2013

10 Books of the Year, off the Top of My Head.

1. Cronopios and Famas, Julio Cortazar
One of the most amazing books and authors I have ever read, possibly. I will write about him when I can. If I can. Ever.

2. Adi Parva, Amruta Patil
Wrote about it already, but it is the questions that stay with me. A book whose writing is better than (if possible) the art. What a beautiful, beautiful book. 

3. Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald
I read this a few months before I watched The Great Gatsby. It made me cry, which only one other book in recent memory did. But also, it made me marvel at sentence after sentence; re-read chapters, paragraphs, and the whole book. Because Fitzgerald makes reading prose seem easy and light. After I watched the film, I was able to see this book in a new light. I saw what he was saying about wealth and the middle-class, why it was important for him to write it the way he did (in the order he did, I mean), and about loving (not outside the context of wealth).

4. My Tender Matador, Pedro Lemebel
Dance with it. See its beauty. Let it tear you apart.
It will.

5. Numbers in the Dark, Italo Calvino
There's a reason this is one of the best compilations of short stories ever. Or several.

6. Book Thief, Markus Zusak
I cried a lot. That's what this book is about. In a good way? 

7. (Much as I'd hate to admit it) Towers of Midnight, Sanderson and Jordan
Over! Yay. (Okay, in all fairness, it was a decent book. Obviously Mat and Tuon were my favorites. It was a little too cut and dry, but if it was anything else, there would have been no point to it. It ties up every single loose end in the way you expected it to end about six books ago. So if, like me, you like your fantasy to be happy and predictable, you'll probably like this book. But if you have to read thirteen other books to get here, you probably won't get this far. So um.)

8. Ka, Roberto Calasso
I've never seen Indian mythology in this way. Roberto Calasso is almost academic in so many places, that this book is sometimes tedious to get through. It is definitely not one of those things you can read in one go. But it is also one of the most rewarding reads of the year. 

9. Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
Oh! The! Footnotes! Just that. If not the whole damn book.

10. Em and the Big Hoom, Jerry Pinto
Also wrote about it already, sort of.

I might cheat later, but this is it for now.

I forgot! 11. Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz!! (Also see - http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/the_search_for_decolonial_love/)
12. Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh (Which I've been saving up for ten years and finally fell in love with.)

why do we like horrible movies?

I have spent at least the past three weeks being bothered by this. There is no easy answer. 

I shall first give you context. When I was sick, I watched a lot of things on TV. Initially, I thought I would use this time productively, catch up on some good reading, all the TV shows I've been putting off and so on. 

Instead, I discovered a new love for cheesy crappy, horrible telugu movies. I FF-ed through most of the violence and music, but the fact is that it is a legitimately new love. It bothers me that I find these films amusing, and that I was entertained by chauvinistic, violent, sexist, thoroughly feudal plot-lines. It bothers me that slapping Brahmanandam is what passes off for humour. (Dookudu, anyone?) I do have standards though. I discovered through trial-and-error that some films are too bad even for my taste. (R.. Rajkumar, for example). 

I write about this today because I have reached a breaking point. I watched Dhoom 3 twice. Twice. And I will recommend it to anyone who wants to watch it. Happily.

One of the explanations I heard for why we like horrible movies is that we are socialized into it. It is an explanation I like, but can't prescribe. We grew up to the steadily deteriorating plots of Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna. As children, our parents let us like their songs and watch their films. How did we end up at nearly every hero marrying his maradalu and fighting for his family honour (any Prabhas, Ravi Teja, Pawan Kalyan film)? We like that these men can kill hundreds and talk about why not killing is a good quality to have in men. We like that their idea of recreation is being aloof from women, as some sort of power trip. But I see these problems with these films and like them anyway (Attarintiki Daaredi? Best mainstream Telugu film of the year, imho). 

The thing is, I don't necessarily need films to have any of these elements (Godavari!! which is NOT a horrible film). I love films that aren't like this at all more. Which doesn't take away from the fact that I genuinely like horrible films. 

So I seek another explanation. 

Why did I like Dhoom 3? Because Aamir Khan is invincible, even in death. Because it's emotionally stupid, and has you rooting for a character. Because its "brilliant" moments are crazy. Because it is earnest and cute, and really the kind of movie I want to watch when I need to be cheered up. I'm not saying leave-your-brain-at-home. You don't have to. I like it because it's stupid and I find it silly because I like bad movies. Because he has a tush I want to slap. Especially when it is in the middle of the screen. (Is slapping someone's butt also something we like to enjoy because of bad Telugu movies? I don't know. Do we learn to sexualize from how we see sexualization? I don't know!!)

All these horrible Telugu and Tamil films are now being made in Hindi too, so obviously there is an audience for films that think like this. Films like Chennai Express, Rowdy Rathore or any Sonakshi Sinha film really are either remakes or being written along these lines. Whether as satire or as films that are meant to honestly be like this, it is a disturbing phenomenon. I don't want to think that these films are getting produced over and over again because that's what people are like. I only say this because even I enjoy some of them, and I can't get over the fact that I do. 

Why do we like horrible movies?

tigana and last light of the sun

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Sometimes, I have trouble thinking of Guy Gavriel Kay's work as fantasy. I suppose it is warranted, considering how rich it is in its historical research. 

I read Tigana last month, and was thoroughly impressed by it. Almost every single review I have read makes a mention of its size, but not once through the book did I feel like I was reading a really large book. (It might have something to do with reading it as an ebook). I say this because of how crisp the writing was. I don't think there is a single sentence in the whole book that doesn't have to be there. It's a story that tells itself through how it is structured, adding layer upon layer to every tale told. 

I finished reading Last Light of the Sun today, and while this book isn't as large as Tigana is, it is engaging and thorough as Tigana. Again, not a single sentence out of place, and a story whose structure is made for marveling at. 

The most amazing thing about Kay is how he writes characters you always want to root for. In both books, he tells a story from several opposing points of view, and makes you love every person in the story. It takes real skill to pull something of such complexity off, and Kay does it. 

The other amazing thing about both books is how he tells a story that is set in a context he has researched extensively, but at no point does the story take a backseat to the research itself. One could treat it as an entirely imagined universe, and not miss anything (or if I did, I didn't really feel too bad about it).  

One of the most interesting authors I've read all year, for sure. 

Edit: Forgot to add, Tigana is absolutely completely heart breaking. THAT has to be in every review.

sick reading

I've spent the past six weeks at home, mostly in bed. (Before you ask, I am entirely well now. There was never anything to worry about). This post contains my brief observations about reading while sick.

1. When one is really unwell, reading is better time pass than watching television. This has something to do with the light hurting your constantly sleepy eyes, I think.

2. Contrary to what I used to think, even if one is doing absolutely nothing all day for weeks, it is difficult to spend much of that time productively. For me, this was because all I really wanted to do was sleep. (For the first couple of weeks, even listening to music was tiring. Cue - something profound about how much we take our energy for these things for granted).

3. When one is unwell, one wants to read crap. That's right. I didn't want to focus. I didn't want to think or worry or feel for characters or admire clever writing. I wanted to read crap. So what I appreciated the most is the Philippa Gregory book. And the Mills and Boons book.

3.1 When I felt horrible about what I was reading, I read a LOT of Terry Pratchett. I went through nearly my entire collection. It definitely made me feel better. And then I read every single thing Kate Griffin ever wrote (as Kate Griffin). Which completely erased my guilt while also making me happy.

4. Having access to other people's Kindle accounts feels like being in a candy store where everything is free. (This observation is also applicable to non-sick people).

5. Better than reading is watching Prabhas films. I am entirely serious.

book!

FULL WHOLE BOOK!

whee!

(It took me missing three whole deadlines to give up on looking at my laptop and read the first thing I got my hands on. Give it up for The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna!)

rereading

it's that time of the year again, ladies and gentlemen.

i'm rereading fantasy.

until last year, i spent my rereading fantasy time secretly and guiltily reading wheel of time. now, since that is pointless and patrick rothfuss is only two books long and abercrombie is only three and i'm not exactly sure about jim butcher and i have none of my jasper ffordes with me in delhi (and i'll probably go jump somewhere before i reread game of thrones), i'm looking for new and awesome fantasy things to read.

suggestions are welcome.

xo

a cool dark place/em and the big hoom

(A Cool Dark Place by Supriya Dravid; Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto)

I just finished reading A Cool Dark Place. I bought it on one end of a flight journey in the airport bookshop, and finished it by the time my taxi pulled into the gate.

What is a book with only beauty? I don't know, really. It may not be a good thing. Because make no mistake, A Cool Dark Place is beautiful. It is made purely of emotion, it seemed to me. How can characters who are supposed to be so empty be people so full of life? She does so many things right: so many characters, so many moments, so much love, so much brokenness. Such poetry in so many places, so flawlessly.

But I have to ask, how much is too much? I ask this as a reader averse to books that carry too much emotion to begin with. (So this might not be the case for a non-loony reader).

For example, this is one of the first couple of sentences in the book that I thought "wow" about  - "For a long time before my father ended his life, he'd hidden himself in the darkness. So my mother had hidden there with him, in the forlorn shadow of his helium heart, in the never-ending nuclear light, under sunken iron beds and love-sewn quilts. I think she hoped her Olympic tolerance would help him may his way back to the living, and destroy the lonely world, the Prozac paradise he had cocooned himself in." But I read it again, rolling the words in my mouth, and I wasn't sure if I knew what I thought of it.

For a long time before my father ended his life, he'd hidden himself in the darkness. So my mother had hidden there with him, in the forlorn shadow of his helium heart, in the never-ending nuclear light, under sunken iron beds and love-sewn quilts. I think she hoped her Olympic tolerance would help him map his way back to the living, and destroy the lonely world, the Prozac paradise he had cocooned himself in.

I'll tell you what this book makes me want to do the most: It makes me want to write a belated review of Em and the Big Hoom. Apart from the fact that both of these books are about broken families trying to grapple with their darknesses, there are two reasons I want to write about Em and the Big Hoom instead. I probably shouldn't compare (so I'm going to try my best not to) but while I was reading, it was all I could do.  

The first is how both of them deal with similarly rebellious, off the path love stories. The second is that when I imagined Gravy, I could only think of him as the Big Hoom: holding the world together with his strength and love.

About halfway through the book, this book made me want to also write a belated review of Em and the Big Hoom.

Apart from the fact that both of these books are about broken families trying to grapple with their darknesses, there are two reasons I want to write about Em and the Big Hoom along with this.

The first is how both of them deal with similarly rebellious, off the path love stories.The second is that when I imagined Gravy, I could only think of him as the Big Hoom: holding the world together with his strength and love.

Both of them write of a disparate world in which they fit and don't with at the same time. In both their worlds, we constantly make obscure references to poets and literary geniuses in our daily lives, find pasts and futures that we can only imagine. 

What Pinto managed to do for me is this: He was convincing of a universe in which a boy lives with a mother who's not all there. He's convincing of their triumphs and their depression, he makes us believe in the times in between. I guess what I am trying to say is this - he gives us context. He gives us quirks of language, he gives us cultures, he gives us conflict.

Dravid, on the other hand, who writes mad characters with booming laughter, doesn't quite cut that. 

She gives us tiny hints about where these people are coming from, of course - the bobbing up and down of a priest conducting a funeral, the book of Marathi short stories, names of places: Madras, Delhi, Gokarna. 

She does little else to moor her characters in any sort of context. Not a time or a place, not a reference I can place. This would not have been disconcerting to me if not for all the other that I could. (For example, a "part-Gatsby, part-Hemingway" man who runs away regularly to Europe for business; him throwing regular Lurhmann-like Gatsby-ian parties in the middle of Madras - I can imagine it, but I'm not convinced by this madness or this alcoholic, opiate, (Prozaic?) universe.)

But the real question, I suppose, is whether she means for us to be at all. These details are meant to be lost in the cobwebs of old chandeliers and jenga-like three storeyed houses with plastic life-size Ambassadors. And while I see what she is trying to do, I don't know if it works for me completely. 

So I have to ask again: how much beauty is too much? Because there may be such a thing as too much.


**

Is there Prozac in India? I always thought of it as an American thing till now.

oops

just went a month without finishing a book.

good time for a vacation!

bleh

rumi is the best poetry to read when writing anything.

rumi is the best poetry to read when agonizing over every line of poetry one is editing from a year ago.

rumi is the best poetry to read to get into the writing mood.

rumi is the best poetry to read when one is thinking about melancholy, myth and language. 

rumi is the worst poetry to read as an ebook.

so tell me, who the fuck took my fat rumi book and didn't give it back?

the book thief

by markus zusak

when i finished reading this book, i decided i wouldn't write about it. or read it again. i just don't want to revisit the memory of the book in any way, unless i want to give myself another good cry. because i was actually sobbing by the end of it. actual sobs. 

there is an undefined moment while you are reading something in which what you are reading stops being words and sentences. from that moment onwards, the book is an experience: sights, sounds, smells, voices in your head. 

in a book as intense and emotionally overwhelming as zusak's book thief, the whole book becomes feeling. from the very beginning, you are feeling colours, beasts of skies, cold cold death. so i look at it now in my bookshelf, and i can only see a room full of bookshelves in nazi germany. i see the book thief, and i know exactly what she went through. and it is for this reason that i don't want it again. it's a great book, but the kind of greatness that i don't have space for in my own tangled emotions. it's the kind of greatness i'd rather stow away, like parts of your childhood you don't know happened because they are too cruel for you to remember.

so instead of writing about the content of the book (which i actually just did, but we'll pretend i didn't) i just want to register two points of surprise: one, that i've had this book on hold for so long. it's not so surprising considering i've been putting off anything but fantasy all this while, but it's surprising considering the (deceptive) simplicity of the narration and the fact that it was on the nyt bestsellers list for some years. two, that it's been listed as young adult fiction. i can see why, but i really sort of can't.