Bibliophilia - I

I hope to regularly review the books I’m reading in this blog. Of course, that presupposes that I am actually regularly reading something worth commenting on. The reading habit I had in school, has experienced a prolonged Near Death Experience, and it is still touch-and-go…

Anyway, I’m halfway through around 4 different books right now. Reading multiple books simultaneously is another habit I’ve picked up in the last two-three years. It usually means I don’t finish reading much, and I usually can’t figure out which one to read, so I watch TV instead!

The combination I’m reading is pretty great, however. Ernst Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises, is supposed to have a “terse” writing style, which has “done much for English prose”. It chronicles the lives of the expat community in Paris, don’t remember the time period. It actually has quite a great effect: for instance, there is this one place where the guy is walking back home fast, eager to go to sleep – he sees someone waving at him, but is too much in a hurry to notice who it is – and then, as he nears his flat, he admires a statute. He reads the inscription, but again, doesn’t bother to remember the exact words. And then, he is speaking of how every room in Paris, probably the world, is furnished the same way…

Then I’m reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This applies what I like to call the Indo-Pak style of English writing. It is the sort of roll-in-the-back-of-your-throat, meandering style – it takes you from the gullys of Karachi to the skyscrapers of New York, all in the same amused, almost snobby (but not quite), tone. So while the first book is terse, this book is all about long sentences, and rather gentle comparisons. The comparisons, paradoxes, and all other devices of the English language are stark and in-your-face in the first one.

Lastly, I’m reading Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to Millenium. I had read his The Great Indian Novel before, or atleast attempted to do so. It was fantastically written, but at some level, the analogies he was drawing were escaping me. I knew that such-and-such character resembles a certain person in India’s freedom struggle; I knew that such-and-such situation is supposed to be funny – but I didn’t know why. So I’m trying out this book instead.

I’ve not got very far with this book, but the first page was enough to give me some hope! He speaks of an article he wrote when he was nineteen – he actually reproduces three paragraphs – and criticizes the “love for big words” and “over-developed vocabulary”. Sounds like someone you know?