reading Archives - Page 10 of 11

01/03/201215/04/2017

Mission accomplished

It’s pizza time folks. In case you don’t remember… the gym had a weightloss contest. I set myself a personal target of losing two kgs this month and I did it. Gosh I feel soooo good. I’m in the sixties.. 69 but still 60s. Yay!

The best part of the entire exercise was that everyone, with the exception of one or two girls, lost weight.. everyone .. from aunties in their sixties to girls barely out of their teens. What a happy time it was at the gym today as everyone got weighed. I loved the camaraderie all around. For once everyone was actually competing with their own selves, sharing diet and exercise tips. What fun this month has been.

While on weightloss, I’m reading a book by Yaana Gupta.. “How to love your body and get the body you love”. I found the title quite interesting and ordered it from Flipkart who seem to deliver books almost as soon as you press the ‘enter’ key on your computer.

The book has a section on smart weightloss. Yaana seems to have tried every diet under the sun and writes the pros and cons. She also talks about people like herself (and me) who are programmed to think of weightloss all the time. I found myself saying “ditto ditto ditto” each time she talks about her obsession with weightloss and ‘healthy’ eating. She says even ‘healthy eating’ shouldn’t be an obsession. And I’m kind of beginning to agree.

Sample this…. she talks of a time when she was trying to lose weight and dreamt of having a pizza she’d had sometime earlier. Says she, “The longer I was on that damn diet , the more I thought of that pizza and fantasised about it.” Sounds familiar, haan?

And when she finally does have it.. it didn’t taste as good as she’d imagined it would. So now I’m wondering whether Saturday would be such a treat after all! 🙁
The point she’s trying to make is.. don’t make your body crave for anything.

Maybe I’ll get to that stage someday.. after I reach 65kgs… maybe. For now I’ll try to “get the body I love” and maybe later I’ll try to “love the body I have.”

I’m halfway through the book. Of course I skipped ahead and read the bit about weightloss first. She says the same thing my trainer had told me.. “concentrate on weight training for sustained weightloss as it boosts your metabolism instead of just getting rid of calories through cardio”. Remember I’d promised myself I’d do that? But there’s something so addictive about cardio I got caught up yet again.. So one more time.. the same resolution.. Less cardio, more weights. That even means lesser time at the gym.

Yes I know I’m going on and on about this whole thing. But then I’ve bored all my friends to tears with my obsession I couldn’t possibly leave out you guys. 🙂

11/01/201215/04/2017

Memoirs of a Lucknow boy

Fans of flipkart raise your hands. Isn’t it just wonderful? As they get more and more popular their services only seem to get better. Last week I ordered a book and it arrived the very next day. Wow, thought I.
Then this morning I ordered four books and one of them was delivered just now. How’s that for promptness? I love this concept of piecemeal delivery of the order. It’s like they’re saying, “You start reading this one.. we’ll get the others ASAP”. And the Cash on Delivery Option is a dream.
Apparently, so well have they been doing, that they’ve launched their own courier service.

The book that arrived last week turned out to be a wonderful read — ‘Lucknow Boy A Memoir’ by Vinod Mehta. I am not a great fan of biographies, auto or otherwise. I got a surfeit of them when in school and found a lot of them boring. Then a friend recommended Andre Agassi’s “Open” and I loved it. That was what made me look at ‘Lucknow Boy’. I have to confess though, the Lucknow connection was the clincher, rather than a love for Vinod Mehta’s writings. I’ve seen him a lot of him in various debates on various television channels and have loved him for his irreverence more than anything else. This will sound silly but the picture I have of him is sitting at one such panel flanked by some nattily dressed panel members while carelessly sporting a bright bright red shirt.

As anticipated I did enjoy the Lucknow bit. In fact the first part of the book makes it a must read for every Lucknowite. Somethings he says of Lucknow resonate strongly with me.. sample this..

“Lucknow bestowed on me one priceless gift. It taught me to look at the individual rather than his religion or caste or the tongue he spoke….” Later he adds.. “…for me Muslims meant korma, Christians meant cake and pastries, Sikhs meant hot halwa, Anglo-Indians meant mutton cutlets, Parsees meant dhansak. The solitary Jewish family in town did not come withon my grasp, so I aplogize for excluding them.”… That’s my kind of man, I thought.

Also..
“Some of my better-educated, more doctrinaire friends usually discuss secularism, composite culture and the syncretic tradition…I breathed the secularism they talk of, the composite culture flows in my veins, the syncretic tradition is something I observed daily as I rode my bicycle from Firangi Mahal to Sanyal Club. I didn’t pick up my secularism from books or at university or from protest demos. For me it was a lived reality.”

That’s not all. Armed with a third class BA degree from the Lucknow University he travels to Britain. That’s where he transforms himself from that small frog in the well to a well read, well informed individual. The rest of the book talks about his editorial journey, which is even more more interesting. Someone who starts his journalistic career as the editor of Debonair can’t really be boring. Other than that he launched three newspapers only to be sacked from each of them. I liked his sense of fairness of giving media space to points of view that may/may not coincide with his own. And I loved his candour..from admitting his temper tantrums (“I was under the misapprehension that all great editors had to be ‘difficult'”) to the gravest of errors to a child he abandoned.

Towards the end he gives some ‘Sweeper’s wisdom’ to aspiring journos. I also loved the section ‘Some people’ where he gives his impressions on people ranging from Shobha De to VS Naipaul and Rushdie. Quite enjoyable.
+++++++++++

‘Lucknow Boy’ put me on the path of some more books, which are the ones I ordered today. Mehta heavily recommends George Orwell’s writings. While I’ve read a lot about his books, specially Animal Farm and 1984, I never got down to reading them. Also, I thought it would be fun to read more of Lucknow’s history and so included a book on that too.

‘1984’ was delivered today and I’m looking forward to a quiet evening with the kids down for the day.

29/08/201115/04/2017

A bunch of books

A bad book is best left alone. However, once I start a book I find it very tough to leave it midway and move on. It feels like desertion. And so I soldier on.. sometimes losing the thread out of disinterest, sometimes letting it lie for days before taking it up yet again and sometimes reading it without making much sense.

It’s worse if the book is ‘famous’ and I feel I ‘should’ like it. Okay I guess I should rephrase what I said earlier… ‘a book you don’t like should be left alone’… it eats into your reading time and keeps you away from other books you might enjoy.

These past few days I’ve been stuck with a bad read and finally today I decided to give it up. What made it worse was that over the last two months I’ve been treated to some half a dozen wonderful books in a row. .. I didn’t just get lucky, they were handpicked by my SIL from her massive collection.

The settings have been as diverse as they possibly could be.. from Nigeria to China to 1962s Mississippi, Germany during the World War and India during the Independence struggle. Take a look…

First for some was uncharted territory — the Nigerian Revolution.. I’d never read anything about it before. In fact I’ve read very little of any African literature. It was completely fascinating. Half of a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus by the same author — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.. great reads. The first one is more about the revolution and the second is the personal story of a young girl set during the same time. I liked Purple Hibiscus better simply because personal stories appeal to me.

Then there was World War Germany. I’ve read plenty of that yet these were wonderful, specially The Boy in Striped Pajamas by John Boyne, which I’ve already written about. The other one, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, is also a great read.

Then I moved on to China. The only Chinese author I’ve read is Pearl S Buck and she is ancient. In the Pond by Ha Jin was more recent. I loved his style… funny and satirical.

If I had to settle for a favourite I’d probably go for this one — The Help by Kathryn Stockett. The book is about black maids raising white children. I found plenty of parallels between the book and how we treat our maids in India. It’s fast paced and gripping. A must must read. The other book about another black woman I got to read is the Pulitzer prize winning The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Wonderful.

Finally there was Homespun by Nilita Vachani. The book spans three generations, goes slow in bits but tells an interesting tale.

And then I went and picked a bad one from the library. Am at bit of a loss now. What are you guys reading? Any suggestions?

20/06/201115/04/2017

The boy who made me cry

I’m not really good with reviews but sometimes along comes a book that makes me want to talk about it, read about it and so.. write about it, which is why The Boy in Striped Pajamas by John Boyne found it’s way here.

Set during the WW II the book came out in 2006 and apparently was also made into a film. It tells the story of eight-year-old Bruno, son of a ‘commandant’ in Hitler’s regime. When his family moves from Berlin to Auschwitz Bruno’s world falls apart. Involved in his own life Bruno has no idea what ‘Out-With’ actually is. He is however intrigued by the tall wire fence that surrounds his new home and the people in identical striped pajamas, who live across it and who he can see from his window. The friendless Bruno finally befriends another boy from across the fence. Their friendship grows till one day the boy invites him to explore his world. That’s when the book takes a horrific and sad turn.

The book is written from the perspective of Bruno and you can’t but smile at his innocence. He leaves you to deduce who The Fury (Fuhrer) is and what Out-With is. He has no idea what ‘Jews’ are or even of his own father’s role.

He offers no cruel descriptions of soldier atrocities nor gory tales of Gas chambers. Yet the horror and desperation of the War comes across palpably through the rare instances he witnesses or is part of. And the end is heart-rending.

Phew… that was some book… right up there with my favourites like ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’. And now I’m moving onto something really light and fluffy… The Twilight Series… definitely teenage stuff, pretty juvenile but what the heck.. I need a break.

Talking of my juvenile side .. what’s up with pottermore.com ? Come 23rd June and JK Rowling has an announcement to make. Here’s hoping she comes out with some more HP books.

17/12/201015/04/2017

Four Books

Since we shifted this year my reading took a beating what with the settling down and looking for a Library that dished out more than just Bestsellers.

However, thanks to Flipkart I’m on a fast track again. Last month I ordered four books — Parul Sharma’s By the Water Cooler (BTWC) (Parul is someone who’s blog I follow and enjoy immensely), Keep the Change (KTC) by Nirupma Subramaniam, Beautiful from This Angle (BFTA) by Maha Khan Philips and Girl in Translation (GIT) by Jean Kwok. Coincidentally all four books are by women authors and have women protagonists.

The first two proved to be quick, fun, one-time reads. They are interesting in their similarity. Both deal with girls thrown in competitive work atmospheres. BTWC’s Mini is a Brand Manager while KTC’s Damayanthi is a Chennai accountant both trying to find their feet in Mumbai. Both have mothers super anxious to get them married and settled. Both have fleeting affairs with handsome hunks only to find true love later.

I loved BTWC for its interesting characters… Tanya who obsessively plans her wedding, the anorexic Vaishali, Mumtaz the detective, Subbu the quintessential accountant, the bitchy boss Shipra. Besides, some of her lines really made me laugh. “.. her eyes were those of a Shark, not missing a single detail of my dress or appearance, assuming sharks were interested in that kind of thing.” Typically Parul.

I must confess though that I enjoyed KTC more. The protagonist Damayanthi is better etched out. She and her saucy ‘Little Voice’ make for a good read.

Both books are funny, sure, yet predictable, too predictable. Like I said quick, one-time reads with simple happy endings that’s all.

BFTA is set in high society Pakistan. It is about three friends, party queen Amynah Farooqui, Mumtaz Malik daughter of a drug baron and the image conscious, conservative Henna daughter of a prominent Pakistani politician. When Amynah’s friend Monty produces a hit reality show Who Wants to Be a Terrorist, Mumtaz too decides to make a documentary on violence again women to cash in on the international trend of Pakistan bashing. Amynah agrees to help and they rope in Henna. They make a documentary with a girl called Nilofer, who is not really as much of a victim as she pretends to be.

The documentary goes on to be a superhit and from then on things get complicated driving the friends apart. I found the book engrossing if for nothing else than the Pakistani angle. It’s a country that fascinates me for obvious reasons.

Besides, I’d never read about the Pakistani elite before. Amynah the protagonist is by far the most interesting character. She’s happy writing a totally fake book on oppressed women in Pakistan. Yet, it’s not that she doesn’t have a conscience, she just doesn’t want to complicate life by thinking too much. She keeps is simple.. goes to parties, snorts coke, has some casual sex for fun and crashes at home nursing hangovers. An interesting read but I kind of expected more when I started out.

Now for the Girl in Translation. If BFTA was about the rich of a poor country, GIT is about the poor of a rich country. The book traces the journey of a young Chinese girl Kim after she migrates to the US with her mother. She knows just a smattering of English, while her mother knows none. But she has an advantage in that she’s an extraordinary student. The story traces her journey as she overcomes financial, social and emotional odds to become a surgeon.

As I read the book what struck me first was that a ‘good traditional Chinese’ girl is quite similar to an Indian one, and that’s what makes it tough for Kim to fit in.

The description of abject poverty is startling in its detail. The grueling work schedule, the low wages, the cockroaches and rats in Kim and her mother’s dilapidated apartment and above all the lack of heating … the cold that forces them to sleep with the oven switched on all night… the cold got to me the most.

What’s better GIT satisfied my penchant for happy endings. This is the one I enjoyed most.

Waiting for the next lot from Flipkart. Meanwhile the hunt for the library is still on.