I found myself rewatching The English Patient after a really long time. No doubt it is a beautifully shot film with a superb cast; one of the few films that does the book it is based on justice. The romantic in me still sighed the way I did all those years ago when I first saw the movie. However, the middle-aged wise woman in me began questioning the film. I could not help wonder whether Katherine and Almasy would have fallen for each other if they were not so good looking; after all pudgy Colin Firth was really no match for lean Ralph Fiennes. Moreover, I was wondering what sort of love was this--it seemed just physical, where was the meeting of minds? Clearly, at this stage of my life I realise that good looks are great but more attractive would be a keen mind, (with the added bonus of being packaged in a gorgeous body); a sentiment best summed up by a favourite character of mine--Dr Yang: "Oh, screw beautiful. I'm brilliant. If you want to appease me, compliment my brain".
D Book Hub
A centre for reading reccos 'n reviews, uninfluenced by the publishing business.
Friday, 12 April 2024
Friday, 16 February 2024
Jaipur Literature Festival 2024
Jaipur Literature Festival 2024….the middle-aged me was quite content to watch the JLF sessions online from the comfort of my cosy home. The mere thought of early morning dashes and seat grabs was enervating enough, forget the reality on ground. The literary eager beaver in me though was determined to catch as many sessions online. While I did not find this year's line up the most exciting, I nevertheless ended up watching quite a few sessions and would have seen a couple more had they been telecast on the festival website. In keeping with my yearly tradition, here's my account of the good, the bad and the ugly at JLF 2024.
Paul Lynch's session on Prophet Song was preceded by an engaging introduction by the Irish Ambassador to India reminding us of the shared and yet different experiences of the revolutionary freedom fighters of both countries. What made me want to read the book was Lynch's serendipitous mention that his formative reading comprised of The Prisoner of Zenda and King Solomon's Mines—two books that I also grew up on and loved! The guy does have good taste in books.
Bonnie Garmus's talk on Lessons in Chemistry was charming though it did not give one any new insights into the book per se — as there are plenty of interviews of hers available online and having read her book for The Clannish Book Cult one had been through all of those. What I did find noteworthy was that her book is being studied in boys' schools for 15+ and that one of them even remarked that it was way better than Lord of the Flies. This revelation made me realise that when trying to update the canon, one should not hesitate to think outside the box. Also, it was her reference to Eve that made me add that book to my TBR list.
Jonathan Freedland's talk on his book The Escape Artist about Vrba's audacious escape from Auschwitz and his subsequent attempt to publicise the horrors of the camp was absolutely riveting. It's amazing how you think everything has been written about a period and then new information comes out adding another layer to the story. This was one of the books I ordered as part of my JLF haul. What was a bit disconcerting to observe was the sudden jump in the recording, resulting in a missing fragment of a significant conversation. The skip occurs when Cohen brings up the current war in Gaza to explain how the Holocaust still propels Jews today to ensure that such a horror would never happen to their people again. This missing clip felt almost like a censoring of the discourse, intentional or not. Given the leftist leanings of many of the organisers one cannot help but wonder if it was the former.
Mary Beard's session on the Twelve Caesars was a mis-marketed talk. Supposed to be a look at how these twelve men were portrayed in art, Beard spent most of her time talking about how the Roman Empire for the most part was quite static. One con of the JLF telecast online this year was that slide shows were not shown online, which meant one missed out on a huge component of talks accompanied by slideshows. Having heard Beard on Pompeii at JLF in person many years ago, I was most disappointed; and I was not the only one to be let down by the talk, for I subsequently learned that so was my dear friend AS who caught the talk live.
Thubron's account of his travels and observations along the Amur river was absolutely riveting and made me want to pack my bags at once and head over there. I was particularly tickled by the Russian comment on the Chinese being very hard workers but having closed hearts, something I found myself agreeing with since I found the Chinese on the streets not the most friendly or helpful of people during my travels there.
The launch of the book The Loharu Legacy was all the more fascinating for me, as I found myself connecting various dots. Dot number one being the total absence of Wazir Khanam from the conversation. Given that she was the protagonist of SR Faruqi's The Mirror of Beauty which was so feted by the Indian literary world, winner of awards, and featured in the JLF festival, it was odd that she was not even mentioned in passing by Dalrymple. Even odder, given that Dalrymple mentioned how Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan had killed his wife's ancestor the then Chief Resident of Delhi for the East India Company (according to The Mirror of Beauty this was because Fraser was eyeing Wazir Khanam). The plot thickened further when the present scion of the Loharu family, Durru Mian (who has penned the forward of the book) stated that while some people considered the poet Dagh (Wazir Khanum's son sired by Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan) to be a member of his family, in fact he was not. Proof of the same being Mian's father's assertion. Sure some could argue that Faruqi got things wrong, quite possible, though unlikely for such an erudite scholar to do so. In my opinion, this seemed to be a bit of a case of writing someone out of history.
How the World made the West was a session that highlighted the current approaches of looking at history in terms of cultural impacts. Josephine Quinn made some fascinating assertions. Firstly, that the use of the lens of 'civilisation' only gained currency in the 18th Century at the same time that notions of race and nations became important, implying that the civilisational view of history stems from imperialistic ideas and is problematic. As an Indian, I loved how she mentioned that India was important in ancient times to the Western ways of thinking. While Rome had no clear idea where China was, they had detailed knowledge about India, smart!
The Lighthouse Family was one of many books to be formally launched at the festival. I was intrigued by how this slender novella had received so much attention: a vigorous pre-sale in Delhi and a video teaser to the book by Penguin. Mystery solved—Firat Sunel, the writer, is the Turkish ambassador to India!!! While Sunel peppered his talk with insights into his book regarding themes and characters, am not sure whether this is a book I do want to pick up. I think I will wait for an unbiased review before I do.
I was so excited to catch Georgi Gospodinov talk about his book Time Shelter, as the novel is sitting on my bookshelf waiting for the right time to be read. Georgi pointed out how Bulgarians love to complain and are the champions of sorrow. He mentioned how the novel form is new to Bulgarian literature, which traditionally favoured poetry and the short story. Georgi then cautioned the audience on how politicians use the past as a weapon of propaganda. This was a session peppered with many interesting observations which I know will make my reading of Time Shelter all the more insightful. Defintiely a recommended session, enjoyed by both me and my friend Anjali.
Leonardo da Vinci Painter at the Court of Milan by Luke Syson was essentially an explanation as to why Syson is confident that the Salvator Mundi which was recently auctioned off was indeed painted by Leonardo da Vinci. This session was a prime example of why one needs to attend the JLF in person as the slideshow was not visible to the audience at home! Maybe this is something that could be rectified next year.
I ended my online JLF fest by attending the panel discussion on Traders, Teachers and Travellers. Naman Ahuja pointed out how Gandharan art did not just have Roman influences but also Egyptian. Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, while acknowledging the Indian influence in South East Asia, emphasised how the Indian there had a very local flavour. I do find it irritating how the Indian influence in other regions is always toned down. Continuing with this approach in SE Asia, Dalrymple used this session to question Sanjay Sanyal's view of the significance of Indian raids of South East Asia. Why are Indian forays questioned and not those of other empires like that of Ancient Rome I wonder?
This year, I had friends and family attending the festival and sharing their feedback with me. Time Shelter was a hit with Anjali Sethi who also enjoyed the sessions on The Amur River and Black River, and Rajiv and Bhargav's Between Hope and Despair. According to her, Murugan's session was not that interesting. I think members of The Clannish Book Cult have oded on Murugan a bit. She found the session on Yashodhara and Women of Sangha a bit lacklustre.
Sessions that Reeta Chopra enjoyed were Prophet Song, Lessons on Chemistry. She found Writing War interesting along with The Great Experiment: Democracy, Elections and Citizenship and Imagination Muscle. Her update on other sessions was:
"Heard Hernan Diaz talk about his book Trust today. He was born in Argentina but grew up in Sweden. Speaks Spanish, Swedish n is in love with the English language! Dreams n writes in English! His writing form has been greatly influenced by Henry James. N his book Trust apparently is 4 books in one, written in a style very much his own! Also interesting today was Shumona Sinha, an Indian, who writes in French. Her recent novel is Down with the Poor. Tania James' Loot n Anjum Hasan's History's Angel also sound like interesting reads!"
Sessions that I would like catch eventually include: Diaz on his book Trust, John Boyne on All the Broken Places, Galgut on Promise, Theatre of War with Mukund Padmanabhan and Mmhonlumo Kikon.
What I particularly love about JLF is that it gives my reading a focus with a plethora of books to add to my wish list. Already I have indulged in shopping by ordering Eve, The Great Flap of 1942 (have read two chapters already and have to say it is a really fascinating book) and The Great Escape. Books I do want to read include: Trust, The Prophecy, Time Shelter (already have a copy at home), The Amur River and His Majesty's Headhunters.
To have caught eleven JLF sessions in the midst of dealing with the hurly burly of Delhi life is pretty good, I must say, and hats off to the JLF team for making them available to literary aficionados all over the globe!
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
2023: A recap
Where did 2023 go? Am absolutely stupefied that I have not uploaded a single post on my blog for the past year. No wonder I do not get any fresh followers….resolution of 2024: definitely to rectify such lapses, to which end I already uploaded a book review yesterday. As for this post, will do a recap of books I read in 2023:
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Gramus: my top book of 2023. A highly relevant tale peopled by quirky, endearing characters.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tommorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: A close second for the top book of 2023. For a non-gamer like me to enjoy a book set in the world of gaming is testament to the writer's prowess. This is an engaging novel about friendship through its various ups and downs.
The Mountains Sing by Qai Mai Phan Nguyen: an absorbing narrative set during the land reforms of Vietnam.
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin: An extremely overrated book! I cannot get over the buzz and hype that surrounds this book. The books' premise sounded like so much fun, unfortunately, it could not live up to such expectations. Spoiler alert: the writer resorts to a cop out by attributing the protagonist's strangeness to mummy issues!
When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka: Another novel which seemed very promising; it deals with the Japanese internment during WWII; but while it did provide one with insights it failed to go beyond that. What caught my attention though is how the writer clearly referenced Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; but this is no great American novel even though it deals with the shattering of the American dream.
Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak: Standard novel by Shafak that is engaing and tugs at one's heartstrings but falls short of Forty Rules of Love.
The Blind Matriarch by Namita Gokhale: Delhi's Covid novel serves as a chronicling of life in pandemic struck Delhi.
Summer Fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila: A delicious romp in irreverent Northern Finland peopled by both humans and creatures of another dimension. Great for fans of Gaiman.
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama is a really first-rate novel. It has it all: engaging characters, an engrossing storyline and a variety of themes. What makes it all the more refreshing is that it is a Tibetan novel that deals with complexities that faces Tibetans today ranging from eviction from one's homeland to art theft.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese made it to both Oprah's and Obama's book lists. While this is not the most sophisticated of novels I have read, I think that the appeal of the book for the Western audience lies in it's exotic Christian world, where strangely enough the Indian is a shadowy backdrop at best. Change all the names of both places and people and you could be anywhere in the Christendom. Even the themes are so Christian such as the punishment of adultery or the treatment of lepers. Not a brilliant book but compared to some of the duds one has read in the recent past not a bad book, just not something I would really reccomend though.
Monday, 15 January 2024
Day by Michael Cunningham
For a review of Day by Michael Cunningham please head over to the Overrated page of this blog.
Tuesday, 5 April 2022
Febuary--March 2022
Reading The Lost Daughter and Kim Jiyoung at the same time was a real serendipitous pairing in that the two of them are united by the theme of the toll motherhood extracts from women—the sacrifice of their dreams and aspirations and how this can push them over the edge. The two are stylistically and culturally very different books—the former a conventional novel set in Italy, the latter in South Korea where each assertion is backed by meticulously collected statistical data. By the time I was finished reading them, I was quite angry about how unfair it is that being a mother means constantly having to choose between oneself and one's child!
In contrast, The Dictionary of Lost Words which does question patriarchy in England does so though a gentler narrative. A book about the creation of the Oxford Dictionary it serves as a commentary on how women in England were treated as inferior to men reflected in the way the way they were treated and paid in the work place. The book also raises the issue of the gendering of language with the only words used by a section of society (namely upper class male) making its way to the dictionary, resulting in a fascinating read!
My non-fiction read was Menon's book on Megaliths—a very well written and illustrated book where the writer's enthusiasm for his subject is so evident. This would serve as a wonderful introduction to the Megaliths of South India—I just wish it was available for purchase (according to the writer there are plans to reissue it as an ebook—hopefully soon)!
March saw me hooked to The Eighth Life: a meaty (at 934 pages) old fashioned novel tracking a family over the generations. Set in Georgia the book offers a novel perspective on the Soviet years—that from the periphery and yet not quite! I highly reccomend this book if you are looking to get lost in the pages of a tale for quite a while 😊.
Sunday, 6 March 2022
JLF 2022 Part I
JLF--it sure is an addiction. I just can't seem to not attend the sessions and this year is no exception. The fest this time is being held in hybrid mode, the first few days purely online and then the last five days in person in Jaipur with the sessions being streamed online.
I must confess, after having attended the fest many times in person, I do prefer attending the sessions from the comfort of my home where I have the liberty to mutli-task during a session which not be as interesting as I might have imagined it to be.
So, what are the sessions that I have caught so far?
Yesterday, I caught James Fox's The World According to Colour which proved to be a fascinating session with a lot of trivia on various colours, such as the blue butterfly does not have any blue pigment but is actually brown and its blue appearance is actually a result of scales that reflect the blue or that the Arabic word for green is the shortest line in the Quran. This is definitely a book I want to pick up to dip into every now and then. Having lost track of time resulted in me catching the end of the conversation with Padma Kaimal on the Kailash temple of Kanchipuram--definitely a book to read before visiting the temple! Elif Shafak's session had me putting her book The Island of Missing Trees on my wish list. I just hope it lives up to its promise.
Today, I attended the talk by Marc David Baer whose book on the Ottomans deviates from classical approach of the likes of Bernard Lewis and others who saw the Ottomans through a rather Orientalist lens. Instead, he presents them as constantly evolving and at its zenith as being a dynamic empire which fostered learning and inquiry and which was a force to reckon with not just on land but at sea too. The end of this session had me adding The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs to my wish list:) Let's see how many more get added to my list over the next week!
Definitely, time was well spent while attending the sessions. The only thing that rankled is how in referring to Indians who challenge the Mughals, Dalrymple referred to them as Hindus! Clearly the colonial gaze of identifying Indians by their religion rather than nationality continues--but more on that another day!
Thursday, 3 February 2022
January 2022
A new year, new resolutions and hopefully plenty of new books. Fortunately, despite living in a house struck by covid I did manage to read three books in January, not a bad start I would say. Even better, all three were really good books.
I began the year with Catherine McCormack's Women in the Picture, which was a real eye opener. She takes off from John Berger by examining how women in Western Art are depicted in the nude as they have no agency and that these were images produced by men for men. She then goes onto explain how art normalises problematic attitudes. What made the book all the more interesting was how she looks at present day media and how it has been influenced by the canon and how certain artists are challenging these tropes. Even more impressive is the fact that the book is a riveting yet easy read despite all the complex ideas it was dealing with. Definitely a must read for anyone who is interested in art and culture of the Western world.
2022 saw me return to a French novel after a long time. Our book club read was Our Lady of the Nile, and by chance the French version was available on amazon.in so I decided to read the book in its original. This novel is set in Rwanda of the early 80's in a girls' boarding school. Yet this is no school of innocents and the Hutu-Tutsi conflict overshadows the daily life culminating in a savage denouement. What I found quite fascinating was how the antagonist Gloriosa reminded me so much of Jack in Lord of the Flies—clearly, even children are not exempt from the depravities humans are capable of. Recommended if you want to gain an insight into the complexities of the Hutu-Tutsi strife.
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman was the third book I read—-a book that I've been meaning to read for a long time, but finally picked up as I wanted to read it before watching the Netflix series. Am so very glad I read the book first, as the series doesn't do real justice to the book. This is an endearing novel that reminds one of the good there is amongst ordinary people and how human connections are so important in lifting one out of seemingly tight spots. A book that bought many smiles to my face and left me feeling good and happy at the end. Do read to instill faith in humanity (especially after a bleak book like Our Lady of the Nile).