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Book Meme, a few more questions answered

January 18, 2012 //
1

The first part is here. These questions come from a comment that Amulya left on the post.

1. What was the last book you gifted someone?

I’ll go with three – I gave Craig Thompson’s Habibi to a friend on her birthday last year. I was surprised to find out that she had not read any of Thompson’s books, and I sort of knew she would love it. She did. So did her mom.

I gave another friend Blankets. That was because I met her in winter, and Blankets is a perfect winter book. I believe she liked it as well, though she was a little depressed.

I am supposed to send out a signed copy of Grant Morrison’s Super Gods this week, for a friend, but I have a bad feeling he may not receive it in time, so I may have to find another way to send it.

2. Conversely, what was the last book you were gifted?

On my birthday, I received a book called Erotic Comics Vol 2, by Tim Pilcher and a Romanian graphic novel called Year of the Pioneer, by Andreea Chirica. Also, the first three volumes of XIII, a graphic novel, The City of Shifting Waters by Mezieres/Christin and The Yellow M by Edgar P Jacobs.

(That’s five.)

(But let me talk about one of them.)

The book on Erotic Comics, I first saw it, the same copy, in Carturesti, Iulius Mall, Cluj in 2009. I flipped through it, wanted to buy it, but I was out of luggage space and did not want to spend any more money either. Saw it again in 2010, but I was on a book-buying hiatus. Carturesti was closed when I went there in early 2011. My friends bought it for me because they know me and were fairly sure I would like it – they were right. And I know it’s the same copy because the people at the store high-fived each other when somebody finally bought the dang thing instead of flipping through the pages. Life works in strange and mysterious ways.

3. What is your constant go-to book? Either as a fix/soul recharge?

I’ve found that I end up reading Preacher and Sandman very frequently, maybe once a year or so. Preacher reads like a beautiful love story with dollops of anti-religion and profanity thrown in. Sandman reminds me every single time that I have so much to read, and much to learn.

The Count of Monte Cristo, because the most perfect story about revenge makes for a dish that never gets cold.

The Mahabharata, in different forms, versions and retellings. Hard to believe how timeless this book is, and how fresh it always feels with every reading.

4. Name one, just one.. Okay, three books that made you tear up.

Ashok Banker’s writing makes me want to tear up his books, but I guess that’s not what you’re referring to. Heh.

Ok fine. A lot of books make me tear up, actually. Why, just reading Hunger Games the other day brought me on the verge of tears at one specific point. Off the top of my head: Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince. Ian McEwan’s Atonement. The ending of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Garth Ennis’s Hitman and Koike/Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub. One specific chapter in the seventh Harry Potter book. A stupid coming-of-age book called Summer of 42 by Herman Raucher. Olga Perovskaya’s Kids and Cubs made me weep bitter tears at age 14, and just thinking about it makes me melancholy now. This is Too Much Information, I am sorry.

5. What is the most embarrassing book you are in possession of?

A first edition hardcover of Michael Crichton’s The Lost World. It’s embarrassing because I paid a shitload of money to buy it when it came out, thinking that it will be a “collector’s item”. 350 Rs, I think, an insane amount of money for someone in Class 10, and I still cringe at the number of excuses I gave myself when coughing up the money at the counter.

I did not even like reading the fucking thing.

6. Say there was only one library that existed in the world, with every single book ever written – and it burnt down, which three books would you save for mankind?

Ugh. I should not answer this. My brain shuts down with scenarios like this, and I cannot think of the answers right away. Even if I answer them now, somehow, tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and curse myself for not choosing that instead of this. Also, I have a feeling that I will select these books based on the assumption that I have to decide what knowledge has to be carried forward in a world sans learning, and I am not sure if that was your intent.

But ok, I will play.

The collected works of William Shakespeare. Such a world will need entertainment, comedies, drama, dramedies, tearjerkers. No one better than the Bard.

A Science book. The Origin of Species, off the top of my head, just because it has a lot of answers that can bitch-slap religious nutjobs.

A book about books. Maybe Chip Kidd’s Volume One, which makes you ache inside and long to touch a physical book.

For the record, I hate this question.

7. Ever made friends in a bookshop?

Yes. A specific one that has lasted – I saw a guy in Best Book Stall, Hyderabad who had a pile of comics to sell. Asian-looking, brusque, speaking Hyderabadi Hindi like a pro. At one point, Ahmed sir, the proprietor just stood aside and let the two of us decide which ones I was buying directly off him, and which ones he would ultimately put for display eventually. The guy turned out to be the owner of the most famous Chinese restaurant in Hyderabad, Blue Diamond (if you’re ever in Hyderabad, take an auto, say ‘Blue Diamond, Basheer Bagh, near Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium’. Try the Cantonese chicken soup. The Bhutan chicken. Chicken, bamboo shoots and mushroom noodles. And tell Chun that Satya says hi, and that I’ve got some things he may get later this year). I was a semi-starving student back then, and went to the restaurant a few weekends later. He took me to his room upstairs, where I stood gasping at a pile of comics scattered around tables and shelves. He brought me some dumplings and noodles and let me be for a few hours. We occasionally call each other from random bookshops in different parts of the world and crow about new acquisitions. We are like that only.

7. a) The most interesting conversation you’ve had in a bookshop?

The one with Ahmed sir, where we talked about my buying 90 years of bound Punch magazines. It took him about 30-odd minutes to convince me that I should not pay him my money. He talked about some of his other regular customers, and how he does not want me to end up like them, buying books just to own them. Sometimes, I think he knew me better than my friends did.

8. If you witness someone else reading a book, what habit of theirs is likely to piss you off?

Seeing someone reading a book without any discernible reactions, especially when I know it’s supposed to make you laugh or react in some way. My bad habit is that if I see the person reading a book I know, I keep asking “where are you now?” and “what do you think?”. It’s almost like I take their reaction to it personally. Stupid.

9. What was the most bizarre dream you had after reading a book?

I dreamt something really terrifying after reading From Hell the first time. I do not want to remember what I saw in my dream, but it was to do with entrails, Ganesha, living cities and a coach following me through cobbled streets. Brrr.

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Categories Books, Myself

Book Meme

January 14, 2012 //
2

1. What’s your favorite time of day to read?

In the morning, when I am on my way to the office. I get about 45 minutes, and if I am reading something really interesting, I just stagger my travel-time so that I wait longer at the bus-stop. That helps set the tone for the day, really.

2. Do you read during meals?

Yes. And no. Depends on the company I keep, really. When I worked in my previous company, I treated lunchtime like it was special, would not go out with anyone, and infallibly took a book to read. I did not read during dinner because that would be rude. I used to think eating by itself is a waste of time, unless you’re doing something else along with chewing your food. My parents hated that.

Now, I only read during lunch if I am in the middle of something very interesting. Most of the time, I go out to lunch with colleagues, so reading’s out of the question. If I delay lunch sometimes because of work, I still read.

3. Do you have bad habits while reading?

When I read a book that’s exciting, time passes by faster. My eyes dart through the pages faster as well. Happens to all of us. But you know what sucks? When there’s a chapter break at a crucial moment in the narrative. What happens then is that my eyes, out of their own accord, jump to the end of the chapter and read the last few words. This drops a nice monkey-wrench into the few seconds of build-up that would have been my due. I hate this habit, and I wish I could control it, but it feels impossible. (Sad panda face)

Once upon a time, I chewed on (and swallowed) corners of pages. True story.

4. How many hours a day would you say you read?

Again, depends on the book(s) I am reading. Can vary between 2 hours to maybe 7 hours (I’ve done read-binges from 9 PM to 3 AM). I read more in the weekend, if I am not doing anything else.

5. Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago?

I have been reading more over the last year, thanks to the iPad and the iPhone. Been doing 2-3 books every week, and way more comics/manga. Also, I read different books at different times of the day, just to keep things interesting.

6. Do you consider yourself a speed reader?

I’ve done 900-page books in a day. You do the math.

7. If you could have any superpower related to books, what would it be?

The ability to carry my physical collection with me wherever I go. Remembering lines that I like verbatim. The ability to super-sample a book before I read it, without any spoilers.

(As you must have figured out already, I think about super-powers a lot. Just in case I need to pick one on the spot.)

8. Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go?

I carry an iPad everywhere I go. Which means I carry thousands of books with me. I win.

9. What kind of book do you prefer to read?

Something unlike the one that I just finished reading. Unless it’s the first in a trilogy or a series and I need to know what happens next.

10. How old were you when you got your first library card?

Six and a half. 1986 was a long time ago, goddammit. It was at the Tezpur district library, which had a ripping children’s book collection, and I had a really cool elder-brother-figure who took me to the library once a week, on his bicycle.

11. What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest copyright?)

The oldest book would be an 1893 copy of Charles Reade’s The Cloister And the Hearth. It belonged to a relative, and I took it from him because one of our English readers had an excerpt from it involving a hunter and a bear. The rest of the book was pretty disappointing, if I remember correctly.

I still have a copy of Ukrainian Folk Tales from 1987, that I bought with my own money. But the oldest may be a copy of Indira Gandhi, by Swraj Paul, that my father gifted me on my sixth birthday. I have spoken about this before.

12. Do you read in bed? Do you like reading in bed?

Yes. Ouch. I read in bed in strange positions, one old favorite being lying back, lifting my legs against the wall, and laying the book against my knees.

13. Do you write in your books?

No. HELL NO!

Though I have taken to highlighting interesting paragraphs within iBooks, nowadays. But it’s usually pointless, because I do not refer to them later on.

14. If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be?

Just one? Let me go with three.

  • You’ve wasted a lot of time being a non-reader. Make up for that lost time by reading more.
  • Read the classics first. There is a reason why they are the classics.
  • If you do not like the first 10 pages of a book, find out someone you know and whose taste you respect and ask them if it’s worth reading. If they cannot convince you, move on and read something else.

 15. What was the last book you read? What are you reading now?

The first book I read this year was I Am Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, which was a tremendously entertaining story of Google from the director of marketing and brand management. This forms a sort of companion to In the Plex that I read last year, which was sort of a from-the-outside look at the company.

I finished Killing Floor after that, the first of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. I liked it, but I am not sure if I should read any more of them because a friend tells me they are more of the same.

I am now reading The Strain by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro, which begins really well.

There’s a whole bunch of comics I am reading as well, including the Noble Causes Archives, Absolute Death and the Walter Simonson Thor Omnibus. The latter two are rereads.

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Categories Books, Myself

The End is Nigh

January 12, 2012 //
4

This really happened. With minor variations.

*  *

“I heard you were leaving the hermitage, Bahu.”

“Yes, I am, Anant. I will miss you, and you too, Ugra, and all our friends, but I have had it. I cannot take our teacher’s stupidity anymore.”

“Bahu, that is harsh! Our teacher’s methods are strange, but he means well, you know it.”

“He means well? Is that why you are making excuses for him, Ugra? Instead of teaching us the sacred verses just as his teacher taught him, and his teacher’s teacher taught him, he wants to try out these barbaric methods on us. Writing? Are we stupid that we cannot remember what we recite in the mornings? Did my father scribble symbols on barks of trees instead of committing all the sacred verses to memory? I do not like being taken for a fool, Ugra, and I would rather leave this school and join another, instead of submitting to this madness.”

“Bahu, our teacher has valid points. The merchants that travel here beyond the seas, they write everything on stone tablets. Their knowledge is timeless, it cannot be changed by forgetting a word here and there. And besides, think of the time it would save if we could just read and refer to what we had written the day before, or last week, or a year ago, instead of trying to remember every single thing we have learnt over the years.”

“That is the way it always has been, Anant. All these foreign traditions, we accept them blindly without understanding the long-term effects. I, for one, do not want my children to recall Vedas by reading them. They should know the sacred chants by heart, Anant, just as we do. Besides, these pieces of bark, they stink of sap and dampness. How can you even bear to be near them? They make my skin crawl.”

* * *

“Have you seen this monstrosity, Simplicio?”

“Ah yes, the German and his madness. I cannot believe the Holy Father allowed such a thing to exist.”

“Look at the thing. Look at it. So disposable. So…so common. Vulgar beyond belief. Can you imagine someone wanting to possess something like this? Put something like this up for display, in their homes? I would rather spit on something like this than want to own it.”

“Sagredo, have you seen the codexes in the Malatestiana? Such perfect little wonders. How can something produced this way recapture the beauty of a hand-written parchment?”

“And the smell, Simplicio. Smell it. This reeks of machinery. No aesthetics, no personality.”

“I hear it’s become fashionable to own them nowadays. Last I heard, Salviati was thinking of getting one too. Ho, Salviati, there you are! Come here, will you?”

“Simplicio, Sagredo, what up, bitches? Oh. OH. Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, my uncle got one yesterday, I took it from him just to see what the fuss was all about. As far as I can see, it’s hardly the wonder it’s made out to be. I hear you’re getting one too?”

“I am. Oh yes, I am. I pick mine up in a few days. Thirty florins well spent. Quite the demand right now, especially among the nobility, but I know someone who knows someone. And a copy’s been reserved for me. ”

“A tedious fad, Salviati. You will soon realize that you threw your money away, money you could have spent on a real book.”

“No, you don’t get it, you guys, this is the future. Not your tedious parchments. This will bring knowledge to the masses, mark my words. This changes everything.”

“Sure, sure. Well, you and the teeming masses can keep your Gutenberg Bibles, Salviati. We’re off to the Malatestiana, and then to the Abbey. That is how books are meant to be read, in the company of like-minded people. People who know how to reproduce books, who understand the toil involved in creating a copy that captures their personality. Books are meant to be special, Salviati, not mass-produced like clothes..or…or furniture.  But it’s tiresome having to explain it to you print-enthusiasts and your ‘democratization of knowledge’ spiel. Mark my words, print will never catch on.”

* * *

Dear e-reader/iPad/Kindle-haters,

“Real books smell so good” is not an argument.

Cheers,

Me.

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Categories Books, Weirdness

Pop Culture Update: Books

December 25, 2011 //
2

I haven’t really been writing much about things that matter, like books and comics and things that make me want to run around my room shrieking with happiness. This post tries to fill that gaping void in your life.

There are a lot of shitty fantasy trilogies around, but Hunger Games is not one of them. The books were recommended to me by a librarian who sat next to me at a Neil Gaiman show. The movie trailer came out a little while ago, and no doubt I would have dismissed it as another of those post-Twilight teen-angst bubbles. But hey, librarian-recommendation. So I read book 1, and was blown away, and finished books 2 and 3 the same week. It’s hard to read when you’re on vacation, but these were just that good.

What’s the series about? If you’ve read/watched Battle Royale or The Running Man and The Long Walk by Stephen King, you will understand that Suzanne Collins takes familiar tropes, at least in the first book, and then takes those to their logical conclusion in the sequels. The protagonist is a girl that plays with metaphorical fire, and kicks up a political hornet’s nest of epic proportions. The cast of characters features a gruff Mentor-figure, a star-crossed relationship , a Diabolical Villain (who does not even make a proper appearance until the beginning of the second book – well-played there, Ms Collins), a Faithful Confidante, and surprisingly, the most awesome Fictional Fashion Designer you’ve ever seen. The three books work beautifully well together, and I loved the way how the storyline unraveled the world’s back-story slowly, the characters acquiring voices of their own. The books brought me on the brink of tears multiple times, and made me skip a healthy regime of sleep just so that I get my pulse-rate back to normal.

I read Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War on a recent flight. Had heard good things about the book on Joe Hill’s Twitter Geek list, even though I had known of Brooks as a parody guy. Expectations were low – how much more can this whole zombie fad be milked anyway? Turns out it can, and wonderfully at that.

Brooks looks at the zombie outbreak as an actual worldwide event and examines its sociopolitical implications. He presents it like a documentary-style set of interviews with survivors, soldiers, politicians, inventors, people from all over the world – much unlike traditional zombie media, where the focus is on a small band of individuals. The interviews lay out the timeline of the “war”, from the time the zombie outbreak caused society to break down, the slow and eventual return to some form of normalcy, and finally, the climactic showdown. In the process, it covers how every aspect of society is changed as a result – from racism to film-making, military strategy to everyday slang, how certain countries take the lead in containing the social meltdown, and how society mutates to keep up. The interviews lead into one another, jumping across continents, showing just how random events on one side of the globe affect other countries.

The book has tonnes of disturbing moments – a traumatized young girl’s account of a zombie attack, political shenanigans that lead to loss of lives, a zombie vaccine that turns out to be a marketing placebo, the build-up to nuclear war between unlikely enemies. And it has moments of stunning epicness – I refer to them as F!$* Yeah Moments. The Japan arc, for example, blindsides you completely, with two unlikely “protagonists” undergoing their own trials against the zombies. Pay close attention to the real-world nudge in the South Africa arc – where a plan concocted during the apartheid years to contain race mobs is resurrected to contain the zombie attack.

The movie is in production right now, but with stars like Brad Pitt attached to the movie, I have a feeling that the everyday aspect of the book will be abandoned in the favor of focusing on specific individuals. This book offers the refreshing view that human society as a whole can be heroic, somehow I do not see Hollywood subscribing to that utopian ideal. Oh well.

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Categories Books

Naked Fat Book Rave: John Scalzi – the Old Man’s War series

September 29, 2011 //
8

I have not really followed much SF in the last few years, with the exception of writers I already follow thanks to their comicbook credentials. But Scalzi’s name kept popping up in different contexts – the most notable of them being Joe Hill’s Twitter feed. There’s only so much name-dropping one can take before caving in, and I began reading Old Man’s War with slightly more-than-average expectations.

Oh. My. God.

Scalzi can write. No, scratch that, Scalzi can turn reader-ly expectations on their head, craft an engaging story and make me root for his characters. And within 20-odd pages, I had gone from Bruce-Banner-wimpy-reader to Hulk-flip-pages-so-quick-they-combust mode. And that hasn’t happened in quite some time. He unravels the world slowly, peeling away layers one at a time. The kind of smart storytelling that builds on familiar sci-fi tropes, is unafraid to go off the beaten track, and sneak in smug little homages – I cannot believe he name-called Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean in the same line! And yeah, he definitely has a wicked sense of humor.

Basic premise – humans are at war. With everyone in the universe. Space colonization is being spearheaded by the Colonial Defence Forces, with senior citizens as military recruits and third-world countries as colonizers. The first book introduces us to John Perry and his first few years in the CDF, as he takes on alien races, all with different agendas. A lot of well-crafted action sequences. Sex when you least expect it. Shout-outs to other sci-fi concepts and works. Be warned – comparisons to Robert Heinlein’s works of military fiction are inevitable, Scalzi goes one up and mentions Starship Troopers himself, in the second book.

There’s a point in the book where everything goes to hell, and that’s when we’re introduced to the second lead character of the series. No details, but the sequel follows this character, so you will understand. By the beginning of the third book, we’ve moved decades since we first encountered Perry, and it’s thrilling to see how Scalzi manages to weave threads and plot-points so fucking elegantly. I just started Book 3 this morning , and I know there’s a fourth book, the title of which tells me that a particular character is just as important as I thought.

Also, Scalzi seems to be the first non-Indian scifi writer who uses authentic Indian names. Face it, it’s grating to hear names like ‘Muralidharan Singh’ or ‘Hussein Kumar’, where writers mash together names without knowing much about ethnicity or religion. So when you come across names like ‘Utpal Chowdhury’, ‘Rohit Kulkarni’ and ‘Savitri Guntupalli’, and even a goat named ‘Prabhat’, you doff your imaginary topi at the writer, and carry on reading, with even more respect for his world-building skills. It’s always the small things.

Highly, highly recommended. Even more so because when I think about it, these books are unfilmable. You’ll know why when you read them.

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Categories Books
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