It's frustrating me to no end that I can't read Dune at one go or at least for periods longer than lousy 15-minute train-ride stretches.

I was pleasantly surprised when I learnt last night that two of my co-workers are into Neil Gaiman as well. I'd never have guessed. Whether this is a sign of gross assumption or Gaiman's supreme penetration into the masses, I don't know. But I am very happy I found out. Sharing an affinity for books, and especially authors, and possessing the ability to discuss however vaguely or intelligently about books/literature always always scores brownie points with me. :D

American Gods

I was hesitant about picking up Gaiman's novel, that I am ready to admit. It is a bad habit.. I tend to approach books with a certain idea of what they should be without really knowing anything about it and base my decision to read on that entirely misinformed (or noninformed) preconceived notion. I've recently been in the mood for classics - Peter Pan, Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment - so when I bought (or rather, Anil, my wonderfully generous boyfriend, bought) American Gods purely on a whim, I was not sure if I should keep it or return it to the bookshop. I'd never been a fan of the suspense/thriller genre and seeing a short appraisal from Stephen King on the back-cover of the book was ready to throw me off. I am now only 200 pages or so into American Gods and so glad that I didn't allow my stupid pretentious ideas to stop me from reading it. It is an engaging and well-written book and deals - albeit shallowly - with a host of ancient/contemporary "gods" in all senses of the word. It is fun to read, there is always a little bit of interesting information, some chance adventure, that keeps the story moving forward. There are some interesting themes that are brought up - the most obvious ones being the idea of a 'god', good vs evil, etc, but these weren't explored to their full potential. How do I put this? Okay, imagine the story as a huge pool with clean water and lots of fun water games that's about three-feet deep. But Gaiman is cute, very very cute, so I forgive him for constructing a lousy pool. Besides The Sandman makes up for it, I suppose.

red bull in a green field

I've had little energy or drive to write about the books I've recently read or acquired because the new job takes a lot out of me. I work 9 hours with little smoke breaks, carrying heavy plates to fussy customers during dinner hours and then, when the restaurant closes and the club opens, I take orders from fussy customers who can't spare an ounce of courtesy or a penny in tips. It's really quite depressing to see how unforgiving the world has gotten in the past two years.

Wuthering Heights was fantastic, I enjoyed it so very much. I've also completed Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop which somewhat turned out to fulfill certain expectations and then some. Interesting Gothic elements; Carter, it seems, has a preoccupation with Biblical characters - Melanie, the story's protagonist, is compared through several allusions to Eve. One particularly striking image occurs early in the novel; she is naked and sitting on an apple tree, a budding prepubescent body, just about to enter womanhood yet just not, in a middle of a dark, ominous garden with the nighttime closing in. A powerful image it was, a fallen Eve seeking redemption in a fallen garden, between heaven and earth. When Aunt Margaret appeared, she was described as being surrounded by a yellow, shinning light - an obvious Jesus figure. I like how the images were obvious yet not corny. Carter has an eloquence with striking images that she delivers fluidly.

I've started, just only, on Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I've never read any Gaiman before so this shall be my first foray into contemporary literature after a while. I got Gaiman because I've recently been infected, thanks to Jammi and Debbie, with the graphic novel virus, which I am gullible enough to carry around but, unfortunately, too poor to do anything about it. The job pays in another 2 weeks.

I recently traded my brand new copy of Porno (Irvine Welsh), which I never got around to reading, for two books: Salman Rushdie's Shame and Rudyard Kipling's Kim. The first because, apparently, it is comparable to Midnight's Children - and in my opinion automatically gives the novel massive potential. The second because I've always wanted to read it after watching the MGM film adaptation with my father as a child.

Anil offered to buy me the entire Sandman series which I turned down. I've realized the errors of my ways, I've paid my dues, and I think the offer still stands for next month. I want to get Fables as well, especially 1001 Nights of Snowfall. I like it when characters from public domains are taken out of their roles and put into another story. I've seen this before but it was always lousily done (like in school plays, prose, etc); Fables, however, looks wonderful. Plus, I've also heard many other wonderful things about it.

What's next?

Wuthering Heights is one - if not the - of the best novel(s) I've read in 2007 thus far. I loved the writing, loved the characters, loved the story, loved the time I spent reading it (it reached 2 hours nonstop at one point, and I have the attention span of a mosquito so this really says something), and I am quite sorry that it had to finish.

Now I'm spoilt for choice - what do I read next? Work starts in a little over an hour at 5pm and I have 20 minutes to occupy my time with in the train. I am dreadfully early, though, no thanks to my frantic nerves and the building stack of anticipation in every little one of them.

I've a host of books to choose from and only fifteen minutes to make my decision! (panic)

friday five

1. What is your all time favorite book?
"All-time" questions only make sense if they are posed to a dying man. I have hardly lived, barely started, so I can only answer for now. I really enjoyed Rushdie's Midnight Children and Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Balzac's treatment of Old Goriot was very eloquently done. Authors that I respect and admire are Kafka, Dostoevsky, Camus and Shakespeare.

2. What is your all time favorite movie?
It changes all the time because I have only recently begun my film education. For now, I really like Kurosawa's Ikiru. I remember falling in love with the visual aesthetics of Wong Kar Wai's films, especially In the Mood For Love. I could watch that again and again.

3. What are you reading right now?
Something I should have read a long time ago: Wuthering Heights.

4. What is your favorite show on tv?
Frasier, Seinfeld, Mythbusters, Friends (for nostalgia)

5. What is the last movie you saw in the theater?
I think it was 300? I really want to watch 28 Days/Weeks Later and Sunshine.

Solaris: Sci-fi and the 'Other'

I've read two sci-fi novels this year that dealt with human contact and the limits of human knowledge, a theme I can only assume that is at the heart of much science fiction writing. Incidentally (or maybe not so), both novels - Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky) and Solaris (Lem) - were adapted by Andrei Tarkovsky.

A few days ago, I finally completed Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. It was a relatively difficult read for two reasons. One, it frightened me, the pussy that I am. I couldn't read the book post-sundown, especially towards the later hours of the night, because the idea of waking up and finding a physical manifestation of a long-forgotten memory in my room, staring at me, was just.. crazy. After a while, I soon forgot the reason for fright and allowed the fear to descend into an abnormal irrationality ("Oh no, there is someone behind me, right now.. a presence in the room.. a.. ghost"). I've been told, not very encouragingly, that if I watched Tarkovsky's adaptation of the novel, I'd piss in my pants. The second problem has to do with the text containing rich details pertaining to physics and science in general. It can be said to have developed the argument that the text was heading towards but I felt it could have been done in lesser words and much, much less density. Of course, I will readily admit that Problem#2 could very easily be due to my incompetence as a reader. But the details make reading tedious and slow, and if one is able to grasp the gist of the message without having to go through pages of semi-futuristic ramblings on science, then there is a good reason why it should not even be there.

Solaris is a planet body of water - an intelligent ocean, if you must. Kris Kelvin, the human protagonist, arrives at a space station called Prometheus that has been constructed for the purpose of establishing contact with the intelligent life-form. A few hours, almost a day, upon arriving at the space station, Kelvin wakes up to find a woman who looks exactly like his dead wife sitting on the edge of his bed. She behaves almost exactly like her, has the same habits as her, talks like her. Only she is not her. The other scientists aboard the ship have their own ghosts to deal with as well.

I like that the book deals with questions like truth, and how one negotiates the content of truth. Is the replica of his wife really his wife or another woman? What are the markers of identity? What is the truth content of such an encounter?

Then there is a question of limitations that I am more interested in: the "intelligent" ocean, an ocean with a conscience, that is able to replicate people or things by probing into memory, and the scientists' ability to understand only insofar as they are able to anthropomorphize. Why should understanding Solaris the planetary-system become a test for humans? A quote from the book is, "...it was not simply a question penetrating Solarist civilization, it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the limits of human knowledge". To a large degree, this is what the book - and majority of science fiction, I think - is about: the limits of human knowledge. Where a constructed cognition ends and a vast sea of mystery begins, a mystery we can hardly hope to understand. Man's attempt to force his breed of understanding upon what is ultimately unknowing and unknowable. Human laws, after all, are not cosmic laws. What we understand is, perhaps, not how it is meant to be understood (think Truth, capital T). I understand that human laws are enabling as well - within our microcosm, we try to understand what we can - but therein lies the paradox: how far can meaning be ascertained before one realizes that he's stretching taut the fabric that allows meaning-making to function?

We can only hypothesize, and that too only so far. There are limits, tangible and real, no matter how many new words or theories or ideas science comes up with. Perhaps it is the new-age-ish student of arts in me speaking, but there is a time it stops and instead of trying to force a particular brand understanding, one should be an open channel and allow cosmic understanding, no matter how mysterious or unexplainable - for, perhaps, it will continuously elude human comprehension - to flow though.

CAVE

I want this:



Isn't it beautiful? Sakura Adachi, Japanese born designer, made this wonderful bookcase which is a private reading room in itself. Books can be stacked on both sides. Can you imagine an extended version of this for the lazier readers (like me) who prefer sleeping with their books? Cushions on both sides, a small while futon and the transformation is complete. It'll be like reading on a cloud. Or under one. Fluffy comfort. This is the best bookcase in the world.

More at http://www.sakurah.net/ (I can't link it because my update-page isn't functioning very well)

we call this metacomic

There's metafiction and then there's...

A Cry for Help (of sorts)

I am not so sure if I need saving proper but I'll say this anyway:

Help.

I haven't been able to stop buying books. Now, they aren't many and they come back to my room only one at a time, which doesn't appear very threatening but bear in mind, however, that I have cultivated over time an irresistible urge, an urge I haven't been able to suppress no matter how hard I try - something like bees to honey (or flies to rubbish): I keep buying 'em books. I started on my spree with Dostoevsky's Short Stories. A few days before that, Jammi showed up at my place with Peter Pan. Since then, I've purchased Solaris and Wuthering Heights. Meanwhile, I've been making lists, serious lists, mind you. I'll do away with Barth for the moment - I'm not in a PoMo mood, what with the weather and all being so cold and gloomy (yes, it matters).

So let us begin with how Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales looks enticing - and I do mean that quite literally: the font on the cover is delightful! But seriously, I've heard many good things about Carter and I think it's time I checked her out myself. That's one. Two, I'm thinking of getting Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. I remember many years ago, my sister had this book on her shelf. I suppose a vague memory of my father ranting about Seth's brilliance had spurned me to ask her if she'd read it. When she replied in the negative, I presumed, quite naturally, that it would remain on her bookshelf for a long time to come. After all, one does not throw away an epic. As you would imagine, I turned out to be quite mistaken. By the time I was properly interested in post-colonial Indian literature, I'd forgotten about Seth's novel, so when I was reminded last night, I was, needless to say, very keen on reading it. That's two. Three, Dune. I've read countless reviews on this and heard even more wonderful things about it but I have only one fear: that I might get confused with too much going on. But no, that won't stop me from reading at least the first installation of the series.

I am frightened at myself for wanting so much. It seems awfully presumptuous to think I would be able to finish everything (including the unread books on my shelf) and enjoy it simultaneously.