Reading

[ajay124]

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 ...

Home Run Moktan!
Keep it up!
And I added a new word to my vocabulary,LUCUBRATIONS-intense study/meditation at night
" squirm at your naivete,how you got suckered,even for a microsecond,into appreciating such dribble...." Richard Bach,Dale Carnegie,Ayn Rand? when we were young,Paul Coehlo,Robin Sharma,Deepak Chopra,Jack Canfield for the current generation of 'knowledge seekers'
" 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..)" Your analogy reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Heinrich Heine:

A solitary,lonely fir-tree
On a northern mountain side
Sleeps in a white blanket
Draped in snow and ice
It dreams of a palm-tree,
Which far in eastern lands,
Mourns all alone and silent,
Among the burning sands.

*Many years ago,I used to be very impressed with Milan Kundera,but if you delve a little deeper into Czech Lit,you discover the true 'natives'...Karel Capek,Ivan Klima,Bohumil Hrabal.Kundera,a grateful exile in France,seems like Rushdie,to be writing primarily for a West European/US audience.

 

[moktan]

Home Run Moktan!
Keep it up!
And I added a new word to my vocabulary,LUCUBRATIONS-intense study/meditation at night
" squirm at your naivete,how you got suckered,even for a microsecond,into appreciating such dribble...." Richard Bach,Dale Carnegie,Ayn Rand? when we were young,Paul Coehlo,Robin Sharma,Deepak Chopra,Jack Canfield for the current generation of 'knowledge seekers'
" 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..)" Your analogy reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Heinrich Heine:

A solitary,lonely fir-tree
On a northern mountain side
Sleeps in a white blanket
Draped in snow and ice
It dreams of a palm-tree,
Which far in eastern lands,
Mourns all alone and silent,
Among the burning sands.

*Many years ago,I used to be very impressed with Milan Kundera,but if you delve a little deeper into Czech Lit,you discover the true 'natives'...Karel Capek,Ivan Klima,Bohumil Hrabal.Kundera,a grateful exile in France,seems like Rushdie,to be writing primarily for a West European/US audience.

well you said it..Rushdie of late (which means his half a dozen or so novels post Midnight's Children) has tried hard to live up to his image as the pin up boy amongst subcontinental novelists....he has even tried to go hip (like your Rolling Stones journos ,who want to be uber-cooler than the rock stars they cover).. perhaps Kundera too has a similar baggage to bear for favors granted..culturally and politically..
(Kafka the real cat never had it that good ..luckily for us..)
and while on the subject of EU (as in eastern Europe)..let me introduce you to Bruno Shulz ( Street Of Crocodiles)...as obscure and good and Polish as they come...

 

[ajay124]

Kafka,Dostoevsky,Ibsen,Beethoven,Van Gogh,Coltrane,Bird....misery and masterpieces seem to go hand in hand.

 

[ajay124]

Rabbit Run,Rabbit Redux,Rabbit is Rich,Rabbit At Rest....
Portrait of America over 40 years.More revelatory,enlightening and intelligent than the entire output of Hollywood over the same 40 years.
The life and times of Harry 'Rabbit' Angstorm.Mr.Everyman of American suburbia.Very soon of Indian suburbia.Great novels can travel across time and space.
John Updike is gone,God Bless Him,but Rabbit will live.
http://www.malaspina.com/jpg/updike.jpg

 

[ajay124]

Indian Fiction in English
Midnight's Children,The Moor's Last Sigh/Salman Rushdie
The Shadow Lines,The Circle Of Reason,The Glass Palace,The Hungry Tide,Sea Of Poppies/Amitav Ghosh
English August/Upamanyu Chaterjee
The God Of Small Things/Arundhati Roy
Such A Long Journey,A Fine Balance,Family Matters/Rohinton Mistry
Red Earth And Pouring Rain/Vikram Chandra
The Alchemy Of Desire/Tarun Tejpal
Maximum City/Suketu Mehta
The Inheritance Of Loss/Kiran Desai
Baumgartner's Bombay,Clear Light Of The Day,Fasting Feasting/Anita Desai
All About H. Haterr/G.V.Desani
Author's I am not familiar with - Nisha Da Cunha,Gita Mehta,Githa Hariharan,Shashi Tharoor,David Davidar,Hari Kunzru as well as the older generation-Mulkraj Anand,Raja Rao and Kamala Markandya.

 

[ajay124]

Indian vernacular fiction
Times Higher Education - Vernacular spectacular
Times Higher Education - Tryst with westerny
For Continuing Debate
The Hindu : Re-presenting 'India'
Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991): a site devoted to her work
Mahsweta Devi
Sadaat Hasan Manto: A Profile compiled by Aparna Chatterjee
The infinite grace of O V Vijayan
Amrita Pritam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ajay124]

A poem called 'Audition'
Alvarez, "Audition"

 

[ajay124]

Has anybody checked out the website "The Internet Archive"?
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
I first came across this site while surfing for information on the music of Grateful Dead.Plenty of live music for "deadheads" available.Also classic cinema like Battleship Potemkin.
But in recent times I have discovered "open library" on this website,where it is possible to read classic fiction/drama/poetry in a format which is very close to the feel of an original book borrowed from a library.
Authors (Open Library)
Great Site.
According to Wikipedia
"The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission: "universal access to all knowledge."[2][3] It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and books. The Internet Archive was founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996.
With offices located in San Francisco, California, USA and data centers in San Francisco, Redwood City, and Mountain View, California, USA, the Archive's largest collection is its web archive, "snapshots of the World Wide Web." To ensure the stability and endurance of the Internet Archive, its collection is mirrored at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.
The Archive allows the public to both upload and download digital material to its data cluster, and provides unrestricted online access to that material at no cost. The Archive also oversees one of the world's largest book digitization projects. It is a member of the American Library Association and is officially recognized by the State of California as a library.[4]
In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet.
The Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit operating in the United States. It has a staff of 200, most of whom are book scanners in its book scanning centers. Its main offices in San Francisco house about 30 employees. The Archive has an annual budget of $10 million, derived from a variety of sources: revenue from its Web crawling services, various partnerships, grants, donations, and the Kahle-Austin Foundation.[5]"

 

[ajay124]

PoemHunter.Com
Billie Collins and all the other great poets
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House by Billy Collins

 

[ajay124]

My favourite modern novel.
THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
ROBERT MUSIL.
Musil never finished writing this novel,although he kept writing it for 20 years.
I will never finish reading the two volumes,although I have been reading them for 10 years.
Ulrich,the man without qualities,is one of the 4-5 protagonists in world fiction
with whom I felt an instant bond....

"He is a habitual thinker whose most characteristic activity is to continually refine his analysis
of himself and the people around him.
He is not meditative or contemplative - that is,he seeks neither peace nor enlightenment"
-from the Guardian review.

"The protagonist Ulrich is the man without qualities.But lacking a
center,he changes his ideas with the ease of an actor learning a new
role.He is prone to making sweeping statements,such as:"In times to
come,when more is known,the word destiny will probably have
acquired a statistical meaning. Or:It seems really that its only the
people who dont do much good who are able to preserve their
goodness intact. Or:The difference between a normal person and an
insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of
the mind,while the madman has only one. His eloquence and ability to
turn a phrase are stunning,yet his ideas never cohere into a philosophy
or a belief system.They are as ephemeral as a passing storm."
"I have never subjected myself to an idea with staying power.
One never turned up....My relationship to the so-called great ideas,
and perhaps even to those that really are great,has always been man-to-man:
I never felt I was born to submit to them,
they always provoked me to overthrow them and put others in their place.
- from the greatbooks guide

Robert Musil: The Man without Qualities | Books | The Guardian
Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities

 

[entsurgeon]

guys... i recommend the ramayan series by narendra kohli. its available in hind publications... a series of 6 parts @ rs 100+/_ each.
for the record, he seperates myths and unbelievable legends.. and writes it all as a down to earth stuff. a must read and big fun.
dont miss on this one guys.

 

[ajay124]

Right now I am reading
The Complete Cosmicomics
By Italo Calvino
The 'history' of the universe by QFWFQ.

 

[entsurgeon]

just downloaded a salman rushdie book he wrote in 80s.

 

[DilshiyaJames]

I think reading is a wonderful habit and it improves our knowledge skills, I normally like to read novels.

 

[mukum]

Very Interesting thread, sleeping for months.

Mr. Ajay this is wonderful thread for bibliophiles and I think we should restart the discussion about literature (exactly as per Mr. Ajay' s definition)

I just completed THE CHESS STORY by Stefan Zweig - An Austrian author. This is an must read.

Cheers!

 

[mukum]

I am currently reading ATOMISED (The Elementary Particles) by Michel Houellebecq. Very different theme and well written and translated.

 

[mukum]

Some of my favourites in literature

1. Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Crime & Punishment
3. The Brothers Karamazov
4. The death of Ivan ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
5. Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
6. Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse
7. Jorge Luis Borge - FICCIONES
8. ALL Franz Kafka writings
9. The Master and the margarita - Mikhail Bulgkov
10. If on a winter's night a traveller - Italino Calvino

List continues.............

 

[moktan]

many of my friends cannot tolerate Kafka- they find him too depressing..
if only they could appreciate the humour that underpins his stories...
recently because of certain political happenings, i was forced to revisit The Hunger Artist...

other books i read of late...

The Lazarus Project by Alexsander Hemon
Nazi Literature in the Americas-Roberto Bolano
Embassytown - China Mieville. (am reading this one...)

 

[mukum]

Roberto Bolano is an interesting read I have read his Savage Detectives, very well thought and woven at the best.

By night in Chile is a very interesting book by Bolano

2666 by Bolano has got some very good reviews, voluminous book but should be interesting.

 

[ajay124]

The Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh. Sea Of Poppies, River Of Smoke, can't wait to get my hands on number three. ESSENTIAL reading. For entertainment. For knowledge. For the history of how empires rise and fall.

Amitav Ghosh : Home