Reading

[ssf]

QUOTE="Sur"]polished off? [/QUOTE]

Polished off

While we all are aware of the importance of the 3 R's, even the omission of a single 'R' can turn a Friend into a Fiend, as was displayed in one of the recent interesting posts that I was reading.

It's a mystery that grown ups can find these guys 'entertaining' and illuminating.

Q.What do helpless readers read?
A.Self help books!
Q.What do eternally clueless readers read?
A.Newspapers and Magazines.

I would be very interested in knowing what your thoughts are on grown ups reading cartoons. I urge you to think your answer carefully as I have a sawed of shotgun tucked under my bed.

Thank you, Ajay, Suri, Moktan and Sivasarjun for contributing.

Regards,


Sunil

 

[ajay124]

@ssf
"even the omission of a single 'R' can turn a Friend into a Fiend, as was displayed in one of the recent interesting posts that I was reading."
In one of my recent posts,I used the word fiend instead of friend.But I did it deliberately .There was no accidental omission of the R.
I have never read cartoons and I am scared of sawed of(f) shotguns,therefore I will desist from giving my opinion.

 

[ssf]

In one of my recent posts,I used the word fiend instead of friend.But I did it deliberately .There was no accidental omission of the R.

haha, I did get the feeling that it was not an accidental omission too

Regards,

Sunil

 

[ajay124]

i would seriously consider 'All About H Hatterr' a must read of Indian fiction...

G.V.Desani's All About H.Hatter(title inspired by Alice In Wonderland?) is one of the earliest and best works of Indian fiction in English.I have not read it.My knowledge of Indian fiction is restricted to Amitav Ghosh,Salman Rushdie,English August and God Of Small Things.
The Sea Of Poppies and The Hungry Tide by Ghosh are two of the most enjoyable books I have read in recent years.The evocation of the 'east india times' in the former and the Sunderbans in the latter are memorable.I prefer Amitav to Salman.

 

[ssf]

I have a sawed of shotgun

ahhh !!! Why do I keep dropping the f's !!! :lol:

No more postings for today.

 

[ajay124]

ahhh !!! Why do I keep dropping the f's !!! :lol:

No more postings for today.

Repent and mend your ways.Very soon ssf may convert to ss

 

[sivasarjun]

Dontyou guys read literature in your local language?Any recommendations?I think Indian English fiction is horrible.Once I tried to read Vikram Seth .Couldnt complete it.Childish.

 

[suri]

Dontyou guys read literature in your local language?Any recommendations?I think Indian English fiction is horrible.Once I tried to read Vikram Seth .Couldnt complete it.Childish.

HAHAHHAHA! - my local language is konkani - it has no script - uses devanagri and kannada -

and most of the literature has to do with-

1 . moral of the story

2. young girls must be on guard - do not let young lusty males destroy (the) future.

3. life is about "enduring".

big balls of fire!!!!

vernacular fiction is BASE (oops! - do you even know what base means?)

and where do you live? - seeing that you love literature (and the vistas that it opens to you) -in your local language?

 

[ajay124]

Dontyou guys read literature in your local language?Any recommendations?I think Indian English fiction is horrible.Once I tried to read Vikram Seth .Couldnt complete it.Childish.

Salman Rushdie raised a literary storm when he wrote:
"The prose writing -- both fiction and non-fiction -- created in this period (1947-57) by Indian writers working in English is proving to be a stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the eighteen `recognised' languages of India, the so-called `vernacular languages', during the same time; and, indeed, this new, and still burgeoning,`Indo-Anglian' literature represents perhaps the most valuable contribution India has yet made to the world of books. The true Indian literature of the first post-colonial half-century has been made in the language the British left behind''
(The New Yorker, Special Indian fiction issue, June 23 & 30, 1997).

S.Prasannarajan wrote:
Imagining India -- A midnight misreading
*I think the period mentioned 1947-57 in Rushdie's comment may be an error.Should read 1947-97.

 

[ajay124]

Has anybody used Project Gutenberg for downloads?
Project Gutenberg - free ebooks online download for iPad, Kindle, Nook, Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, Sony Reader
These ebooks are free in the US because their copyrirht has expired.Presume they would be free and legal in India?

 

[ajay124]

Free Kindle software for PC.Many classics are available free from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

 

[ssf]

So, I was telling my friends that I wanted to read classics.

And when the eyes rolling stopped, one of them suggested a beginners guide to classics, 'Pride and Prejudice'. And I go, 'Isn't that the one which stars Ash bachchan?' And they go, no dummy, that is Bride and whatever.

So, I borrow this book from a good friend of mine and after I having finished watching all the stuff that I normally watch on the Idiot Box, I settle down to reading the said book.

The introduction made me think that this was not in the least bit dissimmilar to all the Hindi soaps that my dear wife watches. So, them wonderful pages being skipped, I get to this part where the good man of the family under duress is compelled to say 'You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party'.

Now, this seen in the context of Mrs. Bennet searching for a rich neighborly suitor for one of the daughters, did instantly make Mr. Bennet a very good friend of mine. hyeah:

More of my valuable insights into this book may or may not follow.

Regards,

@ss

 

[ajay124]

I am not a fan of 'classic British' fiction.Have not read Austen.Would suggest that you get a copy of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment.May just change your life,like it has done for legions all over the world!

 

[ssf]

Crime and Punishment, from what little I have read, does seem like a wonderful read. But, make no mistake, my friend, I would not want to change what I would like to call, 'A/My Wonderful life'

Regards,

@ss

 

[ajay124]

Crime and Punishment, from what little I have read, does seem like a wonderful read. But, make no mistake, my friend, I would not want to change what I would like to call, 'A/My Wonderful life'

Regards,

@ss

Wonders never cease!There's always room for more
I did not mean that it would change your life in the way godmen and self help experts claim to,but in the sense that it could open up a new world of possibilities...
I read and only partially understood this book at the age of 18.Must have read it 4-5 times since then.Not only is it a great novel,perhaps the best ever written,but also a deep,penetrating look into our sub-conscious,our hidden drives and motives.Reading Dostoevesky taught me to ignore everything that people/newspapers/television are saying and look for the hidden sub-text underneath all that noise.And that hidden sub text is as close to the truth as we will ever get.
Vladmir Nabokov famously said "The cradle rocks above an abyss,and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
Even that brief crack of light was scoured out for humanity by writers like Dostoevsky,Kafka,Ibsen and Neitzsche.

 

[ssf]

Wonders never cease!There's always room for more
I did not mean that it would change your life in the way godmen and self help experts claim to,but in the sense that it could open up a new world of possibilities...



I read and only partially understood this book at the age of 18.Must have read it 4-5 times since then.Not only is it a great novel,perhaps the best ever written,but also a deep,penetrating look into our sub-conscious,our hidden drives and motives.Reading Dostoevesky taught me to ignore everything that people/newspapers/television are saying and look for the hidden sub-text underneath all that noise.And that hidden sub text is as close to the truth as we will ever get.

But then you have forgotten that I read cartoons

Vladmir Nabokov famously said "The cradle rocks above an abyss,and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

This reminds me of my friend who is always complaining that his glass is half empty.


Even that brief crack of light was scoured out for humanity by writers like Dostoevsky,Kafka,Ibsen and Neitzsche.

Four more writers added to my 'Must Read' list.

Jokes aside, I do hope you know that your contributions to this thread is very much appreciated

Regards,

@ss

 

[ajay124]

Jokes aside, I do hope you know that your contributions to this thread is very much appreciated

Regards,

@ss

Reading books,watching films or listening to music for knowledge,is not an option that most people want to explore.The m(asses) have spoken!Art is entertainment! Musicians,writers,filmakers,actors are expected to behave like roadside,sadakchaap clowns (and that's what all our and their superstars amount to) providing cheap entertainment.The more stupid and vulgar something is,the more popular it becomes.People are bored,their imagination is unable to breakout of the prison of television,mainstream films and pulp fiction,their senses are jaded,and constantly need spicy gossip and sensations to be goaded into life.
In the late 19th century Freidrich Nietzsche saw what was coming,and had this to say about the 20th century 'modern' man:
"Mankind is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome mankind? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves.Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide,and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind?What is the ape to a man?A laughing-stock,a thing of shame.And just so shall a man be to the Superman:a laughing-stock,a thing of shame.
Even the wisest among you is only a confusion and hybrid of plant and phantom."

 

[ajay124]

One of the most popular books of the 20th century,with teenagers and adults alike,is J.D.Salinger's Catcher In The Rye.
http://thekams.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/catcher-in-the-rye1.jpg
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like,and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me,and all that David Copperfield kind of crap,but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
Holden Caulfield,the main protagonist,begins his story with these lines,and then takes you on a riveting journey through the by-lanes of his adoloscent mind,'exposing' the 'phony' world he lives in,as only someone young,honest and intelligent can.

 

[moktan]

reading stuff like The Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, Fountainhead, Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance, etc were certainly significant signposts in ones literary journey...(what an adolescent would feel today about something like Sophie's World)...some of these paperbacks like Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (and a contemporary allusion could be made to Who Moved My Cheese) made you squirm at your naivete, how you got suckered , even for a microsecond, into appreciating such dribble....
however for me the real opening of the literary floodgates was when i was exposed to non-english stuff by the likes of Kafka, Mann, Rilke, Dostoevsky, Kundera...(they from the remote coldness of Eastern Europe and Russia) and Borges, Marquez, Neruda, Paz (they from the 'warmth' of latin america..)..
and of course the great French novelists and poets(Proust, Gide, Verlaine, Baudelaire..)...
two figures stand out for the universality of their vision, their prescient appreciation of the human predicament...
Borges with his 'infinite mirrors' his artfully contrived pseudo-histories and fantasies written in quasi-scientific and quasi-academic styles ..
and that great humorist of life Kafka...
Kafka's stories and novels have the temporal and spatial dimension removed from them..the predicament of K in The Trial could be felt at any time, anywhere..the pathetic humor of Gregor Samsa-who having turned into a dung beetle, but is still worried about getting late for his job-holds out a true mirror for our modern predicaments...
today i am a bit removed from fiction...
as an dilettante i am making my forays into understanding the miracle of language and how that is acquired by humans (efficiently between the ages of 1 to 3)..interesting theories abound...from the transformational linguistics (there has to be a basic grammar of the universal language as opposed to that of a specific language..otherwise why would a chinese kid being raised in a bengali household learn the latter language, crudely speaking) of Chomsky, to the linguistic determinism of Wharf (people who speak different languages think differently) to the extreme nativism (people are born with whole concepts embedded in their consciousness) of Fodor to conceptual linguistics of Steven Pinker...it has indeed been a fascinating journey..
any way so much from the limited locus of my lucubration ...

 

[ssf]

reading stuff like The Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, Fountainhead, Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance, etc were certainly significant signposts in ones literary journey...(what an adolescent would feel today about something like Sophie's World)...some of these paperbacks like Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (and a contemporary allusion could be made to Who Moved My Cheese) made you squirm at your naivete, how you got suckered , even for a microsecond, into appreciating such dribble....
however for me the real opening of the literary floodgates was when i was exposed to non-english stuff by the likes of Kafka, Mann, Rilke, Dostoevsky, Kundera...(they from the remote coldness of Eastern Europe and Russia) and Borges, Marquez, Neruda, Paz (they from the 'warmth' of latin america..)..
and of course the great French novelists and poets(Proust, Gide, Verlaine, Baudelaire..)...
two figures stand out for the universality of their vision, their prescient appreciation of the human predicament...
Borges with his 'infinite mirrors' his artfully contrived pseudo-histories and fantasies written in quasi-scientific and quasi-academic styles ..
and that great humorist of life Kafka...
Kafka's stories and novels have the temporal and spatial dimension removed from them..the predicament of K in The Trial could be felt at any time, anywhere..the pathetic humor of Gregor Samsa-who having turned into a dung beetle, but is still worried about getting late for his job-holds out a true mirror for our modern predicaments...
today i am a bit removed from fiction...
as an dilettante i am making my forays into understanding the miracle of language and how that is acquired by humans (efficiently between the ages of 1 to 3)..interesting theories abound...from the transformational linguistics (there has to be a basic grammar of the universal language as opposed to that of a specific language..otherwise why would a chinese kid being raised in a bengali household learn the latter language, crudely speaking) of Chomsky, to the linguistic determinism of Wharf (people who speak different languages think differently) to the extreme nativism (people are born with whole concepts embedded in their consciousness) of Fodor to conceptual linguistics of Steven Pinker...it has indeed been a fascinating journey..
any way so much from the limited locus of my lucubration ...

Oh my !!! Did I just read the above in a Forum meant to enjoy a song and a dance ?

Brilliant and I say this because I understood not a single word !!!

Privileged to rub shoulders with the literary mights (yes, I make up words as I go along) although destined to understand only the best of cartoons.

Regards,

@ss