Category: reading

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J is for JK Rowling

There’s barely anything I can say about this author who’s life has been almost as magical as the protagonist she created. It’s JK Rowling the creator of the wonderful Harry Potter. I’ll confine my post to the author and will not even attempt to talk about her books at all. One, because there’s so much been said already and two, because if I do start I wouldn’t know where to stop. I’ll just say that …
– If you thought the books are just for kids, you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
– If you watched the films without reading the books and wrote them off – big mistake. The films ONLY add to the book experience. They do not substitute it at all.
– If you haven’t read the books at all, you’ve missed being touched by magic.


Jo, Joanne, JK Rowling

She was born Joanne Rowling in a small family comprising her mum, dad and a younger sister. She called herself Jo and says, “No one called me Joannae unless they were angry.” The K stands for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother’s name, and was added later because the publishers felt a book written by a woman wouldn’t appeal to young boys who they thought would be their primary audience. And so JK Rowling she became. She has also written books like the crime thriller, The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

As for those publishers how wrong were they!! 

The hard times

Her mum passed away early from Multiple Sclerosis and that broke her heart. Later, she got married and moved to Portugal. However when her daughter, Jessica, was just three months old her marriage ended and she moved back to Edinburg… penniless.

She moved into a rat infested tiny home that she painted herself. Friends played a very important role in her life and probably that’s reflected in her novels. They loaned her money to move to a better home and also helped her furnish her house sending her as much furniture as they could spare.

She applied for a PG course that would qualify her to take up a teaching position. That, she thought, was the only way she could improve her life. She had planned on leaving Jessica in the creche for student mums. To her despair the creche had closed down. “That was one of the worst moments,” says she. However, another friend came to her rescue lending her childcare fees.

She took a student loan for her course and toiled for one long hard year barely aware that success awaited her right around the corner. 

The birth of Harry Potter

This is the stuff legends are made of. During a delayed train ride from Manchester to London the idea of Harry Potter was born .. fully formed including the ending of book seven. She had the whole thing in her head all the time. How’s that for cool? She started writing six months before her mum passed away and regrets not having shared the book with her.  

Rowling recreates her ‘cafe writing’ for the cameras in 1999. Photo: Austral

The going must have been tough as she struggled for survival. Famously, she would write in cafes while her daughter snoozed by her. “I write in cafe’s because I like other people making my coffees,” said she in an interview.

As she ended her teaching course she had also finished writing the first Harry Potter book – The Philosopher’s Stone. It was a bit of a struggle to find a publisher. But by the time she took up a part time teaching position her novel had been accepted and the rest, as they say, is history. Within five years she turned from a penniless writer surviving on state support, to a multi-millionairess… a rages to riches story!!


Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermionie (Emma Watson), JK Rowling and Ron (Rupert Grinch)

Much later.. she finished her last book in a hotel room over a glass of champagne.. quite a contrast to her ‘sad little apartment’ days. In an interview she says, “I sat in that hotel room drinking champagne, sobbing my heart out.”


One of my favourite quotes from her ..

“I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

Rock bottom ‘a solid foundation’.. positive thinking at it’s best!

So tell me which is your favourite Harry Potter book. Mine would be The Goblet of Fire for it’s sheer scale and the super climax and also a tiny bit because of the gorgeous Twilight hero (Robert Pattinson) who makes an appearance as Cedric Diggory in the film.

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Tomorrow we meet an author from closer home, not quite India, but from a neighbour’s neighbour. Oh and he’s another gentleman. Finally, the men seem to be catching up. Guesses anyone?
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This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.

Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.
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I is for Ian, Ian Fleming

1908-1964                                                                                   
It’s I-day
today. And I bring out someone not quite a classic yet just as timeless, just
as well loved and way more exciting. He is the one who created the coolest,
hottest hero ever.. and I mean ever. It’s the flamboyant Ian Fleming – the man behind James
Bond. If anything he was at least just as dashing as the hero he created.

A tough
legacy to follow

Ian Fleming
came from a well respected, wealthy English family. His grandfather was a banker
and his father Valentine Fleming, a landowner and Member of Parliament as well
as a war hero who was killed in the War when Ian was about 9. His brother Peter excelled at Eton and Oxford and went on to become a well know travel
writer. Ian had to live up to a towering legacy.

A restless
soul

All of that seemed like a tall order for Fleming. He could
never distinguish himself at academics. He left Eaton before completing his graduation.
At the military academy he left without taking an officer’s commission. He
tried to take the Foreign Services Exam but could not clear that too. Finally,
like his brother, he joined Reuters – the news agency – and became a
journalist.

Ian Fleming

A few years
as a journalist convinced him that his salary would not let him live the kind
of high life he wanted. His own inheritance was out of reach so he took on work as a
banker. A few years later, bored of his banker’s job he quit and joined the
Times.

In 1939 he
joined the naval intelligence. That’s where he seemed to have finally found his
calling. Quite like his hero he planned and carried out dangerous missions. He
also wrote countless reports where his natural flair for writing showed up and
they made for great reading. It was during those days that he went to Jamaica
for a conference and fell in love with the place promising to return.

In Jamaica, Bond
is born

My favourite Bond

And return
he did. He built himself a house called Goldeneye
and every year, for six years, he would go to Jamaica to live the high life he had
always wanted… partying, romancing and having affairs. The turning point came when a married woman, Anne Rothermere, he
was having an affair with, got pregnant and pressured him to marry her. While
waiting for her divorce to come through he started writing his first novel
Casino Royale. After that, each year he used his Jamaican holiday to write a
novel.

At the age of 56 Ian Fleming died of a heart attack. In a very Bond like manner his last words were to the ambulance drivers. Said he, “I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don’t know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days.”

James Bond..

.. would be
the dullest, most uninteresting man to whom “things happened”, thought Fleming when he first conceived Bond. However, 12 Bond novels later, we know better. Secret
Agent 007, took on a life of his own.

Fleming modeled Bond after many real life characters including his brother and himself. He put to use his real life experiences. His villains too were people he disliked in real life!

Seven actors have played James Bond in 23 films, beginning with Sean Connery in 1962 to Daniel Craig in 2012.. but you already know that. So who’s your favourite Bond? I’d go with Sean Connery.

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I won’t leave a clue for tomorrow. Girls and boys.. wait for the magic to begin!

This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.

Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.
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H is for Harper Lee

Born 1926
She’s the daughter of a former newspaper editor who practised law in the Alabama State Legislature; a perfect combination to have in a dad if you’re planning to write a book like To Kill a Mockingbird. That is Harper Lee. Did you know that this is her only published book? Some contrast to my yesterday’s favourite Georgette Heyer who was so prolific.

Her full name is Nelle Harper Lee. Nelle is her grandmother’s name spelt backward. Sweet, isn’t it? When I first read the book I wasn’t yet a teen and the only thing that stayed in my mind was Boo Radley. I gave it up midway as too scary.

Her Childhood

While her father was an attorney her mother Frances suffered from bipolar disorder. Rumour has it that she twice tried to drown Lee. As a result, Lee, grew up as a defensive and aggressive girl much like Scout in the book. She studied to become a lawyer. However even while in High School she was interested in Literature. After the first semester of her Law degree she dropped off to pursue her writing. She moved to New York where she met her childhood friend Truman Capote, a writer himself. She also made friends with Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy. In 1956, as a Christmas present, the couple offered to support Lee for one whole year while she focussed on her writing. Lee quit her job and did just that.

Life and fiction

As a child Lee observed racial discrimination in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Lee’s father once defended two black men, a father and a son, for killing a white storekeeper. The two men were hanged. Perhaps that’s where the idea germinated.
Lee modelled Scout on her own self. both their fathers were attorneys. Her friend Truman Capote, inspired the charcater Dill. Truman also talks about a charcater similar to Boo Radley who lived close by and left things in a tree just like Boo in the book.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Told from the perspective of a six-year-old girl, Scout, the book talks about her father Atticus Finch who is appointed by the court to defend a black man accused of raping a young white woman. He agrees to do so to the disapproval of the townsfolk. Even though evidence suggests otherwise the jury hold Tom guilty and he is shot dead while trying to escape from prison.
The book handles the sensitive issue of racial discrimination in a sweet and simple way. Since it’s told from a six-year-old’s perspective it has to be simple, yet Scout and her brother Jem grasp the situation and staunchly stand by their father in an amazingly adult manner.
The book flows so seamlessly and seems so spontaneous that it is difficult to believe it took almost four years to be written. Lee laboured over each page. The first draft seemed like a bunch of stories rather than a novel and so Lee rewrote the book over two and a half years. It was finally published in 1960.
The book was later adapted into a film with Gregory peck
playing Atticus Finch.
Scout and her brother Jem in a scene
from the film
It was an immediate success and won her the Pulitzer prize for fiction 1961.
After the publication Lee gave no interviews and hasn’t written anything other than a few essays since then. In 2006 British librarians ranked the book ahead of the Bible as a book ‘every adult should read before they die’. How’s that for praise!

Why Harper Lee never wrote again

Though she said she was working on a  second book The Long Goodbye, she never published again. No one knows for sure why that happened but some suggest it was the huge reaction to her first book that put her off writing. Though the book got her instant fame, back home in her close-knit town people recognised her in Scout. Perhaps even Lee hadn’t been aware of how much she had drawn from real life. Her liberal anti racial views didn’t go down well with her townspeople and she was flooded with hate mail. Always a defensive person, that made things worse for Lee and she never did write again.

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It’s a man on my blog tomorrow people. And a dashing one at that. His creation is, if I may use a much overused word, the ‘sexiest’ man ever and has been immortalised in films by some of the hottest actors of their time. I’ve almost given it away.
Come now, guess!
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This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.
Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

 

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Georgette Heyer – The Queen of Regency Romance

(1902-1974)

I stumbled upon Georgette Heyer in my school library. It wasn’t love at first sight for then I was totally taken in by Victoria Holt. However, once I did begin, Heyer, jumped right up to the top of my favourite author list.

This British writer was born in the 1900s in Wimbledon, London. However, she chose to set her novels a full hundred years back, in the Regency period.

What a glorious time that was!

Women in elaborate gowns and even more elaborate hairdos topped off by insanely expensive hats. And the men, just as fashion conscious, with their cravats that could be arranged in a hundred different ways, their breeches and stylish coats; balls, soirees, phaeton rides and hunting parties.

Oh I do love it all and Georgette Heyer brought it to life.

The beginning

Her journey in writing began with story-telling sessions. When she was just 17 her brother fell ill with a form of Haemophilia and she began a serial story to entertain him. Her father, who had always encouraged her to read, loved the story and thought of getting it published. The book appeared as her first novel The Black Moth even before she turned 20 and then there was, to use a cliche, no looking back.
Georgette Heyer was one of the most prolific writers coming up with a mystery and a romance each year. Some of her well-know books include These Old Shades, Devil’s Cub, Talisman Ring, The Grand Sophy, Sylvester.

A meticulous researcher

Given that her novels were set in a period she had never seen, she researched every single aspect of that time. Wiki tells me her library included about a thousand reference books. She would make note cards on almost everything no matter how insignificant.
She read up histories of snuff boxes, sign posts and costumes. She sorted her notes into categories like beauty, hats, household, prices. She made extensive lists of phrases on topic like food and crockery, endearments, forms of address!
Whew!! Some effort there!
Which is why for a long time I thought she actually belonged to the 19th century.. so authentic was she. She’s another one inspired by Jane Austen.

Not one for the media

Her third book – These Old Shades (my personal favourite) – was released during the time of the UK general strike and got no promotion at all.. no reviews, no newspaper coverage, nothing. Yet it sold some 190,000 copies. After that she refused to give interviews completely.

A combination of romance and mystery with liberal doses of wit

.. that’s what you find in her books. Her heroes were typically serious yet appreciated spirit in their lady and enjoyed a good laugh. Her heroines were often young. They were always effervescent and unaffected and very very romantic. More often than not Heyer threw in a dash of mystery which made her books even more exciting.

And now I’m off to reread her. Did I tell you, you can read her books over and over again and enjoy them each time? Yes, well you can.

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And for tomorrow’s clue – an H, this lady, has to her credit, just a single published book that won a Pulitzer and became classroom material. Okay.. let me make it easier the book is told from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl.
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This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.
Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

 

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F for Helen Fielding


Born 1958

F brings out
another woman – Fielding, Helen, of Bridget Jones fame. A self confessed Austen
fan Helen says she picked inspiration from her books. I mentioned it here while talking about Austen. Fielding gave chick-lit a whole new dimension. Rather than looking at pure romance she tackled a thousand other issues that plague single women.

Early days

Fielding studied
English before she started working with the BBC as a researcher. While at the
BBC she travelled to Sudan and then wrote and produced documentaries in Africa
for fundraising broadcasts. That’s where the idea for her first book Cause Celeb
came from. The book was praised but made little money. Meanwhile,
Helen turned journalist and wrote columns for various newspapers even as she
struggled to work on her second book. Bridget Jones’s Diary brought her instant fame and was followed by a sequel, Edge of Reason and then Bridget Jones – Mad about the Boy. She has done other books too including Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination.

The birth of
Bridget

When she was
asked by a London newspaper to do a column on her own life as a single woman
she had no idea it would lead to Bridget Jones. She refused to do the column
saying it would be too embarrassing, too personal. However, she did agree to write
anonymously creating a fictional character in her 30s negotiating single life
in London. The column became immensely popular. She was still trying to finish her second novel. However, her identity as the person behind the column was revealed and her publishers asked her to convert it into a book.

I love
Bridget Jones’s Diary because…

Bridget refuses to fit into any regular ‘heroine’ mould 
She’s neither pretty and delicate nor strong and capable. She’s just funny and sweet and goofy and self deprecating. Just like me, is always struggling
with weight troubles and (not quite like me) boyfriend troubles. She has a mother who refuses to
leave her alone (mine doesn’t either!) and friends who keep giving her all kinds of bizarre advice. Even
better – in the end she finds a wonderful man who is good-looking, rich
and above all loves her ‘Just as she is’. What’s not to like? I’ve actually done loads of things that happen in the book like..

– Hitting the gym with a vengeance in anticipation of a big event.
– Or wallowing in self pity
– Or yelling out to my kids during a phone conversation with someone like a typical Smug married.

I love the diary format of the book
It makes the whole story-telling much more personal and Bridget can get away with saying a lot of hilariously embarrassing (sometimes downright gross) stuff because she’s only talking to herself.

I love the vocabulary.. 
..that Fielding coined. Smug marrieds, Singletons and mentionistis.

I also recommend the movie, if you’ve not seen it already starring the amazing Rene Zellweger, a very delicious Colin Firth and a devilish Hugh Grant.

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Tomorrow’s author, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t an easy one to guess. Here’s the clue – she’s a British lady who wrote historical romances with a dash of mystery and loads of wit. No googling please!
This post is part of the April A to Z Challenge, 2014 for the theme AMAZING AUTHORS.


Also linking to the Ultimate Blog Challenge.
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