Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts

Sunday, October 04, 2015

The Best Book Summary award

Zwei of my anchor points - Chuck Jones, Flatland - intersect in The Dot and the Line, a book by Norton Juster. With "A Romance in Lower Mathematics" for a tagline, I continued on the wiki.

Here's how the story goes
The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The squiggle then takes advantage of the line's stiffness by reminding him that he's a lot more fun for the dot. The line's friends tried to get him to settle down with another female line, but he refuses. He tries to dream of greatness until he finally understands what the squiggle meant and decides that he needs to by mysterious and unconventional. Willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, the line manages to bend himself and form an angle. He works to refine this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles to keep his place. When competing again, the squiggle claims that the line still has nothing to show for the dot. He proves his rival wrong and is able to show the dot what she's really worth with him. She realizes that she has made a mistake after seeing what the line was really offering her. The dot wondered what she had thought she has seen in the squiggle to be freedom and joy was nothing more than chaos and sloth. The squiggle tries to reclaim her love, but finds himself out of shape. Fed up, the dot tells him off how she really feels about him. She leaves with the line, having realized that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils."

On the movie
In 1965, famed animator Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio worked with Norton Juster to adapt The Dot and the Line into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley with the narration almost verbatim to the book. The Dot and the Line won the 1965 Academy Award for Animated Short Film.[1] It was entered into the Short Film Palme d'Or competition at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.[2]

Monday, May 06, 2013

Book A Free Man NOW!

If I try tracking one thing I've been consistent with in the years since I got out of college, it is - drumrolls - reading. If you were certain it was either among cycling or trekking, then I won't be surprised. Yes, I have been doing both, but inconsistently. Since my public face is limited (thankfully) to the context of wanderings, one could obviously be lead to think that's what I've been about, only NOT.
Besides the wanderings, are also the meanderings, times which I spend in either thinking about the phenomenology of survival and modalities of morality, or - better - flicking the imagination/mulling switch from 'broadcast' to 'receive', to read a few sincere books instead ['sincere' with the exception of "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" by Robin-something, a book I could gladly see being turned into recycled tissue paper, instead; a book which forces me into Chrome's Incognito Mode (better known as the "P0rn Mode") to search, so that my regular search history isn't polluted].

Where was I... oh, about reading consistently enough to make the fact visible (not that I had it hidden). Well, and in the continuing tradition comes "A Free Man" by Aman Sethi. To show how mature I am at making selection after all these years of reading, I picked it up at seeing the mere mention of Gary Shteyngart among the reviewers. All the more maturity reflected in the fact that I didn't even like G.S. that much, having merely read "A Supersad True Love Story". I didn't like it raving-mad types, but to guess, it was in that aura a general sincere text creates before fading away from memory, that I stumbled into reading G.S. review elsewhere and made a purchase decision based on that.

This book (AFM) had long acquired a "lost" status, it arriving (through Infibeam which-is-generally-cheaper-than-flipkart) at the time Gulmarg happened, and Ma - who was visiting - having kept it somewhere in her caring ways, and then left back. [for some reason she had to hide it so well that the book would've survive even a holocaust] It was only today, when handling a pan-residential search for a pair of binoculars for an upcoming trek in Nepal, that I found it!

I started with the book in the afternoon, and closed it after a few pages. I didn't find it boring, but I found something distracting instead. A perfect opportunity came cloaked inside a social appointment later, that needed me to travel across the city, taking the Metro for an hour's ride to some other adaptation of 'loathsome' that Delhi offers, giving me at least 40 good minutes of read either side. The book started in a very cliched joint session, but soon grew out of that, and - coincidentally - to be about Delhi. I was living and experiencing a city, while reading about someone's fictionalized/experienced version of it; nice. It vividly details on the heart of Delhi, and its fascinating 'mazdoor' populace. The dialog forces you to work a translation in Hindi, which I think is a bother?

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Book nerd day

I'll dearly cling to my love of books; cruisin' and readin' as I go around the city, which would eliminate that need to read into the blank stares, to "THINK" about humanity (or why it shouldn't be), and the epitomes of un-health crowding around moi. This was no more evident than today, as I finished Slaughterhouse 5 while making a roundtrip to the fringes of Delhi, to a horrible university called I.P.U. (re)located in barrenness of Dwarka. I focused, firstly, on acquiring a seat, and then entirely into the text. To be proud, I went through a meaty part of it today, to finally end the book halfway into my return journey. The book was amazing. My love for Vonnegut grows with each kicker of a line of his - I could get dehydrated just underlining all those passages and piths in this tiny novel that managed to stimulate some intelligent lobe of the mind.

Books of varied genre make my new sarvashiksha abhiyaan curriculum. Digressing into the subject of my education, I'd like to report that I failed miserably in the Stanford U online courses that I'd subscribed to (one of which, coincidentally sees a deadline today, but I'm least bothered). I also am on the verge of another failure into application process for 2013 studies. So there, my book genres and online "karts" are the ones to recourse to.

In the heat of moment, I placed my order for 3 different books from 3 different online retailers (Indiaplaza, Infibeam, and Flipkart - in that same sequence). With the free shipping each offers, the price point was the sole criteria, and I have to say that there's no single place for the best deals. Look how easy allegiances change - I never thought (since 2008) I'd ever need to look outside Flipkart for books.

Of the three books, one is (of course it hadda be) KV. Bluebeard. KV is what I now call my schooling in postmodernism (and everything wise about the universe).

Curiosity got the better of me, which is why I ordered the second book, Serious Men, by Manu Joseph. I think Aaranyam Kaandam, a Tamil movie I saw last year, would have subliminally influenced me to perceive this book in a positive light. Each year I end up trying one Indian author, and ending up scarred - they write horrible. Let's hope this one will be better.

As for the third book... Would you be surprised if someone loved a book to the extent of ordering it for the fourth time? Well, I did.
After giving away my first copy to a friend who featured in an elaborate dream in the context of the book, the second one to my uncle, and leaving the third copy in a cafe, this fourth one I'm probably gonna foist, firstly, upon my office reception desk, and later perhaps, pass it to the bride/groom at one of the few weddings I'm going to attend this season (just imagine the hilarity in case it ends ruining a honeymoon). I'm not telling you which book it is.

So it goes. Gah, KV has turned me into a cliche man.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Slow reader, Fast walker

Its unlucky that I'm a fast walker, but a slow reader. Books could've been much cheaper an indulgence than traveling, you know. I love getting lost; mountain trails and fictional worlds, are two of the best places to get lost in. But while the travel - and all the associated dreaming and planning involved - has destroyed my finances (my cash flow stream is a horror) and my profession (i've not yet matured to the concept of employment), book reading tends to make it light for you.

I wouldn't have spent on books in three years what I spent last winter on a single trek. Books, moreover, are a solo thing... you find one to read, you read it - there is no need to be chasing others to come read it with you, or settling on a date 2 months in advance for a reading session. Books don't require so many roles as trekking does - that of a salesman (for adventure), a beggar, a travel planner, a manager, a fixer, a passionate fool. Most importantly, books can be done in parts; travel cannot - not unless teleportation is invented.

Book-reading, however, is also a reflection on the nature of the people who stick to it: people who are always short on time, people who want to manage their life better (for the sake of what?), people who juggle with partial commitments (ever thought of a trek as a commitment, much like how parenting is?), lazy people, idealist people, conservative people. The "lazy" could also mean lazy enough to find satisfaction in another's description, experience, imagination, or opinion; travel, on the other hand, is one's own - you can't really find help with any philosophies or opinions when running into a herd of yaks or slipping on a glacier.

"There's more in a mile than in a 100 pages of a book", somebody famous said it on Discovery Channel, yo.

Monday, October 08, 2012

Cat Phase


I am a cat. That's the name of the book I'm presently into - a book about a noname cat, by a Japanese legend, Natsume Soseki, which is, as I've come to perceive, the forerunner of all cat monology that's popular now. This morning I overstayed my morning at home, to finish its first volume (its a three-volume novel) - and enjoyed it.

Not to forget is Henri the cat, also a recent discovery (its been trending only recently, maybe that's why). But its most entertaining.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Reader subculture

"Is that a book on computers?" this guy standing behind me in the queue (a mile-long queue for the subway train) poked his head out front and asked. I was fascinated to learn of his ignorance, as he had no clue from the author's name on the cover, Camus, in size matching that of the book's title.
"No, its fiction," I replied, curtly.
"Oh, science fiction"
"No, just fiction"
I was already imagining some techie seeing others in his skin, until he clarified...
"Rebel was a supercomputer that played chess. I thought it was about that." [wiki-wisdom: the Rebel had probably stayed in his head since it beat vishwanathan anand (the Indian chess genius) in 1998]
Now it was me who was short on clue. I just put pretended being a complete media illiterate instead of a half-geek.
"I only know about that.. IBM one"
"Oh, yeah, Deep Blue, that is one, too"
I spotted a book in his hands as well, which turned out to be some Russian spy thriller. I'm sure it was a horrible one.

When we finally got in, this guy, much like me, hadn't boarded the first of the trains for it being too crowded, and hopped on to the next one, and again much like me, whipped out his book as soon. There was a third guy in a short radius busy in his own book in a spacious corner. Its nice identifying a sub-culture of readers.

What the third guy was reading had my eyes wide for a moment: "Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives". [googling tells its a book on the lesbian culture prevalent under the hood throughout Africa]. You don't find many into this kinda stuff.

PS: im almost about to be done with the introduction to The Rebel after a week of reading

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Cat's Existentialism


This to preface my start with Camus' "The Rebel", that I located on Pa's bookshelves just this morning. Its strange why I hadn't laid my hands on it earlier, when I was on my unmatched reading streak, coming across some very formative gems of writing in succession. Frankly, I don't know what the book would be about, to have tagged it outright "existential". Whatever it is, I'm hopeful it gets me some nice booty.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Mandala finished - I'm no wiser

Two consecutive days of facepalm. Yesterday it was the incident with the Army guys. The day before was when I finished with Jamyang Norbu's "Mandala of  Sherlock Holmes" in the last hours in Gethia (Nainital). Oh, I'd - so eagerly - ordered it from Flipkart to wrap myself in a beautiful lingering memory...

The novel went from exciting to a pulp fiction by the last chapters - I was eagerly finishing my chapters in the first couple of reads, but on this last read I was praying for it to stop; the incredulous moments and illogical subplots took me off balance. There was a Jung's UFO-Mandala essay (for effect to something like a digestif) that seemed either misplaced or misprinted.

The book, though less on imagination, is soaked in some very interesting trivia - I loved the descriptive settings, objects, and customs around the middle of 19th century. If I ever try this book again, I'd need to sit with two dictionaries - a regular one, and one for the 'quot erat...' type latin phrases.
There's a hunch that I might give it away by the next time I feel like having it... any takers?

Friday, August 10, 2012

I'll have the Mandala

Inadvertently, I step into the genre of mystery writing again. Last, it was The Mystery of Suspect X. Now, its The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (by Jamyang Norbu), a novel that I had no knowledge of until I just unwrapped it in the office, then turned to Amazon to trace the breadcrumb to [Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery]. Three days back, I'd blindly ordered this book from Flipkart.

You can guess that the book is a recommendation. It is, and a subconscious one at that. I'm always chasing recommendations ("Listens to: Others' recommendations"), however, this one is slightly convoluted:

So I'd met this girl - a Czech, whom I could claim the most beautiful girl on this planet with the most creative dreadlocks - onboard a rickety HRTC bus enroute to Manali. She was coming from Leh. The crowd in the bus consisted of me and C, an army guy, and about half a dozen of foreigners (whom I assumed to be a cohesive group).

Not far beyond Marhi, we got talking [me adoring her tanned nose and forehand alongside] - she was traveling in a duo with another Czech girl; and along the way they'd made friends with a German guy with impressive Rastafari credentials. So this Rasta guy carried this book with him, whose cover was decorated enough to make the title illegible for most of the angles. When I finally did get the title, it felt an achievement. Moreover, with the added sweetness of the most beautiful girl I'd met, I decided to seal the memory of the moment, and in a Harry-Met-Sally-esque fashion, went "I'll read whatever he's reading" (note-to-self: what'd be the Bollywood parallel to 'When Harry Met Sally?' - 'When Harish Met Sneha').

I don't remember if I ever heard a mention of this one from any of my friends. I generally borrow in cases where a book is already available on somebody's bookshelf. But any-which-ways, now I have something to consume my weekend.

[One unwanted memory I ended sealing alongside was of the bus almost toppling down the valley trying to save a head-on collision]
[PS: Czech girl if you're reading this - marry me?]

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Back to ABC


After great toil, I made my first successful ascent of the Everest.

I started late, to reach the summit late in the evening, but safely made my way back, that too in a record time. Let me clarify that this was only on paper, of me charting my way through 290 pages of Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" (which documents the fateful night of May 10, 1996 when 12 people died up there). I'd started with this book twice, only to abandon my progress midway, due to the forces of social and professional calling. Each of the previous times, I had company, with whom I could discuss this book, but things didn't work out. This time, I upped my madness, and went solo, climbing through the daunting walls of words much like ascending directly up the Hornbein Coulouir (which is - arguably - the most difficult route to the Everest summit, btw). Finishing the book in 3 days, I also set a personal best of any of the legendary 250+ pg novels I'd set out reading.

This feat comes to my rescue (or distraction?) after the angry Saturday, when I laid out my take on the expectations and 'appropriateness of the moment' that surrounded me to the point of suffocation. My intentions and directions refuse to synchronize with the world's, and it is very annoying, almost like being condemned to death. I could turn to my other heroes like Ilya Ilich or Ignatius, but at their side, life isn't the same exciting as with my new heroes Rob Hall/Scott Fischer/Anatoli Boukreev (and to some extent John Krakauer himself, Neil Beidleman, and Dr. Seaborn Beck Weathers). Ilya please don't judge me wrongly here.

I am hoping that Deepak would (re)send me The Climb soon, an account of the same Everest disaster as perceived by Anatoli Boukreev, a guide in a team parallel to Krakauer's, which Boukreev kinda set to write in the face of Krakauer's skewed version of events that put him (B) in a bad light. I had just started with this book when it was deported to Poland against my wishes. That B writes from a guide's perspective and a champion climber's experience, had me hooked as soon as I started with it. Before details from Krakauer's turn dim in my recollection, I would much like to get my hands on Boukreev's version of events, to compare the two. They say that either of the guys attack the other in their version, but reading Into Thin Air, I could only wonder where is the malicious tone that people talk of - the book was cautiously written, and sticks to being factual.

After my flirtation with existentialist/absurdist literature, I now have moved into the survival genre. "The Climb" incoming or not, I next have Nando Parrado's "Miracle in the Andes" in my wishlist. To follow is Ricky Megee's "Left for Dead in the Outback". Too bad people aren't reading me or my mind around my birthdays. Knock knock.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

keep waking me up

Coerced my eager-to-be-out-and-about self back into sleep at the 0515 alarm. I was entangled in some dream again, but now this 'Venus in Furs' track has conditioned a sure-shot wake-up response in me, as I fumble about in a dazed state, often in a more-aware-than-expected fashion, since locating my cellphone is often difficult. Body clock is screwed - either my body feels humbled at any period of rest extending 4 hours, or has some 3AM circadian trigger which has me often find myself awake around this time. [leaving the environmental factors - mosquitoes that come uninvited, or an overzealous temperature setting on the Air Conditioner, or the neighbor's guitar&keyboard sessions - aside].
So in effect, I wake up to 4 alarms -
  • 2 artificial ones at 0500, 0910;
  • 2 inbuilt (body factory settings) around 0300, 1035.
Maybe my mind has become so scared of drifting away from the physical dimension that it routinely knocks to check if things are right.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Thinking about him



Camou,
and Camou

 

Eckhart Tolle came upon a realisation, at the age of 29
I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.


Am I crying out loud for something by hinting at that? Just a bad day, you say?

Friday, December 18, 2009

The Ferrari owner who was reduced to a monk

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is a really helpful book - it helped me pin down exactly what 'ovverrated piece of hyperbole' means. Its hard to believe that Robin Sharma sells. My instincts hinted at something banal as soon as Mr. Success left all his material possessions and flew to India to 'heal'.

My great virtue of patience took me through the entire book - hey, I dont expect miracles, but do expect some redeeming feature in a book that has been on so many bestseller lists. Friends all along confirmed that they were either advised against reading it, or themselves left the book midway - they could've never been more accurate.
I'd really want to file a case against the author for just taking some general book on Indian spirituality and Hindu/Buddhist idealism and masking it as a conversation between two white men.
If this book were walking down the street, I wish it were run over by a truck.

One part of why I found everything in there so intimidating was that spirituality has a much bigger context than than this layman's how-to. Having traveled to several places that are popular on the spirituality/religion map (though solely in the name of travel) it is easy to confirm that the 'higher dimension' that the book speaks of is excessive simplification and alteration. This book only mystifies YOUR LIFE.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A Great Absurdity

In an essay titled "Curriculum Mortis" by a (anti)psychologist David Cooper in his book "The Grammar of Living" (1974):
"In early nineteenth-century England it (suicide) was regarded as a capital offense - one should be legally murdered for daring to try to kill oneself. For example, one man tried unsuccessfully to kill himself by cutting his throat and was sentenced to death by hanging - but before the hanging (in those days slow strangulation rather than death by rapid trauma to the central nervous system) his wound had to be carefully stitched up and bandaged so that it would not open and allow him to bleed to death from a self-inflicted wound. He could only die by the legally prescribed form of hanging."

Brilliant scheme for somebody committed to die!

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

To Kill a Mockingbird

Didn't intend to do that, but I did. I spoiled a movie experience - for me own self, that too for a movie that the American Film Institute (AFI), in 2006, voted the 2nd Most Inspirational Movie of All Times; one that sits at #47 on IMDB list of the greatest movies of all time. A big honour, na.

Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" has remained somewhat restrained in terms of popularity, but those who know about it know the modern legend it is. That Harper Lee never wrote another book in her life, and never pushed the book beyond its initial years might have contributed to that. Firstly, debut novels often begin their journeys with little efforts from the publishers or promotion teams. The hype only starts from #2, at which Mrs Lee made no attempts at. Secondly, some bibliophiles might scoff at an author with 1 book in their oeuvre - they need a new God to worship. Hence the book remains an esoteric masterpiece.

The book came in 1960. A movie adaptation followed in 1962; the perspective and details in the book itself made it easy to turn it into one. It won 3 Oscars, and another couple of nominations. But having read the book, I can only complain at how loosely tied the movie adaptation was - I bet everybody would - after all there are people who will perceive the book better, esp. the Americans to whom the events would bear a familiarity from their perspective. Events were muddled up to keep things linear. Introductions and discoveries were pruned off. Time frames were messed around. Characters stayed generic and under-developed: Scout felt a pesky helpless runt, Jem's coming-of-age seemed trivial and Atticus was a shadow of what he was in words. The trial seemed a frivolous affair, so did Boo-Radley. Was I asking too much?