Books

Another Book Meme

Pal Amulya is full of book-related questions, and I can talk about books all the time. This is from a Facebook meme that involves naming 10 books that stayed with you. Shit like this is tough because number-bound lists suck yada yada and well okay, these are some books that I keep going back to. It is also a list that surprised me.

The rules are: No comics. Cool? Cool.

1. Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo

I have talked about this book before. Instead of adding to the yakkery, allow me to point you to a painting. It’s an illustration of the Count done by artist Mead Schaeffer in the 1920s, one magnificent painting that arrests your attention. I was lucky enough to see it in person at the Weismann Museum at Pepperdine University, Malibu last year, and it gave me the fucking chills.

2. RK Narayan – Gods, Demons and Others

This was the cover to the version I bought

I was ten, and this was a book I had finished reading in a week, after buying it at the Guwahati Book Fair. A friend’s father borrowed it, and when he came home to return it, a month later, he was much surprised to know how fast I was done with the book. “Did you really read it?”, he asked. Smiling at my indignant yes, he opened the book and pointed to the first line in the introduction, which had the phrase ‘part and parcel of Indian life’. “What does “part and parcel” mean?”, he asked me. He was a little surprised at my answer, and accepted that I was not fibbing about the speed of my consumption.

But my mind was blown because, for the first time, I realized that the introduction to a book was not necessarily boring and that it should not be skipped over.

I pick this over the Mahabharata, because this was the first prose version of mythological stories I read. And it made me look for more. And also, stunning RK Laxman illustrations that made me wear out my black oil pastels trying to copy them.

(Oh, and I also found a first edition hardcover much later in life)

3. Mark Twain – Adventures of Tom Sawyer/Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

This is how we read books, once upon a deprived childhood. First, we read a chapter excerpt in an English textbook. Then we read an abridged S Chand version. Then we read other abridged versions, and finally graduated to reading the originals, the sequels and the spin-offs. I spent some time in my adolescence thinking about whether I would kiss Becky Thatcher if I was alone in the cave with her. (The answer is yes)

Little Women is perhaps my first feminist novel, even though I did not know it then. Sometimes I feel like the book is a bit too traditional, but then I reread it and – seriously, it’s so fucking progressive.

4. Stephen King – The Shining

When you are traveling with friends on a 2-day train journey, and find yourself sitting in the upper berth unable to breathe, occasionally shivering in the middle of July, and wanting to make sure that there are people around you every now and then, you are a very very bad traveler. Or you are reading this book you picked up on a whim from this pavement seller in Delhi. You don’t know it yet, but it will determine a lot of your tastes in the next decade. You will yearn to find terror in words, and you will realize that it takes a very special writer to produce works that inspire dread, and much later, you will discover his son, who does the same.

(The book is dedicated to “Joe Hill”. Hill’s book NOS4A2 features references to multiple King characters, including a fleeting mention of the True Knot, who appear as the antagonists in Doctor Sleep, the cool-but-somewhat-tepid sequel to Shining)

5. The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories – Edited by Stephen Jones

These “Mammoth” books proliferated in bookstores around India, and introduced me to a fair amount of new writers that I hadn’t heard of before. This particular volume contained a poem by Neil Gaiman, which made me look up and understand the difference between fixed verse forms, specifically sonnets and sestinae – memory fails me, but this was perhaps the first bit of non-comics Gaiman work I ever read. It had a story by Clive Barker, which pointed me to the wonderful Books of Blood. Brian Lumley’s contribution made me look up his Necroscope books. I had just read the original Dracula, and Stoker’s excised chapter ‘Dracula’s Guest’, included in this volume, made me feel like a happy child (which I was!). And finally, the novella ‘Red Reign’ by Kim Newman, which later became the Anno Dracula series, was my first introduction to a shared fictional universe. Good times!

6. Walter Moers – the Zamonia novels (13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear/The City of Dreaming Books/Rumo/Labyrinth/Alchemaster’s Apprentice)

I don’t talk about the books I like a lot. The cynical part of me worries that someone I recommend the books to will talk disparagingly of them, and then I will have two options: hate that person forever, or rethink my opinion of the book. Because obviously we cannot all be mature adults respecting each others’ opinions about the books we love, man. So yeah, Walter Moers. If you haven’t read these books, you are missing something. If you don’t like them, don’t tell me, because we are not meant to know each other.

Two regrets: I do not know German well enough to understand how good/bad the translations are, and I did not have an Awesome Uncle to present these books to me when I was younger. Had one existed, the world would have seen a version of me that had Optimus Yarnspinner tattoos and wrote bad Zamonia fan-fiction.

7. George Orwell – 1984

Before this current wave of young adult literature drenched in dystopian futures and all-pervading governmental control, there was Oceania and Winston Smith and Big Brother. It is strange how this book written in the middle of the last century hit on every aspect of modern life that makes us nervous in 2014. I love going back to it, and sometimes I worry that the future is already happening.

8. David Fisher, Anthony Reed – The Proudest Day / Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins – Freedom at Midnight / Ramachandra Guha – India After Gandhi

These were the books that made recent Indian history interesting to me. History taught in our schools comes to a miraculous end in 1947. The British rule is essentially an Us vs Them saga where They were bad and We were good. These books un-deify the valorous and make them human, and give multiple hues to people who were just names and statistics.

(Also, the section about the first elections in independent India makes me cry, every single time)

9. CD Payne – Youth in Revolt (and its sequels)

This is a California book, and occasionally it becomes a Europe book. Every now and then, I look past the zany antics of Nick Twisp and his crew and contemplate their milieu, the small-town lives of the characters. I read about Nick’s Berkeley catastrophe while passing through Berkeley. Years later, I stayed in a motel in Ukiah while driving north, and it was only later that I realized excitedly that Sheeni grew up in that town. To me, Nick Twisp is the post-modern version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn combined, and unlike most books whose sequels let you down, these just make you fall in love with the characters even more.

10. Jaron Lanier – Who Owns the Future?

A book that made me question a lot of opinions that I had about the digital economy, particularly piracy and the culture of sharing. These are opinions that I thought were fairly obvious and set in stone, but Lanier’s arguments systematically decimates them and makes me feel like a fool. The book is quotable beyond belief, and has given me one of my favorite words: antinembosian, which means ‘before the cloud’. It is also the reason I would rather write this on my own blog, than on Facebook.

Books, Weirdness

The Mind Palace

If you have seen the BBC TV series Sherlock, you must be aware of the term “mind palace”.

Clicky! Animated mind-palace gif!

The phrase makes its appearance in the first season, and seems to be played for both shock/awe and laughs. Every time, Sherlock boots people out from his immediate vicinity to access the “palace” and gets into a CGI-enhanced zone where he accesses, sifts through and retrieves information. By season 3, the mind palace has become a recurring concept, part of Sherlock’s self-aggrandizing charm, with Watson and every other character making references to it now and then. As it turns out, Sherlock’s nemesis in Season 3 also has a mind palace of his own. Sounds like a very Convenient Tool from the writers’ arsenal, right?

Until I realized, after reading the first few chapters of a book called Moonwalking with Einstein, that the mind palace is an actual mnemonic device in use since Greco-Roman times, called ‘method of loci’. There is a Wikipedia page that talks about it in detail. People who practice and participate in the World Memory Championships use this technique to hone their brain to the extent where they can memorize the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in as less time as possible (21 seconds is the world record, at the moment), or as many numbers as possible within the space of an hour, or random names in 15 minutes. How do they do it? It requires tremendous amount of focus and a meditative state of mind to construct a “real place” in your mind – I believe the programmatic analogy would be a multi-dimensional hash-map where the key iterator is about travelling through that real place and storing/retrieving values as you mentally walk through that place. Here is a great and detailed post that goes into way more detail than I can get into.

The book is written by a journalist named Joshua Foer, and details his own attempt at the World Memory Championships. Like I said, I have just started on the book and it’s super interesting so far – and I love the way it begins, with an account of (apparently) the first historical use of the method of loci.

There were no other survivors.

Family members arriving at the scene of the fifth-century-B.C. banquet hall catastrophe pawed at the debris for signs of their loved ones – rings, sandals, anything that would allow them to identify their kin for proper burial.

Minutes earlier, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos had stood to deliver an ode in celebration of Scopas, a Thessalian nobleman. As Simonides sat down, a messenger tapped him on the shoulder. Two young men on horseback were waiting outside, anxious to tell him something. He stood up again and walked out the door. At the very moment he crossed the threshold, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed in a thundering plume of marble shards and dust.

He now stood before a landscape of rubble and entombed bodies. The air, which had been filled with laughter moments before, was smoky and silent. Teams of rescuers set to work frantically digging through the collapsed building. The corpses they pulled out of the wreckage were mangled beyond recognition. No one could even say for sure who had been inside. One tragedy compounded another.

Then something remarkable happened that would change forever how people thought about their memories. Simonides sealed his senses to the chaos around him and reversed time in his mind. The piles of marble returned to pillars and the scattered frieze fragments reassembled in the air above. The stoneware scattered in the debris re-formed into bowls. The splinters of wood poking above the ruins once again became a table. Simonides caught a glimpse of each of the banquet guests at his seat, carrying on oblivious to the impending catastrophe. He saw Scopas laughing at the head of the table, a fellow poet sitting across from him sponging up the remnants of his meal with a piece of bread, a nobleman smirking. He turned to the window and saw the messengers approaching as if with some important news.

Simonides opened his eyes. He took each of the hysterical relatives by the hand and, carefully stepping over the debris, guided them, one by one, to the spots in the rubble where their loved ones had been sitting.

At that moment, according to legend, the art of memory was born.

[amazon asin=0143120530&template=iframe image]

Books

The Subterranean Option

I love e-books and e-readers.

With that out of the way, I also love physical books. Not in the ‘real books smell awesome!’ kind of buzzfeed-happy hippy activism that seems to be going around nowadays, nope. I would prefer that the physical version of a book be something that brings its personality to life. It would have to be the kind of entity that needs to be on a shelf, as an extension of my own love for the contents of the book itself. A volume that feels good to possess, re-read and show off. Paperbacks do not quite cut it, and I find that given a choice between an ebook and a paperback, I would prefer the former – just to avoid clutter. But if it is a book I love, and if there is an edition that screams at me to buy it, that’s when the wallet comes out. (he said, taking his pipe out of his mouth and with a sip of his chardonnay)

Subterranean Press is a small-press publisher from Michigan that publishes limited edition printings of (mostly) fantasy and science fiction titles. These are copies that come designed with a lot of care and attention, and the lettered editions in particular set enviable standards. Of course, the prices reflect both the exclusivity and the attention that the publishers lavish upon these books. Which tends to limit my spending quite a bit, not a bad thing at all. They are not the only ones doing this – there’s a whole other bunch of publishers such as Cemetery Dance, Centipede Press, and PS Publishing that do nearly the same thing. Here’s a site where you can read more about these editions. But it is SubPress that I have a special fondness for, and not without good reason.

For one, this company has been publishing the works of Joe Hill, one of my favorite authors at the moment. My first purchases with them were editions of Horns, and the first two volumes of Locke and Key. Horns was a beautifully slip-cased “trade” edition, because the limited eds had sold out by then, and I got it signed by Hill at a Wonder Con 2012, soon after. The two Locke and Key volumes came with the scripts, just the second example I have seen of comic-scripts being bundled with the comics themselves, the other being the first two Absolute volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I have been meaning to get the limited edition of Hill’s first book – Heart-Shaped Box, but the crazy eBay prices deter me. Last year, when NOS4A2, Hill’s vampire opus was due to be released, I kept a close eye on the SubPress release, meaning to buy it as soon as the pre-orders went up. Alas,. I was traveling outside the country, and by the time I was back, all 750 copies were gone. When the books finally shipped, after-market prices went through the roof. I could only gnash my teeth as copies sold for upwards of 300$, on a cover price of 125$. I did keep a close eye on eBay auctions and the occasional sane market-place dealer (Bett’s Books, for example. One of my favorite booksellers because their prices are pretty reasonable, specifically for Stephen King limited eds. But even they did not have a SubPress copy of NOS4A2 under 200$) Nope, nada, zilch.

Until last week, when I happened to check the SubPress newsletter just as it came in. And this is what it said: (under the heading A Surprise)

Twenty-two Copies of NOS4A2 Up for Grabs

Important Note: We pulled the last copies of NOS4A2 out of our collectors room. If you’ve already purchase a copy, you are not eligible to purchase another. (When the buy button disappears from the NOS4A2 page, it means all the copies are sold out.)

Needless to say, before you could say “SHAZAM!”, I jumped on the page. With the speed of Mercury, I entered my credit card details and clicked on the BUY button with the power of Zeus. It took the courage of Achilles after the transaction failed the first time, to realize that it was not because the 22 copies were sold out, but I had entered the wrong expiration date on my card. The wisdom of Solomon came to my rescue, and I repeated my exercise. Boom, tish!

A few days later, the glorious package landed up on my doorstep. It does require a bit of the strength of Hercules to pick the oversized volume, and I am saving the stamina of Atlas for when I re-read it. I have to, the book has an alternate ending and a novella that comes with it, and by golly, I love it enough to reread it. Also, while the other SubPress Hill books were illustrated by Vincent Chong, the illustrations in NOS4A2 are by Gabriel Rodriguez, Hill’s collaborator and co-creator of Locke and Key. Rodriguez not only designs the lurid cover, but also a bunch of full-color character illustration bookplates scattered throughout the book, and black-and-white chapter illustrations. Icing on the fucking cake, man.

: The size, man!

: Because size does matter!

: Oh yeah, it’s signed by both Hill and Rodriguez

Music

Compact Discs lol

I upgraded my phone recently, so the phone adapter to the music system in my car no longer works. I am too cheap to spend 30$ to buy a new adapter (and too broke to buy a new car), so there was no alternative but to make use of the 6-CD changer that lies unused all this time. Well, except on road trips, when I take some backup discs along in case my phone runs out of battery, not an overly infrequent occurrence with the older model. I don’t buy too many CDs nowadays. Who does, really? Spotify satisfies nearly every musical itch and then some. T-mobile, bless their soul, does not charge for streaming music, so it’s no longer necessary to keep everything cached offline, eating up precious phone drive-space. But the biggest problem I have with playing CDs is that scrobbling comes to a standstill. And believe me, I love my scrobbling.

Besides, who needs accessories like this?

So there are six CDs in my car now. And this is a post about what they are.

Disc 1: Sylvan Esso – their self-titled album.

I heard this band when they opened for the Tune-yards in May this year, at the Fonda theater. (That concert, FYI, resulted in me being hearing-impaired for the better part of two days, a scary but well-deserved situation because I braved a cold to go attend it. )

Everybody I talk to thinks Sylvan Esso is a person, but apparently the name comes from an Assassin’s Creed character. The band is vocalist Amelia Meath and producer/knob-twiddler Nick Sanborn, and the two came together from different ends of the musical spectrum. Meath was an indie folk artist who was part of a 3-member band called Mountain Man (who sound exactly like you think they would) and also part of Feist’s backing band during her Metals tour. Nick Sanborn was bassist for alt-rock band Megafaun and occasional DJ/producer operating under the name Made for Oak. What gets me about them, other than the lovely way the vocals, lyrics and the music mesh to create their unique sound, is the relentless energy both of them brought in their live performance. Hard to explain that about from a lady with a mic and a guy hunched behind a table full of audio gear, but that is why live shows kick ass. You see the way the two of them are into the music, and that elevates the songs from ear-friendly pop candy to something primal. To get an idea of what I mean, check out this live version of ‘Wolf’, one of my top three songs in the album.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSXPvY8og-g[/youtube]

I tend to enjoy this album at two levels. There are times when the energy of the songs carries me along on weekday mornings, bringing an extra bounce to my step as I park the car and walk into the office. Other times, I focus on the words – contemplative, thought-provoking and deep – and they bring me peace. Yes, it’s that kind of an album.

Between the time I first heard them and now, Sylvan Esso seems to have exploded into the mainstream scene, with lots of airplay, an appearance on Jimmy Fallon, and a bunch of sold-out headlining concerts around the country. They totally deserve it.

Disc 2: Oh Land – Wish Bone

I have talked about Oh Land before, and when I heard tidings of her new album last year, it made me giddy with delight. After I heard the album, of course, I may or may not have had a seizure, from the different ways in which Ms Fabricious’ music hit my pleasure centers. The production on the album is top-notch, and every song is a gem. From the percussion-driven guitar and synth riffs of ‘Bird in an Aeroplane’ to the harp-and-choir-backed ‘3 Chances’ ; from the quirky near-dissonance of ‘Boxer’ to the joyous feel-good chorus of ‘Cherry on Top’; the foot-tapping ‘woo hoo’s in ‘Pyromaniac’ to Wish Bone covers a wide range of emotions, musically and lyrically. ( The most memorable lines, to me, appear in ‘3 Chances’ – “If kittens all got 9 lives/and zombies resurrected/could it be with you and me/the pattern’s neverending”).

Sure, I realize that my repeated playing of this CD brings even the tail-end tracks into my ambit. (the term ‘B-side’ should be officially retired from any music discussion, I find it somewhat demeaning. The unfortunate placement of a song in a sequential list should not lead to the implication that it is inferior to the first few members of that list) There is one called ‘Green Card’ towards the end of the album, co-written by Sia Furler, which could take on lead singles of other, lesser artistes head-on. Fitting that the album comes to end with ‘Love You Better’ and ‘First to Say Goodnight’, two of my favorite songs.

Disc 3: Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Vol 1: Love Songs

I love Suzanne Vega. If you have a soul, you do too. She makes music that refuses to be associated with a genre or a moment in time, or be affected by musical trends and styles – much like herself. The Close-up series of albums is her attempt to rerecord her older songs in stripped-down versions, with minimal instruments and studio theatrics. She also grouped them by theme, the other three volumes being ‘People and Places’, ‘Songs of Family’ and ‘State of Being’. I bought ‘Love Songs’ because hey – love songs! But really, it was because of ‘Caramel’. Listening to this version was as much a shock as hearing it for the first time – it’s just her voice and a single acoustic guitar, quite a difference from the bossa-nova trappings of the original. Time has passed since then, and right now, I feel like if the original version of ‘Caramel’ is a first-date song, seductive and thrilling, this interpretation is the song you would want to play when the two of you are watching the sun go down on a beach, twenty years later.

The songs in this album, sadly, have replaced the originals in my head. When I go back to Retrospective, the 2-CD set that pal Chandru gave me a long, long time ago, and which got me hooked to Ms Vega, I find the reverb and the beats somewhat over-bearing, the orchestral effects that drew me to the music seem really out of place. Close-up puts the focus squarely on her voice and the words, and it works so well. ‘Stocking’ gives me a boner every single time I hear it (and it makes me want to clap along when she says ‘Oh yeah’). I smile to the words of ‘If You Were In My Movie’, and I try very hard not drive off the road while bopping along to ‘(I Will Never Be) Your Maggie May’. I have managed well so far, I guess.

(1000+ words, so the next three CDs will be in a future post. They are sort of connected, so it makes sense. Sorta.)

Comics, Conventions, Events

My San Diego Con Report

I nearly did not make it to San Diego Comic Con this year. Blame it on jet-lag, middle age and a perilous meeting-packed week. I knew I would not make it on Wednesday and Thursday, and by the time Friday came around, I had half a mind not to go at all. But there were promises to keep.

I believe I am coming down with Convention Fatigue. I say this out loud despite knowing that fifteen-year-old version of me would punch me in the face. 2005-version of me would get all passive-aggressive, especially at how I was somewhat behind in replacing all my shelved books with signed copies.

This is specially true of San Diego, where walking from one end of the exhibition floor to the other requires serious stamina, a willingness to not mind being buffeted by the occasional 200-pound metaphorical gorilla. I am not making fun of the Comic-Book Fan here, I swear, it’s just that there is never a straight line. There are always aisles blocked by a signing, or impromptu photography sessions when an exceptionally-beautiful Elektra poses for pictures, or a kid wants to pet a cute R2D2 robot. Occasionally you notice that specific creator signing at a booth, and you have to weigh the probability of missing the event you are running to if you choose to queue for this particular guy, who is only around for 30 minutes more and does not stay the next day.

San Diego Comic-Con is a logistical nightmare if you are not prepared. I was not prepared at all this year.

I missed Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten signing the new English language reprints of their award-winning graphic novel, Leaning Girl. I could not get to Joe Hill at the Harper Collins booth because he signed until noon on Saturday, and I got there at 12:10. I could not get to Joe Hill at the IDW booth because you needed wristbands (groan!) to stand in line, and all the wristbands got over in the morning. I missed Bryan Lee O’Malley signing at his booth because I wasn’t there on Thursday and he cancelled his Saturday signing. Missed Matt Kindt and Kazu Kibuishi; did not even get to say hello to Mike Mignola at his booth, wanted to get a ticket for the Sin City 2 signing at the Dark Horse booth but could not.

Meh.

“So what did you do in the one and a half days you were there?”, they asked.

My favorite moment in the show was meeting artist Kevin O’Neill, who was signing and sketching over at the Top Shelf Booth. I was in line on both days, and got a Mina sketch and a Hyde sketch in my Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen editions. Got my Marshal Law and Nemesis The Warlock volumes signed, and even bought a limited edition copy of League: Century, signed by both Alan Moore and Kevin. While waiting in line, it turned out that pal Micah was right behind me, and we spent a pleasant half-hour talking about con experiences and comics. With a special emphasis on the phrase “Hyde fucking the Invisible Man to death.” What have you wrought, Alan Moore?

Right next to Top Shelf was the Fantagraphics booth, and I met Don Rosa, the man behind The Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge. I had met Don in 2007, at my first US convention – Super Con San Jose, which has since been rebranded as Big Wow Comic Con, and I mentioned to him how he had signed my copy of Life and Times, but when I went to buy the companion (which is sort of a collection of out-takes from the book), it was all sold out. This time I had a copy of the Companion with me, and he signed it “For Satya, again!” He also sketched a very cool Kid Scrooge for me, with his lucky dime. Very very cool indeed. The Hernandez bros were also signing right next to him, and I got my copy of the Love and Rockets sketchbook signed by both Beto and Xaime.

Saturday started off pretty badly, with a parking ticket from the officialdom of San Diego, because half my car was in a yellow line as I was getting money out of an ATM. Mood soured, I went in to try catch Joe Hill. Missed ‘im. Headed to Zander Cannon’s booth, got myself a copy of his audio commentary and he drew me a sketch inside my copy of Heck. Most of the day then went by in a blur, meeting old friends, talking to art dealers, admiring the cosplayers. Made my first payment for my Next Big Art Deal. Ended the day and my con meeting Jeff Smith, who signed copies of Bone for a pal. At this point, I am not sure how many copies of Bone I have asked Jeff to sign, but it’s always a pleasure to say hello to him and Vijaya.

A couple of take-aways for me, from SDCC this year.

I need to be better prepared. Comic-con is a test of one’s physical and mental reserves, and if I am not into it, I will not enjoy it, period.
No more lugging hardcovers around. They put a serious damper on my enjoyment of the convention. I plan to make myself some book-plates next time. Getting those signed and sticking them into the actual copies of the books.
I hate the fact that I did not make it to any panels this time. Not even the one where one of my friends was up on stage!
While hotels were sold out, I noticed lots of AirBnb postings in the downtown area. So far, I have stayed at a hotel away from the convention center, at a hotel right next to the convention center, at a friend’s place in San Diego, and this time, at a friend’s place in the OC. AirBnb next time, maybe?

Angst In My Pangst

There can only be one.

Monthly Archives: August 2014