Breathless Red, breathtaking Red

Sample these abridged lines from Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, which I am currently reading.

Indifference, time and disaster will destroy our art. [...] Greedy, shameless mice will nibble these pages away; [...] Child princes will scrawl over the illustrations with toy pens. They'll blacken people's eyes, wipe their runny noses on the pages, doodle in the margins with black ink. [...] While mothers destroy the illustrations they consider obscene, fathers and older brothers will jack off onto the pictures of women and the pages will stick together, not only because of this, but also due to being smeared with mud, water, bad glue, spit and all manner of filth and food. Stains of mold and dirt will blossom like flowers where the pages have stuck together. [...] Not only our own art, but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect: [...], your red-tinted pictures of love and death, yours and all the rest, all of it will vanish ...

Ethereal, isn't it? Pamuk manages to vividly illustrate the ephemeral nature of man's artistic creations in the passage. But at the same time he makes you appreciate the timelessness of art. You can detect a hint of defiance in the artist's passionate outburst when he is speaking of art doomed to face extinction. An almost breathless (and breathtaking) outpouring of devotion and resignation from the artist. The missing parts probably take away some of the beauty of the passage, but that should in turn be an incentive for you to buy & read the book (You don't seriously expect me to type out two pages of the fiery stuff, do you? :-) ).

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet

Posted by Rajat @ 11:36 PM   |  Comments

A Bookworm's Diet

Since my last update I have managed to devour the following :-

• The Search by John Battelle
• The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (the first novel in the 5-in-1 The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Currently reading :-

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
• The Great Indian Novel^† by Shashi Tharoor

Lined up along the shelf for subsequent consumption are :-

• One flew over the cuckoo's nest^† by Ken Kesey
• 1984^† by George Orwell
• Maximum City^† by Suketu Mehta
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

† I bought these books from Landmark, using the coupons I had won for being first in the weekly intra-company quiz for 2 successive quarters.

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet, Quizzing

Posted by Rajat @ 9:47 PM   |  Comments

A Bookworm's Diet

It has been more than two months since I posted an update on the books I have read. So here goes :-

• The Complete Adventures of Feluda - Volume 2 by Satyajit Ray (Translated by Gopa Majumdar)
• Infinite Loop : How Apple, The World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company, Went Insane by Michael S. Malone (chronicles the history of Apple till 1998 - an engrossing read, based on solid research)

Currently reading :-

• The Search by John Battelle

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet

Posted by Rajat @ 10:22 PM   |  Comments

Premier Afternoon

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Premier Bookshop to redeem the coupons we had won at two of KQA's open quizzes (in particular, the open quiz on February 5^th by Avinash Thirumalai & Siby Kuriakose of the Thought Gang & the one conducted by Dibyendu Das & Vinay Das on March 26^th). We had been instructed to redeem them before April 15^th. I didn't understand the reason for this until I read Suresh Menon's article in the Sunday Herald supplement of the Deccan Herald dated March 26^th :-

Soon the bookshop itself will no longer be there: Premier is on the verge of closing down.

Needless to say, I couldn't believe my eyes. Premier? Closing down? What's happening? At the bookshop I talked to the proprietor, Mr.Shanbhag about this - it seems the lease for the place has expired & now the owner is reluctant to renew it. Mr.Shanbhag has been asked to vacate the place by around April end. So he is currently searching for another place where he can set up shop again. It was heartening to see some customers offering to help him out in searching for suitable places. I wished him the best in his quest & returned with these :-

• The Search by John Battelle (in a previous post, I had talked about toying with the idea of buying this - well, I bought it :-))
• The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet, Blogger Days, Quizzing

Posted by Rajat @ 11:28 PM   |  Comments

A Bookworm's Diet

An update on the books I have read since my last update :-

• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Good read)
• The Tommyknockers by Stephen King (Typical King)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Peter Pan by J M Barrie (Wonderful writing - most of the incidents seem metaphorical, providing different interpretations for children & adults)
• The Lord Of The Rings by J R R Tolkien (Tolkien IS God :-))
• Under the Radar - How Red Hat Changed the Software Business & Took Microsoft by Surprise by Robert Young (CEO of Red Hat) & Wendy Goldman Rohm (Incoherent flow, bad editing & at times, the writing stinks too. The best part of the book was the section in the Appendix on 'Understanding the IPO Process')
• State of Fear by Michael Crichton (Pretty good. Enormous amounts of data dished out at times. Hurried ending)
• The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien (second reading)
• The Complete Adventures of Feluda - Volume 1 by Satyajit Ray (Translated by Gopa Majumdar) (Positively brilliant. More in another post)

Currently reading :-

• The Complete Adventures of Feluda - Volume 2 by Satyajit Ray (Translated by Gopa Majumdar)

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet, Blogger Days

Posted by Rajat @ 8:53 PM   |  Comments