Blurb!

Well... I'm so happy to share with you, my first recognition that came my way. To tell you the truth, this is the first time i have ever tried posting for a contest...and somehow i am lucky enough to feature in the best 'five'.... thanks to all my readers .. as also my friends and my wife who inspire me to write and post.... also, a big thanks to that unknown friend who convinced me to sent an entry to this particular contest.. Thank You all... You can read my entry here : Old Books, Old Memoirs - The Fountainhead

and I connect with bloggers at BlogAdda.com 1989 it was, and I was a petite 12 year old, and I along with my classmates, a group of 45 students, in our Seventh Grade.   We were part of the Bharathamatha Family, a Christian Missionary Convent, when this young and vivacious teacher took charge of our English Class.   Her Name was Sushma Menon and when she entered, the whole of 40 boys were awed by her charm.   Little did we know that she was married and not ‘just out of college’ as we had thought when we first saw her. Anyhow, the first class it has been, and as usual she started with introductions, first with herself and then asking us each one to introduce ourselves and then tell her as also the rest of us about our reading habits.   So we were to tell our names, and the book that we were currently reading. So we started one by one.   Ironically, we were not avid readers then, and even if some of us (including me!) read anything, we just about graduated to...

Last sunday, I was on my usual mall crawling and shoppin spree, and out of my inclination, I stepped into the corner bookshop. My idea was to pick up the new Chetan Bhagat novella, the 3 Mistakes of my life. When I was about to pay up, I discovered to my delight, as his earlier books, this one too..cost very little just 95 bucks...! These days, a movie in a multiplex in delhi costs about 200 bucks, add to that a bucket of popcorn and a mug of cola, and with that money, I could buy all three of his books, still saving me some for my grub! But quite unlike the movie at the multiplex, the book is delighting, fresh and just out of the stable...and as usual, just like in his earlier books, Chetan Bhagat indulges in some preaching too and yes of course on his fav topic.. self-development. if on first time it was the Three IIT'ians, and then it were the five Call Centres', this time it is the turn of three friends from Ahmedabad, who are inturn bonded together with the three things ...

...if you ask me the author whose books that i read recently, then it has to be Khaled Hosseini . Here, ofcourse, i have to discount the books that i read anew (I do have this habit of going back to a book, reading it in a differnt way, from the first time), and here when i talk of Hosseini, I must mention, the u-turn that has happened to me regarding Hosseini, from the time i heard about 'Kite Runner' and the time i finished ' A Thosand Splendid Suns ' ..."One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls..." One can see many things corresponding to Hosseini's earlier novel ' Kite Runner '. Two things united Afghanisatan, in its pre-70's era - Kite flying, and Kabul's Cultural space consisting of its Musicians and Poets. ...Khaled Hossieni, predictably, obviously for his second novel, goes to this umbilical cord, and takes out the title from this poem...'A Thousand Splen...

' Blogito, Ergo Sum !' ...yea...i have been Blogging!... and more than that.. i have been reading too.. I thought its time i wrote something on my favorite author of all times.. the writer with no paralells... Micheal Crichton! Micheal Crichton....call him a science fiction writer, or film script writer and producer or even film director...he does justice to all the roles that he had taken in life...the underlying part is...his film related works starts from his books...talking of his book... or rather sci-fi thrillers, ...a harward medical graduate, he is a member of the prestigeous american Phi-Beta-Kappa society during his study days. during his medical school days, he wrote books under the pseudonym John Lange and Jeffery Hudson. It says...this pen name was adopted to reflect his amazing height (he is 6 feet 9 inches). Lange in german means "Tall" and Hudson is a famous dwarf in early england. Most of crichton's works ends in tragedy in a way... inten...

Other Colors & Essays .... by Orhan Pamuk Orhan Pamuk once famously quoted..."when i speak of writing, what comes to my mind is not a novel, a poem or a literary tradition, but it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, alone, sitting on a table, turning to himself...". And yet his writings are loneliness filled to the brim with memories, the sights and sounds of his surroundings, people's voices, dreams etc. The idea of loneliness of the writer is an important theme in Orhan Pamuk's writings and he goes back to this theme repeatedly. As an occidental turkish, influenced by Foydor Dostoevsky, Pamuk's "Other Colors & Essays" depicts every shades of life. Even the Black, Grey and the White are colors here... ...The book starts with "...for 30 long years i have been writing..." for those who read his previous book 'Istanbul' would remember how he wrote the finis for it. He concluded it by "...I dont want to be an ar...