harish p i
Eileen, the 2016 Man Booker shortlisted novel by Ottessa Moshfegh is not the kind of book that normally appeals to me. It is the story of a woman who has very low self esteem, living a dismal and pathetic existence. Nothing dramatic happens in the first three quarters, except routine, dreary existence of her, always wallowing in self pity. But still, while reading it, I wasn't able to put the book down. There's something about this dark comedy that touches and make you empathetic.
Read the full story here :
http://diaryofaragingbull.blogspot.com/2017/02/eileen-dark-comedy-about-dreary.html
The book consists of a torrent of wise cracks and jokes about post racial US society. As a novel, it doesn't have a strong structure or plot. The whole book gives you a feeling of watching a very long stand-up act about racism. Several of the jokes and observations are ingenious. The author deliberately avoids any meaningful characterisation and keeps them all two dimensional caricatures. Instead of weakening the novel, it makes you not to care for them and concentrate on the rants of the protagonist, which is actually the strong point of the book.
I feel the intention of the book is to criticise the attitude of modern society to avoid discussing of racial difference altogether. The author tries to put forward a view that it is better to go back to the old ways of segregation if there is no atmosphere to openly discuss and agree on racial differences. It is more difficult for the minor ethnicities to live in a society that obliterate it's identity and makes it conform, rather than giving it space to develop its culture. In the novel we can see that segregation leads to better performance of students and general uplifting of the quality of living.
Read the full story here :
http://diaryofaragingbull.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-sellout-by-paul-beatty-loose.html
It is a very fast paced novel and an entertaining read. But I guessed the killer around the halfway point and confirmed it by the time I read 3/4th of it. Still had a good time reading it.
The Sceptical Patriot is a book written by Sidin Vadukut, Indian blogger, writer of Dork series of satirical novels and journalist, that sets out to evaluate how much truth lies in the kind of forwarded stuff that he has named India Facts. I think there won't be any Indian who hasn't encountered forwarded messages containing list of all things that are supposed to make us proud as Indians. Some examples are the claims that India has never attacked another nation in the last 10000 years, or the claim that it was Indians who invented zero.
Read the full story here :
http://diaryofaragingbull.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-sceptical-patriot-auditing-india.html
For me Lajja was a very anticipated read. With all the controversy over it, the subsequent banning by Bangladesh government and the exile of Taslima, it's author, it had made headlines.
But all that enthusiasm faded once I read the book. The intention of the writer was extremely good and she was successful in making the world take notice of the plight of minorities in Bangladesh. Even the plot provided enough chances to exploit extreme emotions. But the structure of the novel, pathetic is the word to aptly describe it, was too crude to make us care for the characters. The conversations and motives of characters were merely mechanical and lacked any semblance to real world. The writing was interspersed with pages of data, very real and disturbing ones, but stated dryly in an off-putting manner.
Lajja has great intentions and a lame execution....
Some Prefer Nettles is a very interesting Japanese novel written in the 1930s. It is about the conflict of a generation of Japanese who are torn between traditional Japanese life and modern Western way of living. It is about a Japanese couple who has decided to part ways amicably. At that time the man forms a unique relationship with his father in law who is a traditionalist. He becomes interested in puppet shows and decides to follow the suit of his father in law.
What really was that...?!!!!
I have read many great novels by Dickens and admire his works. Christmas Carol is the best Christmas Story ever told. But the stories in this collection is totally out of this world.. In a bad way. It's more of some meandering thoughts.
The book is definitely well written. But once it starts, it just never ends. It goes from setups to setups, marvellously described, without any payoffs. Tiresome and... Goldfinch in the story is just a plot device.
“Pakistan wanted to be able to act like Hafez Assad's Syria while demanding that the United States treat us like Israel.”
Read my full blog post on this wonderful book here
I read the greatest satirical piece called The Good Soldier Svejk, long back and was amazed by the wit and callousness it displayed. And then I heard Catch 22 being compared with it. I decided to read it then. But I couldn't get hold of a copy since it was before ebooks became popular.
Meanwhile I read another novel by Heller titled Something Happened and was thoroughly dissappointed by it. It took another couple of years and recommendations from online forums to try Catch 22.
My verdict: The second greatest satirical piece that I read...
The book is a chronological account. It has the feel of a memoir and not that of a political discourse. This vastly improves the readability of the book. The author had personal connection with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and she is able to give a lot of insights into how their relationship worked. Her interactions with different players of the time and their perspectives makes it all the more interesting. I was impressed by her adventures inside the Golden Temple.
Read the full story here :
http://diaryofaragingbull.blogspot.com/2017/01/durbaar-by-tavleen-singh-criticism-of.html
Vangie's Ghosts is a science fiction fantasy novel by Paul Di Filippo that deals with the idea of infinite multiverses, parallel universes, in each of which life goes on like ours but in an altered form, where the events or time are slightly staggered. It explores the possibilities if they are accessible for us, manipulating which we can perform what we may call magic and even experience something close to immortality. The idea has a lot of scope, which the writer gleefully exploits and exhibits to us, taking us through the nooks and corners of his multiverse saga.
Read my detailed review here
It's a collection of eight loosely interconnected stories portraying the French debonair thief Arsène Lupin. The characters seemed to be so enamored by him that one of them even claims he is their national thief. The stories keeps a playfulness and kind of, portrays everything of that time, in a satirical note- that of the decay of French nobility and the greediness of the poor, the folly of the police members and the appetite for sensational stories by the public.
Although our antihero tries very hard to mirror his contemporary genius from the other side of the Channel (who incidentally appears in the last story, only to be satisfied with the short end of the stick), it falls slightly short of his magic.
Baumgartner is a moving novel about grief, old age, and memories, which also serves as a character study of its protagonist. The novel has an episodic structure, recounting the pasts of several characters in flashbacks, interconnected by the train of thoughts of an ageing philosophy professor who is writing a book on human consciousness. The novel is narrated in the third person in a voice that is warm but never bothers to emotionally attach to the narrative. The result is a story that connects to its readers and simultaneously leaves enough space for them to have a detached assessment of it.
Individual stories are good. The atmospheric horror that the author builds and the final pay off is wonderful. But it is a task to read the whole book at a go. These stories were written in several magazines over the course of decades and these are meant to be read like that. Maybe one story every month or so. I tried to read the whole book at a go and it severely hampered the experience. But there is no denying that Lovecraft crafts great stories...
The Teleportation Accident is a hugely enjoyable strange and wild ride through multiple coordinates of space and time, inhabited by the craziest of characters in a hyperbolic narrative. It entertains in a bizarre way, all the while giving our grey cells enough intellectual exercise.
Read full review: http://diaryofaragingbull.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-teleportation-accident-by-nedd.html
Enchantress of Florence is the story of the life of a Mughal princess who was lost at the time of Babar and how her arrival after two generations changes the fate of a city made by wealthiest emperor of Hindustan, Akbar. A handsome foreigner arrives at the darbar of Akbar, pausing as the messenger of Queen of England, murdering the real messenger on the way. The reason for his arrival is to tell a tale... of the beautiful Mughal princess and a Turk warrior of Italian origin (It seems Rushdie has an obsession depicting people with a multiple cultural background) spanning a hundred years and three continents. And through the tale, the princess comes alive... As in Midnight's children, Rushdie weaves the story by using fictional and real characters, like Akbar, Amerigo Vespucci, Birbal and Thansen... And another queer depiction is of the fictional queen, Jodhabai, a figment of imagination of Akbar, who lives as a shadow in the palace of Fatehpur Sikri, respected and envied by all, including the other queens (real of course) till the other princess, Qara Koz, comes alive in the Emperor's imagination dethroning Jodha.
Coleman Hill is a heart-tugging story, part fact and part fiction, that describes the plight of two families, spanning three generations, and their internal struggles to sustain and redeem. It is also a strong testament to the healing power of time and one of the best books that I read this year.
The full review is posted here
This book describes the workings of several dating technologies, like carbon dating, that utilise the atomic properties of materials to decipher the age and other details of an event. Though the subject matter is very technical and requires a basic understanding of chemistry, physics, and a bit of biology to fully comprehend its nitty-gritty, Helfand makes sure that the layman reader is not too confused or bogged down while reading the book. His description is elementary enough to sustain the reader's interest, though he never succumbs to the temptation to dump it down to a level that trivialises its implications.
Dragon Palace has eight stories that compete with each other in a contest of surrealism. All the stories have heavy doses of fantasy with elements of magical realism. I also found the stories to have an ambiguity and texture that is usually found in folktales—not the ironed-out versions that cater to the moralistic needs of modern sensibilities, but the real dark and brooding tales that old grandmothers used to tell during pitch-black nights decades ago.
This is a book about the process of thought- about how we make ourself understand the world around us, and how we usually do a pretty bad job of it. The book is interesting if you are really ready to invest your time and effort. I found it a very long but rewarding read.
There are definitions of History given by several characters in the beginning of the novel. The whole novel is an elaboration of these definitions. Julian Barnes very economically but profoundly reflects on memory, aging and it's effect on our perception of the past.