No significant update. Just removing dead links. -Aside- Ages ago, the Intellectual Whores website (now a 404) had given me some solace; but not much hope though. The masterfully written Ladder Theory explains why things are so screwed up; but, yeah, but, so we (whores?) don’t lose hope, there are the ever so entertaining whore avoidance tips. Now, after all these years, I finally manage to read Woody Allen’s short story, The Whore of Mensa. -End of Aside- ...
It’s somewhat sad that the Autobiography of Malcolm X is also meant to be a specific political and social message, as well as serve as a brilliant account of the life of a thoughtful and brave leader. X thought he would be dead by the time the book came out, and was also probably a little concerned about what he wanted his reluctant critics to think about him: so that they would take his message seriously. So, instead of celebrating change for change’s sake, X decided to underplay it, to an extent that if don’t watch out for it, the book will seem more like a testament to the angst and the rage of the African American in mid-nineteenth century. It is that, I don’t deny it; but it’s also an account of a man’s life – a life of change: change in reverence of concepts, in thoughts, in mind-sets, in lifestyle, and more so, a change in life itself. ...
From Tic-Tac-Terror (by a Franklin W. Dixon) to Lolita (Nabokov), I’ve collected more books than I have read. But I have read some. It started off with Hardy Boys; and I remember Fenton Hardy’s case always being connected in some way to the Boys’ case. So, during each book, I used to watch out for clues that would link the boys’ case with anything that their father was doing at that time (mostly in some other part of the country; just to add to the grandeur of the plot). At one point somewhere during 6th or 7th standard, just to ensure that I could prove to a few friends in school what I had read, I started maintaining a list which had the name of the book, plot, and ‘gangleader’ written in neat columnar format. A sample line would be like this: ...
I read Lapierre and Collins’s “Freedom at Midnight” and am incredibly moved, even sobbing many times during the book, and make a promise to myself that I’ll learn more about India, and esp. the Partition. So, I pick up Sucheta Mahajan’s “India and Partition: the Erosion of Colonial Power in India,” and start it with great enthusiasm. At around the 20th page, when going forward with any reasonably degree of continuity requires looking up citations, making notes, and higher levels of concentration, I switch to some pulp fiction. ...
I love this book because: Its set almost entirely in Bombay. Salaam Bombay. It gives a very heart-felt view of India, Indians, and everything Indian. It reminds me a lot of Godfather (the book). It also reminded me of my first read of Godfather, which, sadly, happened only once. It also reminded me of Harold Robbins’s Never Love a Stranger. There is something about the first person narrative that Nabokov abuses in Lolita to trick the reader, but Roberts uses with elan. I have rarely liked a first person narrative more than this. I love sweeping sagas. I loved the trivia: on knife fighting, on the Automatic Kalashnikov assault rifles, the inner workings of the Bombay Underworld, the Afghan War, Colaba, gritty slum life in Bombay, and a whole lot more. The terrific one liners. There are so many of them, a few brilliant, a few corny, and a few unbelievably true. Made me introspect on aspects of my life which I had buried for a long time. Brought tears to my eyes more than once. Is a gripping page-turner. 900+ pages in 3 days?!? Celebrates the human spirit. The romantic in me is happy and content; the cynic in me smiling. Shantaram will be one of my favorite books for a long time to come. ...