bought an Indian 'chicklit', I guess, though I haven't yet begun it, called The Hindi Bindi Club - one of my friends has been mentioning it for a couple of years - one of her writing club friends began it a couple of years ago - it sounded interesting. And ShahRukh Khan's biography by Anupama Chopra is out, so I got that too.
My husband, who's the complete non-cook apart from making tea, started leafing through the Ismail Merchant book and was tempted to try out some of the recipes, so that's probably a good book to buy for someone who likes non-vegetarian Indian cuisine and can't cook! The Shah Rukh Khan book is well written, and traces the growth and development of India alongside the trajectory of both Bollywood and King Khan. It does a good job of getting inside his head and explaining what he is all about, though it leaves out a few facets. Definitely worth a read and a buy, especially at its price of Rs. 295. Only thing that irritated me - the sanskrit play Mrigacchi Kattika was changed to mirch kattika!
What I love about the process of buying books is the adventure - will I find a new author or a new book by old favourite author today? Will I discover a new genre? Will I bankrupt myself in trying to buy 25 new books all at once?
Ooh, lots of lovely reading to do now!
It has a couple of bookshops, but I headed for the big one, Om Book Shop, to check out their collection. I had been wanting to buy a cookbook by Jamie Oliver for a while but unfortunately they were all out of stock of those. I eyed several Culinarias wistfully - they look gorgeous and the pictures are wonderful, but they cost such a bomb. And weigh a ton, too. I finally bought Ismail Merchant's cookbook and another interesting one called Spices in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Spices one has lots of interesting recipes from Turkey which is a country I recently visited and have a soft spot for, and the pictures are great too. I find that in cookbooks there are 2 categories - the food memoir and the instructions manual. Tarla Dalal tends to err on the instructions manual side, and while I love her cookbooks, have most of them and admit all her recipes turn out brilliantly, I can't quite curl up in an armchair with her stuff. What I like to read ( even bedside reading) is the food-memoir - Shoba Narayan, Madhur Jaffrey et al.
I also bought an Indian 'chicklit', I guess, though I haven't yet begun it, called The Hindi Bindi Club - one of my friends has been mentioning it for a couple of years - one of her writing club friends began it a couple of years ago - it sounded interesting. And ShahRukh Khan's biography by Anupama Chopra is out, so I got that too.
My husband, who's the complete non-cook apart from making tea, started leafing through the Ismail Merchant book and was tempted to try out some of the recipes, so that's probably a good book to buy for someone who likes non-vegetarian Indian cuisine and can't cook! The Shah Rukh Khan book is well written, and traces the growth and development of India alongside the trajectory of both Bollywood and King Khan. It does a good job of getting inside his head and explaining what he is all about, though it leaves out a few facets. Definitely worth a read and a buy, especially at its price of Rs. 295. Only thing that irritated me - the sanskrit play Mrigacchi Kattika was changed to mirch kattika!
What I love about the process of buying books is the adventure - will I find a new author or a new book by old favourite author today? Will I discover a new genre? Will I bankrupt myself in trying to buy 25 new books all at once?
Ooh, lots of lovely reading to do now!
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