Happy Birthday Virginia Woolf

25 January

Today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday. If she was alive today and people tried to make a big deal out of it, she would probably have smirked, picked up a coffee, denied having a party and retired to her studio with a book. I get her, I think we would have been great pals. Or not :) She would definitely be one of those interesting people in your friend circle. 

Virginia Woolf is so good yet very few read her works. I was just speaking the other day to a couple of friends who are all avid readers and none of them had attempted to read Woolf. Why?

One of them said something quite innocently which really stuck with me - it’s too difficult. Or it is made out to be so, by the keepers of literary eliticism. 

I have come across these people quite a lot in my life and they are nothing short of humbugs, so do not get deterred from getting a taste of great writing when they just drop names like Proust and Blake. Most of them have only read of them.

Virginia Woolf is best known for her “Stream of consciousness” style, which is, if you read it, one of the most easy reads. If you have never read her works, I would suggest you start off with Mrs. Dalloway and get transported into Clarissa Dalloway’s life and mind and effortlessly travel through timelines. Next pick up Orlando, which Woolf had written for her friend Vita Sackville-West. In fact Woolf had gifted the manuscript to Vita, now would you not want to be a friend who gifts you a manuscript? It is funny and charming as it pokes fun at serious issues like the creative life of women and rules of succession. To the Lighthouse requires a little more focus to comprehend, I agree, as it hardly has any physical action and is mostly about the thoughts and reflections. 

Another work of hers which is very powerful is one of her essays - A Room of One’s Own. She makes some very scathing and insightful points about women’s power of expression. One of the points she makes really sticks with me long after I have read, it talks about how women are not free to think of any idea. As soon as she starts thinking of one, rules are imposed upon her and she has forgets it. Today we are living in an age, when much of those rules have been chiseled down, yet there. 

If Woolf was alive today, she would be a poster girl of so many things, I just cannot list them down here. Also, I bet her Twitter following would be bursting. She is very cool, read her.

Reading on Vacation

Thursday, 20 Jan, 11 AM. 

Yes, I am one of those people who always picks up a book at the airport. So it barely happens that I step out without a book in my bag. 

Yesterday was a very special day when the family had a very spontaneous plan of going on a road trip. We packed up in one hour which included lunch, so anyone who knows me would know that would have taken at least 30 minutes. The rest of the time was packing. Now that we have reached the destination we realize we have got most thing and not got so many!

Yet, the books have not been forgotten, by anyone in the family and that makes me happy. 

The one on the top is a board game (The Crew), which all three of us enjoy playing. My son is reading "The Wishing Chair" by Enid Blyton. It is a joy to see him discover Blyton. Maybe I will read it as well.  While I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton as a child, I must confess I have not read this one. I was more the Malory Towers and Famous Five girl. He is almost through with it and tell me it is really good. So he has also got "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens. This is an abridged version and the first Dickens he will be reading, so I am very excited how he likes it. 

Between my husband and me, we picked two Agatha Christie books which were in our shelf and in our TBR list for some time - Crooked House and Death on the Nile. I don't want to talk in detail about Christie here because that cannot be done justice in one sentence or even a paragraph. Since we would be lazing in and by the pool for most of the time, we thought of bringing along some light reads. Last but not the least, there is one non-fiction book - Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson which is a book on business. It's not really something I read, but I am planning to go through a couple of non-fiction books this year. In our house we have a dedicated bookshelf for non-fiction (more on that later). 

For now, let me hit the pool, armed with my sunscreen and Christie. Bye!

Five New Books I Read in 2021

When I was younger, and I mean in school, I had a leather bound notebook where I used to diligently write down the names of books I have read. Later I added notes to these. Needless to say that notebook is long gone. So I thought why not put it here? 

Without much ado I will talk about five new books that I read last year. 

1. A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende: I actually started reading this in the end of 2019 but it followed into the beginning of 2021. Does that count? Well, I am the judge as it is my blog and I say it does. I had thought of reading writers from different languages last year. Often I end up going to the bookstore and picking up the English bestseller of the week and that’s that. So I picked this one up (Allende is Chilean and this book was written in Spanish) and God was it a delight! Written in a Bildungsroman style it follows Viktor and his journey through life. His sense of displacement and efforts to start over were such a joy to read. It is wonderfully layered with different emotions, yet free flowing. Throughout the read I got strong Love in the Time of Cholera vibes. My only worry was losing out on some nuances due to the translation, but still it was thoroughly enjoyable and I would highly recommend. 

2. The Spies - Luis Fernando Verissimo: While on the topic of translated works, let me pick up my next book which was translated from Portuguese. This is a hilarious book and it was so refreshing to read about absolutely ridiculous incidents happening to and with the characters during the most intense moments of their life it reminds me of one of the Bengali writers Parashuram (more on him later). The story is about a publisher who is frustrated with his boring life and the most exciting part of his day is deciding proper placements of punctuation. This dreary life is paused when he receives a manuscript which he perceives to be a distressed cry for help. Soon our man forgets his daily drinking and literary debates to deploy a band of unlikely heroes to a small town in the province to help out this damsel in distress. I enjoyed every bit of it’s funny anecdotes and generally on point comic timing. If you are one who enjoys the bizarre, go for it. 

3. The Shadow Lines - Amitava Ghosh: Sometimes you really admire a writer and you discover a book by him you have not read yet. That’s how I picked this up. Also the previous themes provide a good Segway to this one. Ghosh’s narrator relies on other’s memories to string together a story here and it has themes of displacement of homeland which I seem to be obsessed with. Purba-Poshchim by Sunil Gangopadhyay is on my Very Ambitious TBR List of 2022. That said, there is a lightness with which he describes seemingly serious and violent acts which makes him such a easy and comforting read. The end leaves you with a haunting feeling so reminiscent of The Hungry Tide, it just reminded me why he is such a favourite of all times. 

4. Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart: What do I say about this heartbreaker of a book? It’s the Booker Prize winner so I do not need to put in a testament of the very world class story telling, but what a story! It’s like someone punches you in the gut and you lose all your breath. It is Stuart’s first novel, so I am really looking forward to his next one. There is a something so poignant and profoundly sad about a child taking care of his chronically alcoholic mother that it stays with you long after. And the mother’s self-destructive love for a man who is an absolute imbecile, the children’s knowledge of this and their own individual coping mechanisms. It’s essentially a tragedy of all the characters, but Shuggie’s desperation stays which you and haunts you. Pick it if you are a sucker for tragedy. 

5. Wonder - R.J.Palacio: This is another first time writer and again what a beautiful story. It does not have the linguistic craft which screams classic literature, but it is beautiful in it’s simplicity. Now this is a motion picture streaming on Netflix, starring Julia Roberts. After reading the book over a weekend I tried watching the movie, but I couldn’t. Somehow the images that Palacio manages to conjure in my mind did not match the movie, so I just could not bring myself to it. But enough about the movie. The book traces the story of a child with a facial deformity who is trying to settle in school. Very basic issues of bullying and making friends, losing them and finding true friends. Something about the emotions in the book are so pure that reading it was an absolute delight. Read this!