Books

The conspicuous absence of any mention of books from the last post was on purpose. I got book tagged a while ago by Diwaker . Although given a choice, I would rather choose not to answer the dreadful questions being asked in the tag, I will go ahead and do it. May be as a way to make up for all the visits when you come here and find nothing new.

The tag asks me for all the books that I read last year. But first a more interesting piece of trivia. How many books do you think I bought last year? I haven't counted but they will be over 50 any day, may be close to 60 which means one for almost every week. And how many did I read? Precisely 2. Now you know why I wanted to avoid the question.

Anyway, now that the ghost is out of the bottle, I would follow it up with another one. It turns out that this lazy bum who cannot manage to post regularly even on one blog, actually has another blog where he writes about the books that he reads. Of course, since I read only 2 books this year, that blog has very few posts. You can find them at Virtual Marginalia . For the lazy ones, here are the books that I read:

1. Catcher in the Rye
2. Lucknow ki Paanch Raatein

The second one has been a common read for a lot of people who are around me in the blogosphere and I can lay claim to that. I read the book on a train journey to lucknow from Bangalore and it was a magical experience. Read the rest at the above mentioned blog.

Apart from these 2, however, I have been reading some Hindi poetry, which I think can't be and shouldn't be counted as the books read. One of the best finds of the year was a old copy of Kanupriya that I bought without knowing about it from a second hand book store. If you have any taste for Hindi poetry, I would say don't miss it. New copies are available in Lucknow and I guess you can find it at other places also.

Another one was a collection of love poems by Ashok Vajpayee. The book is no master piece and is in fact quite ordinary for most of the part. The emphasis on being explicit, almost nude if we can say that, leave you with bad taste again and again. According to my classification, half of the book is nice material to be included in a Sex education text book where it would be more in context. There are however, instances of brilliant imagination, some sparks here and there and as anyone reading poetry would tell you, one good poem can pay for all the effort spent reading the ordinary ones.

The striking feature of the two books has been that they are in free verse, almost prose poem. I have a strong bias for rhyme and flow in poetry but Kanupriya showed me how any medium or any form can come alive in the hands of a master. When filled with content appropriately, any forms can work wonders. The problem comes when the form in there just for sake of itself. When form and not the content, becomes the symbol of rebellion, the revolution is achieved only in minds and not in the hearts.

Anyway, I am still too inexperienced to comment on such things. My aim this year is to finish all the books that I amassed last year. Hopefully in the process, I would waste some more margins :)

Comments

Braveheart said…
"When form and not the content, becomes the symbol of rebellion, the revolution is achieved only in minds and not in the hearts."

Very well said! The form must be chosen by the content and nothing else. Like the meaning should choose the word and never the other way around.

-- Akshaya
Anonymous said…
need to read the first book..having been out of touch with hindi, god knows how long it will take me to read a novel .how have you been..I moved ages ago. Sorry about not informing. change my link.:)

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