Tuesday, December 25, 2007

 

booked

One day in the spring of 1998, Bluma Lennon bought a secondhand copy of Emily Dickinson's poems in a bookshop in Soho, and as she reached the second poem on the first street corner, she was knocked down by a car.

Books change people's destinies. Some have read The Tiger of Malaysia and become professors of literature in remote universities.

that was the start of the paper house (also called the house of paper in some editions ), a very thin novel (103 pages including some nice illustrations) by carlos maria dominguez - the most memorable book that i read this year.(you can read an excerpt from the first chapter here). last year's was ali and nino by the way.

i've never heard of the tiger of malaysia and it made me curious but when i googled the title and tried amazon no such title apparently exists. the closest is sandokan:the tiger of malaysia. but that's not the reason why it's memorable to me . the main reason is , although i'm nowhere near as nutty and addicted to books (i think) as the main character of this little jewel of a book who was also named carlos, i can easily identify with many of his obsession and feelings . but i'm not likely to go troppo as he did - i think and hope.

but some days i do feel well, booked ( as in templed out when you had too much of looking at angkor wat for the day , say) and feel like well, put a match to the whole thing.... but this thankfully is just a fleeting feeling.

i read purely for pleasure and as such i have no specific timelines or deadlines to start or finish any book. i try to discipline myself to be indisciplined. which is very easy for me to do as i'm a hopelessly indesciplined person by nature and inclination. and i don't care for the latest 'must read' authors, or winners of literary prizes or try to be patriotic and read or support local authors and books. i don't care very much for book recommendations either and i never care to recommend any books to anybody either.

all the same you can still feel jaded even when you have too much of a good thing. and now i feel rather tired at mere mention of literary fiction...or booker winners... these new writers, sometimes they can be rather tedious... i think i'll get back to good old story tellings with real stories in it...stories by nikolai gogol for example... then perhaps i won't feel like puting a match to my library....

currently actively reading :

robertson davies- the cunning man
russel banks -the rule of the bone
Anthony burgess - little wilson and big god (autobiography)
in siberia - colin thubron (travel)

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