Books-&-Reading

Slightly better September again - but I have fallen a lot more behind (5 books behind the plan according to the goodreads widget). Most of my reading is currently being done off my kindle which makes it marginally easier to read too. So here goes: Hell’s Corner - David Baldacci: Bought after stumbling on an ad on TV (the dangers of daytime TV I guess). Interesting read, especially given my long hiatus from reading spy-y books. Paradise - Toni Morrison: My first Toni Morrison book. Loved the attention to detail - one I intend to re-read. Another Country - James Baldwin: Bought this off the Kindle store on an impulse. It does seem like I am being drawn to the books I read in my youth all over again…

Thanks to lulls here and there - as opposed to the fast pace at which April, May and June went by - I managed to do a bit of reading: Salman Rushdie’s - Midnight’s Children (1981 Booker Prize winner, 1993 Booker of Bookers Winner & 2008 The Best of the Booker Winner): I read this one mainly on the go, off a hand held device which probably affected my enjoyment of the book. I did think it was a laborious read at times. It might be a thing I have for Booker winners, as I didn’t exactly enjoy my reading of The Finkler Question either earlier in the year. Ian McEwan’s - On Chesil Beach (2007 Booker prize shortlisted): Good read, if only for its description of 1960s England, before the advent of the pill and the mainstream-ing of contraceptives. Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz (2006 New York Times Bestseller): An engaging read on Christianity, and how it is meant to be a passionate relationship not based on stultifying rules. The section on being addicted to solitude hit too close to home too… Definitely one I should re-read at a more leisurely pace. Haruki Murakami’s After Dark: Seven hours one Tokyo night… Part real life, part dream.

The size of the reading list for 2011 is threatening to spiral out of control. And I am adding more to the list… Added two new books to the list - Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Teju Cole’s Open City. That brings to five the books on the list.. Sigh..

Book number two is Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. This was one of the books I’ve actually tried to buy off Amazon and failed - twice (the other one being Teju Cole’s Everyday is for the Thief). I thoroughly enjoyed this one - maybe because Baba Segi used to be a moniker I was known by. My summary: Shoneyin takes polygamous life - the rivalry, the struggle for the bread winner’s attention, the gumption that ensures survival - and condenses it into a compelling narrative. The genius of it all is that is completely believable. ...

I finally finished Howard Jacobsen’s 2010 Man Booker Prize winning offering “The Finkler question” – if plodding through the equivalent of 320 pages on a mobile device can count as reading. The ubiquity of kindle apps for almost every connected device under the sun – and Amazon’s penchant for adding tons of cardboard to shipped books - made me try the iPad + Kindle app combo for reading books this year. In the main, reviews of the book were great - The Guardian , The Independent and The Telegraph all had high praise for the book. Although there were quite a few note worthy constructs sequestered within the text, I did however find reading it a wee bit tiring. What the book did well though, was to endlessly waffle on about the subject of being… ...

In perhaps one of those quirks of timing - which make me wonder if indeed the world is ‘run’ by someone with an almost Machiavellian sense of mirth - Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on social media hit the blogosphere a few days after twitter was leading the way in breaking news of bomb blasts during Nigeria’s 50th year anniversary celebrations. True to type, the response to his article has been immediate and extensive, but largely critical. I suspect that this is to be expected - most people who would write a blog, or tweet, or use foursquare would feel personally chastised by the words that Gladwell offered. ...

“If I have to see the insides of yet another heat exchanger, I just might quit”. So said I to Annie - the intern who assists me at MO Corp - mainly in jest, but with more than just a threat of burnout hovering just beneath the surface. It has been thirty-seven straight weeks of working without a break; thirty-seven weeks of mind numbing, brain frying, geek stuff. It hasn’t helped that I have been largely unable to unburden my mind by reading; unable to let myself loose to indulge in the art of imagination as prompted by others more accomplished than myself. ...

I walked away- with your face stolen from a crowded room……….. Now you are on my skin, in my mouth - and hair as if you were always woven in my walk… Yusef Komunyakaa said it much better than I could ever say…

When in doubt, discretize…. - Probably the most important thing I never learnt

Barry Schwartz, writing in The Paradox of Choice makes a compelling argument - to my mind - for cutting down the options.. One paragraph on the subject of life and partners grabbed my attention. .. inevitably, you will find people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and ’trading up’. The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, “I’m simply not going there' ...