THL

The History of Love
If escher's paintings left the easel and went through a typewriter, this is what would come out..
An author's last lap of life belting out a novel,who has already written his 'the novel' on his love in his life as 'The History of Love', A young girl named Alma's (after a character in this book)attempts to find out about the character she is named after, excerpts from the 'THL' novel itself, the story of the believed author of 'THL' and many more such yarns with coinciding story lines.
All this might sound like a jumble, if you are not used to the concepts of novel in a novel and more.
A cautious author would want to have a centralised control over the characters and just have one narrative. But Nicole seems to be very good at churning out as many narrators as the characters.Its one thing to have anarrator speak for each character and another to do what Krauss has done.

Jan 14, 2006

Wide Awake

Watching this movie, you calmly wait to see in what form, Night's creativity is going to unfurl in front of you. Its a nice experiment.
The kid in search of God, trying to look at all other religions in the world is so trying to expand his consciousness at such a small age, which great artists are known to do at the age of 20 and more.
For all those in search of something, here is your 'The signs', that you should go on...

Aug 21, 2005

Margaret Atwood's

the Blind Assasin

It is an amalgam of nested story lines. Unfortunately 'synergy' did not work to Atwood's favour.
The story of two sisters is very uninteresting. I still read on, to find out why the book is called so. The fictionary tale about the blind assassin's is worth the perseverance.
There is more suspense in the assassin's life than in the death of Laura Chase, the novelist.
I would have given a 5 star to this book, if it was TRULY JUST the story of 'The Blind Assassin'.

Aug 19, 2005

Diving

In Ponape chapter, in Zinsley's book,The rapture of the Deep, he comfortably dons the role of a marine biologist introducing you to Tunicates that are a link between vertebrates and invertebrates and the move on to the customs of the Pohnpeiian. The anthropologist then winds up marvelling at the ruins of Nan Madol

I happen to be in the posession of Grays Anatomy, so here's the beginning of me waxing about the bones.

Bones - Long
short, flat
and mixed

Spiced

Bourdain has already written on how a year just goes by in a kitchen in his confidential. Of burns too which will not elicit any balmy response from any of the coworkers. How different can a pastry chef's life be? The hours of kitchen call on you to be an automaton. That is how your success as a chef is measured, with the orders that you stack. It must be a welcome break to try perfect a new recipe to be on the menu for a while. Other breaks, when a national disaster brings in chefs and critics under one roof to send relief to the rescue teams. Then changes, when your workplace changes. You break into a place, everyone loves your work. After a while, the well of customers dries up. Time for new place, new recipe.

chocolate maki, Kalamansi Colada sure fire those dessert juices.

The book is well written and dispels the romantic chef image of ratatouille.

Silk Parachute

'Silk Parachute' essay brought out a sense of disbilief as I was reading it.
'Spin right and Shoot left'- This essay's beginning didnt get me hooked into it, but I could connect more to it from the part where he mentions 'lax rats'(muggles of non lacrosse world) - another club member then.
'Checkpoints' - on fact checking at NYorker.

'My life list' was felt ronic compared to the birders list. Its kind of funny, the hundred kinds of tea he has in the wild. The point wouldnt have been driven home, if I hadnt read earlier in a survival-in-the-wild book about having pine tea. In this and the 'checkpoints' essay I noticed a similarity in the small sections being non -sequential - seeming like different takes on the whole run. A ploy to keep in mind for future writing.

June 6, 2010

Writing down the bones

When you come across the writing techniques, at first most of them seem like they might not be of much help. Like for example, writing down the verbs and nouns and looking at new combinations. This activity can be appreciated only if something leads you to see the connection between writing in words and thinking from memories.
I like the way the author has put forward some concepts- Metaphors fit well when they occur to the writer in thinking process. One of her masters metaphor seemed ridiculous.
As a want-to-be-a-writer, if you had to deal with seperating and merging life and writing, she says writers live twice.
Read back your daily journals. You will know what she means by an idea bearing the stamp of the moment it was inspired and how each time you read it, your interpretation differs giving you more thoughts to write..

Nov 22, 2006

Story Machine

The development of formalism to help Brutus, the story machine write a story using betrayal is interesting to read.
The story by Racter, a machine makes you see how mechanical a writing it is capable of.
The Bodenesque creativity definition will get you thinking about 'what is really creativity?'

June 8, 2006

Secret Life of Bees

"Stingless bees tell other workers in the colony about a new food source by laying a scent trail between it and the nest."

(...)

While we are the workers at the nest, Sue Kidd is the 'talking bee' whose book ' The secret life of Bees' is the trail scent left to find the amazing food source , the book itself.

The novel has been excellently written, with stories rolling out of characters effortlessly. While I came across a line .. 'take everything T.Ray was not, shape it into a person, and you would get Walter Cronkite'.. I felt, I had already seen this usage in this book. Later on, I realised that I had come across it in Thomas Hardy's novel "The Return of the Native". But Kidd's style is very different and sweet like honey ... You will appreciate the author's success in coming up with a good style thats so easy to read.

Sep 3, 2005

Wallace Stevens

Within reading the first few pages, one can feel the surge of guilt for the unjustice done to all the words we dont use anymore. Disuse of words defends the trashing.

Nov 23,2009

The Books that we cant read

Having read a little on African art in the Menil collection, I found that some rituals in Things fall apart made sense. Proverbs and sayings of elders appear in more than smattering numbers. Further into the book the quoters are not restricted to elders. What is the fascination with using the sayings even after having got the point across? Thats what a set of Bon mot do.
With this in the recent past, Contemporary African writing caught my attention. I wanted to know more about it. But when my eyes caught some words of war and unrest, that did it for me. As the times of war or peace have an effect on the kind of writing, how can the search for literature be complete?

"Five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."- Orson Welles

Peace may not be essential for great works, but some can never be relished.
Angelas Ashes had a good style of writing, but I couldnt read on. About a person with alcohol problems. If it were by the alcoholic himself, it might have a different kind of appeal like in When Things Get Dark. This would (I had to desert this book too for the same unmeetable reasons) have adult perspective with damage to a knowledgable self and not others. Reading Frank Courts memoir through his childhood eyes comes with a bitter taste of swallowing your own tears.

I am not alone in turning my face away from Angelas Ashes. Adair Lara in 'Naked, Drunk and Writing' points that 'A number of people I know couldnt bring themselves to read Angela's Ashes because it was too grim: alcoholism, humiliation, poverty, dirt, disease, untimely death. But for me the dry humour throughout the book tempers the meanness and provides hope'.

Best American short stories 2009

Stories that made me find more about what spurred them.

A Shadow table - Alice Fulton. Should I come across her collection of stories - 'the Nightingales of Troy'- Big yes. Couldnt find if this was a real custom.

Now Trends - Karl Taro Greenfield. The elements of the story are as interesting as the real and vicious(reading) experiences its gathered from.

May 16, 2010.

Hidden life of deer

The author makes it fun to be a deer and play Hide and Hide.

With the oaks going barren one year(they have a mind of their own just like one of the cats in the book) - helter skelter in the animal kingdom but a great opportunity at Thomas residence to do
back yard deer watching - their social behavior.

Reading about the effects of introduction of non native species to a place makes me wonder about how mysteriously evolution works. If here subspecies are lost, isolation breeds different species like in the Grand Canyon squirrels. Geography dictating breeding season.

Now who knew scats held facts in them. If someone got a look at the scats at Montezuma Castle in time, then they could tell the direction in which the cliff dwellers left in haste.

The concept of Predator urine was interesting.

All in all, there are so many things happening in the natural world that call for observation for comprehension, with some mishaps in the domestic world - hysterical macaws, hyper rats and passive cats.