Delightful moments at the movies – Jan 2010 edition

My book reading is going slow and steady and as I haven’t read enough to write my second book post of the year, I thought instead of waiting till I complete my first book (the mammoth ‘War and Peace’) I will write about another thing which is dear to my heart – movies So, here is the list of some interesting movies that I saw last month and what I think about them.

(1) Rettai Vaal Kuruvi (Two-tailed Sparrow) – Directed by Balumahendra - Lead Actors and Actresses : Mohan, Archana, Radhika – This is a Tamil movie which came many years back. It is a story of a man who has two wives and loves them both. Intimate and affectionate scenes between Mohan and Archana on one hand and Radhika on the other are portrayed quite well. The plot is weak and takes on a predictable path after sometime.

(2) Transporter (Part 3) – Directed by Oliver Megaton – Lead Actors and Actresses : Jason Statham, Francois Berleand, Natalya Rudakova – I saw the first part of the ‘Transporter’ series before and liked it. It was a movie which didn’t make one think but was fun to watch. It also had an interesting character of a French police inspector played by Francois Berleand, who quoted Marcel Proust. Thought I will watch the third part and see what Francois Berleand says now. The third part was quite average and the premise behind the movie is starting to jade a little bit. Also Hong Kong actress Shu Qi who played the heroine’s role is the first part was way better than Natalya Rudakova. The saving grace is Francois Berleand. He does what is expected of him, and quotes Dostoevsky this time But even there, his quoting of Proust was better

(3) Being There - Directed by Hal Ashby – Lead Actors and Actresses : Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Richard Dysart – Beautiful movie about a gardener who doesn’t know to read and write but who likes watching TV and who gets ejected out of his employer’s home after his employer dies. He accidentally ends up in a millionaire’s house and gets exposed to the high and the mighty and soon becomes famous and the toast of the town. Peter Sellers’ performance as the innocent gardener is wonderful. I liked Shirley MacLaine’s performance too. Film Critic Roger Ebert has rated this as one of the great movies. This is my first ‘good’ movie of the year

(4) Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Directed by Woody Allen – Lead Actresses and Actors : Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz – Woody Allen leaves his imprint in the movie. However out of his recent movies, I liked ‘Scoop’ and ‘Matchpoint’ more. Scarlett Johansson seems to be his favourite actress now. I like Rebecca Hall’s acting and she has done well in this movie too. Liked Javier Bardem’s role in this movie – very different from his role in ‘No Country for Old Men’. The role played by the father of Javier Bardem’s character was also quite nice – he writes poetry but refuses to publish it. Reminded me of Roberto Bolano and Arthur Rimbaud. Penelope Cruz was good in her Oscar winning role.

(5) The Hurt Locker – Directed by Kathryn Bigelow – Lead Actors : Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty – Excellent movie and a potential Oscar winner. Set in Iraq during the American occupation. Jeremy Renner as the team leader of a bomb disposal squad has acted wonderfully. No major women characters in the movie except for a professor’s wife who comes in a scene and Jeremy Renner’s character’s wife who comes at the end for a few minutes. It was interesting to discover that Kathryn Bigelow is the ex-wife of James Cameron. Both of them are competing for the Best Picture Oscar this year. Will be interesting to see what happens during the awards ceremony.

(6) Julie and Julia - Directed by Nora Ephron – Lead Actresses and Actors : Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Chris Messina, Stanley Tucci - Nice movie about food and cooking and life. Loved the concept and the way the movie evokes delicious sensations and the aroma of food. Also liked the way the movie depicted the relationship between Julie and her husband Eric. Meryl Streep is good as Julia Child. It was interesting to see Stanley Tucci in a role different from his usual comic ones.

(7) Doubt - Directed by John Patrick Shanley – Lead Actresses and Actors : Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis – Beautiful story which leaves the viewer with questions in the end. Meryl Streep’s performance is awesome – an amazing contrast when compared to her performance in ‘Julie and Julia’. Such an unbelievable actress! Hoffman is awesome as usual! Amy Adams does well as a junior nun. Viola Davis gives a powerful performance in a one-scene role. Interesting thing about the movie was that all the main actors and actresses were nominated for an Oscar but none of them won. Someone should have – their performances were so good.

(8) Avatar – Directed by James Cameron – Lead Actors and Actresses : Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Laz Alonso, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang – Old story, which is very similar to that of Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with Wolves’. Some ideas in the movie also seem to be inspired by ‘The Matrix‘. But the depiction of the planet Pandora – the flora, the fauna, the landscape and the people – is really wonderful. The environmental message that the film carries is also nice. I liked the alien heroine very much! I also loved the scene where the hero and a strange animal roar at each other and the animal beats a retreat and the hero thinks he has won the territory fight, but then discovers that there is a bigger and more wilder animal behind him (My friend tells me that even this scene is there in Jurassic Park. James Cameron seems to have been inspired by different things while writing the story for this movie). As a movie with artistic merit, I wouldn’t rate it high (‘Dances with Wolves’ tells a similar story in a more beautiful way), but as a pathbreaker and trendsetter in terms of blending real action with lifelike animation, I would rate it quite high. Must see movie.

(9) Finding Neverland – Directed by Mark Foster – Lead Actors and Actresses : Kate Winslet, Johnny Depp, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman – Nice movie which has one of my favourite actresses Kate Winslet. Movie depicts the life of J.M.Barrie, who wrote ‘Peter Pan’ and his inspiration behind it and his platonic love for Sylvia Llewellyn Davis. Liked the roles played by Johnny Depp (as J.M.Barrie) and Kate Winslet (as Sylvia Davis) very much.

(10) The Blind Side - Directed by John Lee Hancock – Lead Actresses and Actors : Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates, Lily Collins, Jae Head – Interesting movie. But I found the topic a bit cliched. Sandra Bullock is good but this is not my favourite movie of hers. I liked her performance more in ‘Crash’ and in ‘While You Were Sleeping’. Among sports movies I saw recently, I liked ‘Pride’ more. Sandra Bullock has been nominated for an Oscar for her performance in this movie – I think her role is a ‘feel-good’ one but not really an Oscar winning one. But looking at the way the Academy has given awards recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wins the Oscar.

(11) A Very Long Engagement - Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet – Lead Actresses and Actors : Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jean-Pierre Becker, Jodie Foster, Marion Cotillard – Good movie. Love Audrey Tautou’s performances and so enjoyed this movie of hers too. French movies have this light-hearted and humorous way of telling a serious story and sometimes the sadness too is there in the humour. This movie has all that. Saw Jodie Foster in a movie after a long time. I thought it was her, but wasn’t sure, because I haven’t seen American actresses acting in movies in other languages and so checked the credits in the end and discovered that it was indeed her. It was nice to see Jodie Foster speak in French and see her doing it well too.

(12) Atonement – Directed by Joe Wright - Lead Actresses and Actors : Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave – Beautiful movie with a sad ending, which is based on Ian McEwan’s novel. Nominated for the Oscars in 2008. It is a shame that it didn’t win the Best Picture Award (‘No Country for Old Men‘ did). I have seen Keira Knightley only in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ before – she acts quite well too, in addition to being beautiful. Saoirse Ronan does quite well as Briony. My favourite scene is when Briony, when she is a nurse, talks to a soldier in French and comforts him, when he is close to his final moments. I haven’t read Ian McEwan’s books before, but going by the evidence of this movie, I think he must be quite an interesting writer. Will try to get my hand on some of his books.

Reading Adventure – Reading ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy – 1

As part of my reading goal this year, I decided to read a few big classic novels One of them is ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy. Inspired by two of my friends, who have probably read it more than once, I have made multiple attempts in past years to read this classic, but for one reason or another I haven’t been able to continue with my reading effort. ‘War and Peace’ is a mammoth classic (my edition is 1358 pages long with small font – if the font size had been bigger, the size of the book would have increased by atleast 50% to around 2000 pages!). One needs to put in the time and effort to read it and do justice to this epic book and be rewarded by the experience. I decided that I will put in the required time and effort this year. And what is more, instead of procrastinating, I decided that it will be first book that I will read this year I started reading it a couple of days back, and have finished around 125 pages till now. The classic translation of ‘War and Peace’ is the one by Constance Garnett, but the one I am reading is a new translation by Anthony Briggs.

If you haven’t read the book before, here is a two-line summary : The book is set during the the war between France and Russia at the time of Napoleon. ‘War and Peace’ describes the fortunes, lives and loves of some of the story’s fictional characters and families during this time.

I am giving below some of my favourite lines from the book, from the chapters of the book that I have read till now.

His French was the elegant tongue of our grandparents, who used it for thought as well as speech, and it carried the soft tones of condescension that come naturally to an eminent personage grown old in high society and at court.

As tends to happen with the best-looking women, a defect – in this case a short lip and a half-open mouth – came out as a distinctive and beautiful feature.

Just as a skilful head waiter can pass off as a supreme delicacy a cut of beef that would be inedible if you’d seen it in the filthy kitchen, Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests that evening first the viscount and then the abbe as if they were supreme delicacies.

If everybody fought for nothing but his own convictions, there wouldn’t be any wars.

Even in the very warmest, friendliest and simplest of relationships you need either flattery or praise in the way that you need grease to keep wheels turning.

…she was at that charming age when the girl is no longer a child, and the child is not yet a young girl.

There was a smoothness in the way she moved, a gentle suppleness in her little limbs and a kind of wary aloofness that suggested a pretty half-grown kitten that would one day turn into a lovely cat.

Sonya half-rose, and the kitten in her revived, its eyes gleaming; it seemed ready to flick its tail, pounce about on its soft paws and start playing with a ball, as good kittens do.

At this point, Princess Marya sighed and looked around at the tall mirror to her right. The glass reflected a feeble, unattractive body and a skinny face. The ever-gloomy eyes looked at themselves more hopelessly than ever. ‘She’s flattering me,’ thought the princess as she turned back to read on. But Julie was not flattering her friend; her eyes were large, deep and radiant (sometimes a warm light seemed to pour out of them), really so winsome that very often, in spite of the plainness of the face as a whole, her eyes held a greater appeal than mere beauty. But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression in her own eyes, an expression they assumed only when she wasn’t thinking about herself. Like everyone else, her face took on a strained, artificial and disagreeable expression the moment she looked at herself in the mirror.

We love people not so much for the good they have done to us as for the good we have done to them.

The regiment stirred itself like a bird settling its feathers…

Hope you enjoyed reading the above lines. I will post more of my favourite quotes, after I read more of the book.

Reading resolutions for 2010 :)

It is time to write about my reading resolutions for the year. This year, I thought that instead of setting a target for the number of books – which tempt me to read shorter books and avoid classics and other thicker books like books on science – I will set a target for the kinds of books I will read and specific books that I would like to read. I gave some thought to this, and the initial list that I came up with was quite ambitious. But after a lot of  thinking I pared the list down, and this is how it looks like.

1. Read the following books
   1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
   2. Natasha’s Dance by Orlando Figes
   3. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
   4. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
   5. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
   6. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
   7. A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
   8. Umrao Jan Ada by Mirza Hadi Ruswa
   9. Sevasadan by Premchand
   10. Adventures of a Bystander by Peter Drucker
2. Read one book of poems
3. Read one book of essays
4. Read one book on sport
5. Read one book on science
6. Read one book of humour
7. Read one biography / autobiography
8. Read one book by or about Shakespeare
9. Read one book in Tamil (potential choices could be ‘Mannan Magal’ and ‘Kanni Maadam’ by Sandilyan, ‘Alai Osai’ and ‘Kanaiyaazhiyin Kanavu’ by Kalki, One of Kalki’s anthologies, ‘SMS Emden 22-09-1914′ by Diwakar, Vaasanthi’s short story collection, ‘Nandipurathu Nayagi’ by Vikraman, ‘Moga Mul’ by K.Janakiraman, ‘Manipallavam’ by N.Parthasarathy, ‘Yayati’ by V.S.Kandekar (Tamil translation), ‘Sanga Noor Kaatchigal’ by K.V.Jagannathan, ‘Aranmanai Ragasiyam’ by P.Vijay, ‘Villodu Vaa Nilave’ by Vairamuthu, ‘Kayalvizhi’ by Akilan, Pudumaipithan short story collection, Sundara Ramasamy short story collection)
10. Read one book in Russian (potential choices could be one of Anton Chekhov’s plays or one of his short story collections, one of Ivan Turgenev’s novellas, Mikhail Lermontov’s ‘A Hero of Our Time’ or one of Alexandra Marinina’s mysteries)

As it is, the above list looks pretty ambitious. If I can do it, it will be my best ever reading year Please pray for me

2009 – A Year of Reading :)

2009 has been an interesting year for me, with respect to reading. When I started the year, I wanted to read less books, but I wanted to read some of the big books and classics, which I had been wanting to read for sometime. Now at the end of the year, and the beginning of a new one, when I look back, I find that I have read some interesting books and have been able to read the number of books that I wanted. (I wanted to read 24 books, and I read 30). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to read the classics that I wanted to. I hope to read them during the coming year.

Here is the list of books that I read in 2009, with the links to the reviews I had posted.

1. Berlin : City of Stones (Book One) by Jason Lutes
2. Berlin : City of Smoke (Book Two) by Jason Lutes
3. What Good are the Arts? by John Carey
4. The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey
5. A Many Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin
6. At Large and At Small : Confessions of a Literary Hedonist by Anne Fadiman
7. Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner and others
8. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
9. The Code of the Woosters by P.G.Wodehouse
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
11. Coraline by Neil Gaiman and Craig Russell
12. Book Lover by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack
13. This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M.Homes
14. Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy
15. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
16. Playing Hardball : A Kent County Cricketer’s Journey into Big League Baseball by E.T.Smith
17. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
18. Six Graves to Munich by Mario Puzo
19. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
20. Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
21. God’s Debris by Scott Adams
22. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
23. The Wit of Cricket – compiled by Barry Johnston
24. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
25. Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
26. Science and Religion : A Very Short Introduction by Thomas Dixon
27. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
28. Walkabout by James Vance Marshall
29. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
30. Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kubert

I hope to read new and interesting books in 2010 too. Hope you can join me in this journey

I will take your leave now by wishing you and your near and dear ones a very Happy and Wonderful New Year, filled with lots of joy and fun and wonderful surprises and books! Hope all your dreams and more come true this year!

Book Review No.28 – Fax from Sarajevo by Joe Kubert

One of my dear friends, who inspires me with her reading (she was the first person – and for a long time the only person – I knew who had read Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’) gifted me the book ‘Fax from Sarajevo’ by Joe Kubert many months back. It was a collector’s edition and it was out of print. I have been reading the introduction, flipping the pages, reading a bit here and there, but not really reading the book to complete it. I keep my favourite books aside and read them slowly and try to spread the enjoyment for the longest time. I was doing that to this book Sometime this month I realized that I have to really read it and enjoy the book as a whole rather than reading a snippet here and there. So, I took the book and read it from the beginning to the end. Here is the review.

Summary of the story

I am giving below the summary of the book as given in the back cover.

In this full-color graphic story, comics legend Joe Kubert has produced, without question, the greatest and most personal work of a long and distinguished career. This is the story of Joe’s friend Ervin Rustemagic, as he and his family struggled to preserve their lives and dignity during the eighteen-month siege of Sarajevo in 1992-93. Ervin had nothing to rely on but the tenuous lifeline of a fax machine to communicate with his friends during the war. From hundreds of faxes detailing everything from the atrocities committed in the name of “ethnic cleansing” to the ever-present fears and frustrations of the Rustemagic family, Kubert has expertly pierced together a truly heart-wrenching story of a very real tragedy and, ultimately, of unflagging hope.

Here is another description of the book from the inside flap.

In 1945, we told the world, “Never again.” In 1992, we forgot our promise.

That was the year the war broke out in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The year that genocide revisited the planet. That was the year that Ervin Rustemagic and his family found themselves trapped in a city under siege.

An international businessman and art agent, Ervin had grown up in Sarajevo, and, for more than a decade, run his business there. When the shells and gunfire tore the city asunder, Ervin’s only means of communication with the outside world was his fax machine, through which he began to send rapid-fire messages. Messages that were faxed and re-faxed among Ervin’s many clients and friends.

For client and friend Joe Kubert, these faxes were a story unfolding, a story of horror, outrage, and inhumanity. Doing what he had done for years, Joe put the story on paper. The result is perhaps the highest achievement of one of comics’ greatest living masters : a story of hope and promise against the worst kind of odds. It’s the story of war, a very real war, told from the point of view of the innocent victims. It is the story of survival.

What I think

I found the book quite interesting, touching and sometimes very scary. I wasn’t following the international news much when the civil war in Bosnia was going on. I remember having an argument and quarrelling with one of my friends when the NATO forces bombed some parts of Yugoslavia and the bombs hit civilian targets – my friend supported the bombing and I didn’t. (To be fair, after reading this book, I realize now that she might have been right and I might have been wrong). I also remember former tennis player Goran Ivanisevic, making statements against Serbia, and supporting the Croatian cause, at tennis tournaments during those times. But, otherwise, I didn’t know a lot about the post-Yugoslavia scenario, when war erupted between Serbia and other former-Yugoslavian republics. This book gives a snapshot of that period, from the perspective of one family, who suffered during that time. The story is touching, moving and sometimes unbelievable. It is difficult to believe that things like this, which we see in movies, actually happened, not long time back. One of the characters in the story talks about concentration camps and about mercenary snipers targeting children because they were easy targets. The book also describes how tough, life was, during the siege of Sarajevo and how people lived through those terrible times with unflagging hope and how they also managed to bring happiness to each other during those trying times. Sometimes I had to pinch myself  to realize that the book was not a story but was a record of real events. In one of the faxes, the main character in the story, Ervin, says this :

To all of us here it looks ridiculous now when we look back and remember some terrorists’ actions in Italy, France or England…When terrorists have killed 5, 6 or dozen persons. How much fuss was made about such terrorists’ acts?!? And we have here hundreds of such terrorists’ acts every day and nobody cares! New York, London, Paris, Rome or Hamburg are being very much shocked when a bomb explodes in metro or railway station…And only in our district of Dobrinja (residential area of Sarajevo where we live) over 250,000 bombs and grenades have exploded so far…

One can’t help but feel for Ervin. Unfortunately, international law is not strong enough to prevent atrocities within a country by the countries own rulers. Also, in a situation like this, when a country declares independence, and the parent country hasn’t accepted it, the situation is fluid and no one intervenes till the dust settles down. Unfortunately, this is no consolation for the people who live in the war-torn zone, and suffer a lot of turmoil because of things beyond their control.

One of the interesting things I liked in the story is the name of the main character and his family members – Ervin, Edina, Edvin and Maja. All beautiful names and the first three rhyme Another interesting thing which I found was that the book describes Sarajevo as a multi-religious and multi-ethnic city and that seems to be the case with the whole of Bosnia and the story suggests that ethnic cleansing was done by the Serbs. I don’t know what is the objective version of history with respect to the events in Bosnia – I will have to do a little bit of research into it – but if the facts suggested by the book are true, then it follows that NATO forces were actually fighting on behalf of the Muslims of the erstwhile Yugoslavia, when it decided to send its bombers. It is an interesting fact to ponder in these post-9/11 days. I am looking forward to doing more research on the breakup of Yugoslavia and what actually happened in Bosnia.

I have a couple of other observations on the book. One of it is that sometimes the story moves in fits and starts and the scenes don’t transition in a smooth manner. But, when one realizes that it is actually a narration of real events, then one realizes that the the fits-and-starts character of real events is captured on the page. Another observation that I have on the book is on how much can be lost, when a real person is depicted by words or even by pictures. For example, Ervin’s wife Edina is shown as a normal homemaker, who takes care of her children and cries a lot and is depressed during the events of the story, but in the back pages, there is a photograph of Edina, in which she doesn’t look that way at all. She has the face of someone who is ready to withstand any pain and fight against all odds. She also has beautiful Slavic eyes, which I am fascinated with, which doesn’t come through in the main story. It just shows that it is extremely difficult to depict all facets of reality in a story – even if the story is in pictures.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed reading ‘Fax from Sarajevo’ very much, though the story is at times sad, depressing and scary. I have to thank my friend for introducing me to this classic. If you like reading personal accounts of historical events, you will like reading this book. If you need some motivation, I will add some spice here : this book won both the Eisner and Harvey awards and so it has got a lot of critical acclaim too

Book Review No.27 – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I haven’t read any of Dickens’ shorter works before and I thought this was a good time to try reading one of them. I got inspired by some of my friends’ suggestions and decided to read ‘A Christmas Carol’. I read it in one sitting today. Here is the review.

Summary of the story

I am giving below a summary of the story as given in the back cover.

Scrooge is a mean old man with no friends or family to love him – he’s just so miserable and bitter! One freezing cold Christmas Eve, Marley’s Ghost pays Scrooge a visit and an eerie night-time journey begins. The Christmas spirits are here to show Scrooge the error of his nasty ways. By visiting his past, present and future, will Scrooge learn to love Christmas and the others around him?

What I think

I had seen a movie version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ before called ‘Scrooged’ and it was nice to read the story in the original. I liked it very much. I first came across the name of Scrooge in Disney comics, which I used to read when I was in school, in which Uncle Scrooge is a famous character, who is rich and miserly, and who is also the uncle of Donald Duck. It was interesting to discover that Uncle Scrooge was based on the main character of ‘A Christmas Carol’. The book also made me remember some of the real-world Scrooges whom I have met – who kept their money in the bank and didn’t like spending a penny, who didn’t know how to enjoy life and refused to let others enjoy their lives. But, when we read the book, we sympathize with Scrooge. The story also made me remember a quote from a movie I saw sometime back called ‘The Peaceful Warrior’ in which one of the lead characters says : “The ones that are hardest to love are the ones that need it the most.” It was also interesting to know from the book that Charles Dickens made the phrase, ‘dead as a doornail’‘, popular, through this book. (It is also the title of one of Charlaine Harris’ vampire novels in the Sookie Stackhouse series).

In his introduction to this book, Anthony Horowitz, who writes children books, says this about Dickens, which I found quite interesting :

I didn’t always love Charles Dickens. The first book of his that I read – it was Hard Times – landed on my desk with a dull thud and a small cloud of dust when I was at school, aged about sixteen, and I’m afraid I found it very heavy-going. The industrial setting was grim and depressing. The author seemed to use an awful lot of words to tell his story, and quite a lot of those words had far too many syllables for my liking. There were too many pages. It all felt too much like hard work.

That’s the trouble with Dickens. People think of him as a ‘great’ writer, which can be a little off-putting. He has a nasty habit of turning up in English Literature exams…definitely not an enjoyable experience. And the honest truth is that if you read him too early, you can be turned off him for life – which is a great pity.

Because what is really great about Dickens is that he was a wonderful storyteller with ghosts, murderers, lunatics, lovers, revolting villains, dashing heroes, eccentric aunts and lovable rogues across the pages. He created a huge cast of unforgettable characters, many of whom are still famous all over the world.

Favourite Lines

I am giving below some of my favourite lines from the book.

And yet I should have clearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed reading ‘A Christmas Carol’. As Horowitz says in his introduction : “it’s a perfect book to dip into, to get a first taste of Dickens. It’s short. It’s easy to read. And although you may think you know the story, it may still surprise you.”

If you haven’t read Dickens before and would like to start with one of his smaller works, this well-loved beautiful story is a good place to start.

You can also read a review of this book by fellow book-blogger Kelly here.

The Art of Praise – Part 1

Whenever I start reading a book, the first thing I do is read the blurb – on the back cover, the inside flap and the praises showered on the book and the writer by different reviewers and writers. I do it out of a force of habit. Most of the time the praise is glowing and exaggerated and not interesting. But once in a while, I stumble upon a comment which is beautiful – because of the language the reviewer has used – or which makes me nostalgic or makes me smile. Most of these praises are sung in honour of the author or the book or in the case of biographies, the personality on whom the book is based on. Whenever I have discovered these delightful gems, I have felt that these short lines offer an education in the art of praise in its most refined form.

I thought I will share the pleasure I get from these delightful gems which showcase the art of praise. So, here are some of the best ones that I saw recently. Hope you enjoy reading them.

“Everything that has been said about Le Guin – that she is a lush prose stylist, that she is a poet in every line, that her books make readers think and thinkers read – is here on display in her newest Hainish novel. It is elegant, elegaic, enormously compressed…and simply pulls the readers along. Not in the hobbledehoy pace of major page-turners but in the graceful elliptical manner of one of the Old Tellers.”

- Jane Yolen, author of Briar Rose
(on Ursula Le Guin’s novel ‘The Telling’ as quoted in the first page of Le Guin’s ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’)

“Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon – a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original.”
- New York Times
(as given in the back cover of Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’)

“There were many rumours about Keith, and they were all true…”
- Richie Benaud on Keith Miller
(as given in the back cover of ‘Keith Miller : The Life of a great all-rounder’ by Roland Perry)

My Favourite Economist

I normally don’t write a post like this – which has got nothing to do with books, literature or sport, but I thought I will make an exception today. I read in the newspaper today that Paul Samuelson, the revered American economist passed away during the weekend. It was sad news, because Samuelson was one of the academics and economists my friends and I admired the most, when we were students. Economics is not a good profession to be in today because leading economists are ridiculed for not having been able to predict the big economic depression that descended last year. Many people probably question what is the use of a field, which calls itself a science, but which is not able to do what a scientific field should – predict what happens when a particular set of conditions exist. But in those starry-eyed student days, some of the economists were our heroes and Paul Samuelson was the superstar who towered above all of them.

Paul Samuelson was a genius and an allrounder – he was to Economics what Gary Sobers was to Cricket. (Pardon me for the cricket analogy – if you are not a cricket fan, you can replace Gary Sobers with Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Steffi Graf, Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens, Michael Johnson, Daley Thompson or Jackie Joyner Kersee). Or a different way of saying that would be that he was the Newton of Economics. He did important work in multiple areas of economics and sometimes created new branches of economics because of his innovative work and left his stamp in each of them – something which is extremely difficult to do in these days of specialization. He was also the first to use rigorous mathematics in economics to showcase a particular idea. Before Samuelson, most economists wrote verbal descriptions of theories, and mathematical models were frowned upon. Samuelson changed all that.

Samuelson also headed the newly setup Economics department of MIT and built it into an institution which produced a succession of Nobel Laureates. He led the trend by becoming the first American Nobel prize winner of Economics, and many of his students went on to emulate their teacher. Samuelson’s pioneering textbook on economics for college students, which was published more than 60 years back, continues to be the most important economic textbook for students and the textbook most used by teachers. I have a few editions of it – I got the last one a couple of years back In the book, in the last passage of the introduction, Samuelson says : “As you begin your journey into the land of markets, it would be understandable if you are anxious. But take heart. The fact is that we envy you, the beginning student, as you set out to explore the exciting world of economics for the first time. This is a thrill that, alas, you can experience only once in a lifetime. So, as you embark, we wish you bon voyage!” These words have inspired generations of students (including me) to study economics.

I don’t know much about Samuelson’s life and what his political and social views were. But I know one thing – he was, is and will be a legend in his field. For generations of students, he was the one who gave economics its sex-appeal, and inspired novices like me to dream of becoming an economist. He is one of my heroes. How I wish I were still that age, when I was a student – when being a student was fun, and academics and professors and Nobel prize winners were our heroes and heroines.

Hope Samuelson is watching the world from the Elysian fields and smiling at how new students are discovering his favourite subject and how his successors in his chosen profession are pushing the frontiers of knowledge into exciting new terrain.

You can read a tribute to Samuelson on NYT here.

Book Review No.26 – Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

I discovered ‘Walkabout’ by James Vance Marshall, when I was browsing books in the children / YA literature section of the bookshop recently. When I read the blurb, I discovered that the story was set in Australia. It looked quite enticing and so I thought that I will get it and read it. I started reading it yesterday evening and finished it in one sitting. Here is the review. I will say something here before I continue. Please pardon me for the length of my review. I tend to write more about things that I like. I hope that is a good excuse

Summary of the story

I am giving below the summary of the story as given in the back cover.

Mary and Peter are the only survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Australian desert. They are exhausted and starving when they meet an Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive. But an inevitable clash of cultures leads to a tragic misunderstanding.

Julia Eccleshare says this in her introduction to the book :

At its heart this is a story of survival – two children, stranded in the Australian outback when their plane crashes, must find food, water and shelter if they are to stay alive – but Walkabout is also much, much more than that. It’s a journey of emotional enrichment that takes Mary and Peter from knowing only the simple stereotypes of their upbringing to a new appreciation of a great deal that was previously unknown.

What I think

I enjoyed reading ‘Walkabout’ very much. It was an undiscovered treasure for me. James Vance Marshall’s prose is easy to read and the story is interesting from the beginning till the end. The book reminded me in some ways of ‘The Coral Island’ by R.M.Ballantyne (it was one of my favourite books, when I was in school) – because that was also a story of children who were stranded in an island. The difference was that in ‘Walkabout’ the children are stranded in the middle of a continent, and this part of the continent is so desolate, that it is similar to being stranded in an island. There is a description of this in one of the early chapters, which goes like this.

Sturt Plain, where the aircraft had crashed, is in the centre of the Northern Territory. It is roughly the size of England and Wales combined; but instead of some 45,000,000 inhabitants, it has roughly 4,500, and instead of some 200,000 roads, it has two, of which one is a fair-weather stock route. Most of the inhabitants are grouped around three or four small towns – Tennant Creek, Hooker Creek, and Daly Waters – which means that the rest of the area is virtually uninhabited. The Plain is fourteen hundred miles from Adelaide and is not a good place to be lost in.

It is quite interesting that, though we think today, that most of the world is known and is inhabited by people, there are parts of the world which are still uninhabited and are desolate and wild. ‘Walkabout‘ was published fifty years back, and so things might have changed today in Northern Territory, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still desolate and wild lands out there.

Book Review No.25 – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

I discovered Madeleine L’Engle’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ through my fellow book blogger, Emily, who recommended it very much (You can read her post on Madeleine L’Engle, here). When I went to the bookshop to get Christmas and New Year cards, I decided to spend sometime in the children’s / YA (Young Adult) section of the bookshop. There, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ leapt at me I started reading it day before yesterday. The prose was easy to read and the story was fast-paced and I finished it yesterday. Here is the review.

Summary of the story

I am giving below the summary of the story as given in the introduction to the book, by Julia Eccleshare.

Meg needs to find her father. His disappearance is mysterious and inexplicable. Nasty teachers and school friends hint at him just taking off and leaving his family; but Meg knows better and she is determined that he’ll come home – even if it means she’ll have to travel through time and space to find him.
And that is just what she does. Accompanied by her new friend Calvin and her little brother Charles Wallace, both of whom have very unusual powers, Meg sets off with Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, three strange neighbours who promise to help. It’s a journey fraught with danger. Survival depends on relying both on intelligence – of the most questioning scientific kind – and love.
Written almost half a century ago, A Wrinkle in Time is a journey through time itself, and stands the test of time quite remarkably. Helped by adaptations for television and other media, it has sold over eight million copies worldwide, making Madeleine L’Engle, who died in 2007, one of the bestselling and best-loved American children’s authors.