the worm turns

Read: 'love and longing in bombay' by vikram chandra - dark, funny, intimate, poetic, realistic, all at once. he takes the claustrophobic closeness and familiarity of bombay (i love him for calling the city that. glad he did not make it sound like the middle-aged-maharashtrian-housewifely sounding mum'bai') and makes a glowing collection of interconnected short stories out of it all. a long time since i really enjoyed reading indian authors writing in english. don't get me wrong. some (like rohinton mistry) are a delight, but the familiarity of the subject matters sometimes put me off. i am seriously looking forward to chandra's next. it is a nice thing. this looking forward.

Also read: 'ladies coupe' by anita nair. good in parts, with some really well formed sentences, but i cant help feeling that it is a bit too forced sometimes in its effort to be realistic. and the ending does not fit at all. the characterization goes all wrong there. middle-aged straitlaced spinster having a change of heart overnight, and suddenly becoming a new woman, and celebrating this new found emancipation by seducing a young man she just met on a beach? improbable, to say the least.  

Re-read: 'kari' by amruta patil. the graphic novel is beautifully laid out in black and white and an occasional splash of colour. i read it more for the look than for the story. the story is indeed interesting, and told through the tongue-in-cheeky, vulnerable, yearning voice of the boy-girl protagonist, but it is the graphic effect that is more pleasurable to me. 

i miss having illustrations in the books that i read. who decided that adults dont like to look at pictures as they read? no fair.

Also re-reading: 'persepolis' by marjane satrapi. i have a feeling i shall be doing a few more of this re-reading stuff. of the same book, i mean. the graphics are lovely, and the text is both direct and intelligently funny. i loved this book.  

Reading: 'wyrd sisters' by terry pratchett. what can i say? pratchett is king. i hope (a) he never dies or, (b) if he does, he does it very, very, very many years later. 

Also reading: 'literature and the child' by lee galda and bernice e.cullinan. it covers all genres of childrens'/young adults' literature, offers author profiles, exhaustive booklists and teaching ideas. thought provoking and detailed, galda and cullinan take a good look at how some of the deepest issues known to us are addressed through literature and how our children respond to it. themes like racism, incest, death, identity-crisis, perspectives, self-worth and adolescence are a part of the warp and weft of all literature, and they need to be sensitively treated while in the hands and minds of a child. it is rather steeply priced, though. sometimes i wish i had pots of money. allright, one pot at an opportune moment would do as well.

Dying to read: 'the naked man' by desmond morris. purely scientific interest. and it has some very, shall we say, interestingly named chapters. only thing is, this will be an exchange book. the old ek hath le, ek hath de, kind of deal. to get my paws on this, i'll have to temporarily part with morris's 'the naked ape'. the thought hurts me a great deal. not the getting part, but the giving part. my heart bleeds. i hate lending books. if i had a baby, i might lend her/him to someone for a little while quite gladly, but lending books is beyond me. what this says about my depraved state of womanliness i cannot say, but there it is.