New arrivals

Of late, I have been on a book coupon redemption spree :-). I bought One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez using the Premier bookshop coupon I got for being a finalist in The Second Ruckus Tangdi Quiz conducted by the KQA in April. Other than that, I used up a set of Landmark coupons (gifted to me by my thoughtful colleagues) to buy the following :-

• Samskara - A Rite for a Dead Man by U R Anantha Murthy (translated from Kannada by A K Ramanujan)
• Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
• In Xanadu : A Quest by William Dalrymple
• Butter Chicken in Ludhiana by Pankaj Mishra
• Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (900 odd pages of hardbound reading)
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• 2001 : A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

I had read In Xanadu when I was in college (delightful book, of course). Anyway, one book down won't make much of a difference to my reading backlog ;-).

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet, Quizzing

Posted by Rajat @ 11:53 PM   |  Comments

Who wants to be a Millionaire?

I can barely stop sighing when I think about this video.

How I wish I had been in his place! Not for the million as such (though it wouldn't have hurt to get that too), but for the sheer style in which he got that million. Perfect clip for a MasterCard ad (more or less).

Answering the 14th question - $500,000
Answering the 15th question - $1,000,000
Winding it up in style on TV - Priceless

John Carpenter, take a bow!

P.S. : Brings back memories of the lost opportunity at University Challenge in 2003. *SIGH*

Tags : Quizzing

Posted by Rajat @ 12:23 AM   |  Comments

A Bookworm's Diet

Long time since I posted an update here. Over the last 2-3 months I have read the following :-

• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
• The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor (A potent juxtaposition of Indian mythology and history)
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• 1984 by George Orwell (A scary dystopian account)
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (See my older post)
• One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (Now I badly want to see Jack Nicholson in the movie)
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (Roller coaster ride through past, present and future!)
• Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (Bombay described beautifully)

I went to Landmark last Friday to redeem some coupons I had won for coming 2^nd in an intra-company quiz. I bought Snow & Istanbul : Memories and the City, both by Orhan Pamuk. With Pamuk winning this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, a whole shelf at Landmark has been filled with copies of his books. Earlier one had to search around for his books. I have begun reading Istanbul (heavenly stuff).

Tags : A Bookworm's Diet, Quizzing

Posted by Rajat @ 11:40 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

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