Plants versus Zombies

Not really. Its books versus TV, but who writes trite titles like that? If i had to choose between a world that could have one or the other, books would win that war, hands down. But its the daily battles that they fight over my time that are more interesting and well, real. Broadband means unlimited TV (of course TV also means unlimited TV, but not as unlimited as Broadband does. What, there are different sizes of infinity, you know.) Landmark means unlimited books* And the winner is determined by a complicated algorithm that factors in, apart from what is to be watched or read, the following:
- how much of the weekend remains
- who is around to judge what i'm watching
- how much i need to feel better by watching miserably complicated lives of others
- how loudly was the little voice in my head telling me i wouldnt finish the book when i shushed it and bought the book anyway
- how much is it a book i would like to like. I'm shallow like that
- what time in the morning did the first cock crow

With the arrival of a library, books were clearly winning over the past month or so. But yesterday, all that changed. Yesterday, we started getting BBC entertainment. Yesterday, we switched on the TV randomly and there was Fawlty Towers going on. Bhai and i thought it had something to with the Pythons and John Cleese came on screen. We squeaked and my mom wondered why she had to have kids who got excited about a middle aged balding man with that moustache**. And i spotted the Vicar of Dibley while channel surfing. TV has hit back and how!

* Landmark unfortunately has gone to meaning squat. I went there when their sale was on, and bought nothing. Nothing. I spent more time and enthusiasm looking at stuffed toys for a "3 year old". I did go over to the science fiction section, but there was no spark. Sigh. The Library. It works swiftly and surely.

** See? There are some moustaches i remember.

Yes, another library

Popped up, this time literally a stones throw away from my place. Its so close, and so inside my galli, i dont even have to dress up to go there! This one is in a little bamboo shed in the garden of a bungalow. Its run by the old-ish lady who presumably lives in the bungalow. We have a history, that bungalow and me. The previous owner had a dog with a split personality. It was the fiercest dog we ever knew, but she laughed at us for keeping our distance, insisting all the time that it was a fraaandly dog. Its been years since they moved out, but i still keep my distance. Which is probably why i didnt notice the little library before.

A bamboo shed in the garden, with plants all around, bean bags and a hammock outside, a bright cheerful light inside, books, books, books. Many of them look owned. Read. Loved. Popular fiction, Indian writing, Science, Science fiction, kids books - all the usual suspects. However, the collection is not usual. I see bestsellers sprinkled here and there. But I also see books that would not have made it to any list, that must have been handpicked by someone who knew what he/she was getting.

A friendly old lady who knows what she has. A man who pauses from talking about books to play the flute. A kid sprawled on a bean bag, nose deep inside an Astrix, oblivious to an Aunty who pretends to get offended because he has forgotten his manners and not greeted her.

I want to talk to her, tell her she has a great collection, ask her if all these books are hers, if she has read them all. I want to tell the man with the flute who said he'd just bought The Graveyard Book that he is going to love it. But i dont. One, because i'm me. And two, i'm not going to join her library. I've already joined a "big bad corporate one". At some level, i think i've cheated her. I slink out when she is busy trying to understand what the man with the flute is saying about bar-code readers.

I walk the ten steps to my home thinking i've finally found one snapshot of old age that doesnt scare the hell out of me. I'd like to be that old lady. I'd like to lie on the hammock while people come and lose themselves in my collection. Only, i dont know many people who can lose themselves in two shelves of chiefly science fiction.

New retirement plan - I need to diversify my assets!

OMG!

OMG! OMG!
Please bear with me! I think it'll be a while before i can stop talking in exclamation marks!
I just joined a library!
What do you mean, that doesnt deserve such excitement!
Do you have any idea how that changes my life!

You know the truckloads of pressure you are under, when every book you want to read, you have to buy? You cant just pick stuff up on a whim. The depleting bank balance, the filling up shelves, you are answerable for it all! I feel terribly guilty for the 10 percent books that i have bought and am almost certainly not going to read. I fear they will go through life with abandonment issues, all because i didnt know what i wanted.

But now? I can pick up stuff without any consequences whatsoever! Except for loss of time, but who cares about that! I can read crap! My dad can read crap! For 200 a month! Eeeeeeee! The remaining exclamation marks and the accompanying words will come with bullet points.

• They have a pretty good YA section! Percy Jackson! Artemis Fowl! Phillip Pullman! All stuff i want to read but dont want to buy!
• They have the Wizard of Earthsea! This is one of those books i cant not read, even though i am unlikely to like it much. (So what if i bought and read it and didnt much like it about a month ago. I'll never have to do that again!)
• They have the first book in The Wheel of Time series! For some reason, i bought the second one first and there it lay. In the "unlikely to read' pile. Until today!
• They have all P.G. Wodehouse (not that i mind buying those) and all Terry Pratchett! (i've already bought most of those, also i dont know what they were doing in the pre-teen section).
• They have 18 branches or something in Bangalore! Dont ask me why i care!
• I'm hoping the library will help me come out of my comfort zone. Try something other than SFF.

There. I think the exclamations have gone. To all those friends of mine sitting in Europe and showing off their public libraries, Ha! I now have a private one.

Landmark, my love, looks like you might finally have some competition. Also, looks like i might be able to keep my hands off the second season of 24 after all.

I may be telling me to shut up

Pretty sentences get in the way of what i want to say. Sure, they make for great arm candy and impress people sometimes (myself included) but is that what I want a sentence for?

Well, yes.

Maybe until i learn to get pretty things to say what i want, i should say nothing at all.

Onto books now

The first time i came across Neil Gaiman was at the science fiction section at Landmark. He was sold to me by a 6 footer who wouldn't touch books with a 7 foot pole. Big name in the comic world, he wrote Sandman, don't you know? Huh? I bought it anyway. Anansi Boys. It came with a lot of praise and a Hugo nomination that the author declined, say. I could barely finish it. It was one of those rare books i had to skip the middle to get to the end of.

My next one was American Gods (which Wikipedia now tells me might have been a prequel to Anansi Boys!). Hugo and Nebula award winner. I couldn't read past one fourth of that one. I went around feeling ashamed of myself. I couldn't finish his books. What was wrong with me??

The third one was The Graveyard Book. Hugo again. Lot of praise again. I justified the purchase saying it was a children's book, there is no way i couldnt finish a children's book. I promised the 6 footer that if i didnt make it through this one, i'd mentally classify Gaiman as an author of umm... literary fiction or... magic realism or... yes, good housekeeping, stuff i wouldnt touch with a 7 foot pole. But this one had me at hello.

Its about a little boy called Nobody (Bod) Owens who is bough up in a graveyard. By ghosts. There is a scene early on when Bod is just a baby, living with real, living parents. He has managed to topple off his crib by climbing on his teddy and has waded his way to the head of the stairs.

Stairs that went up were tricky things, and he had not yet entirely mastered them. Stairs that went down however, he had discovered, were fairly simple. He did them sitting down, bumping from step to step on his well-padded bottom.

I read those lines and then i couldnt make myself get back to the book for the rest of the day, i was so excited! How does anyone come up with stuff like that? You'd have to go inside a little one's head to find it, thats the only place where stairs that go up and stairs that go down exist as two different things! Although, I'm not sure children (or young adults as they seem to be called these days) who are the audience for this book will "get it". It might work on them as a joke though. I went back to the book at night and it didnt disappoint. I got so caught up in Bod's wanderings around the graveyard, i forgot he was the only living kid in a colony full of ghosts. His adventures reminded me how little it takes to keep you entertained as a kid. I loved how it is okay to invent a concept like "Freedom of the graveyard" without defining it exactly, because kids are used to things they dont entirely understand. I loved that Bod had Silas, an adult who is his filter to the world, who helps things make sense, who keeps out the bad stuff, while preparing him for the day he will have to walk out into it. And like a reviewer says on the book, i cant wait to see what happens next. I hope there is more!

Books, TV etc

Heroes is back. And while i cant be anything but glad, it sometimes feels like the makers are playing chess with the characters. Every season they paint each character with a random colour, throw them on the board in some interesting starting position and then watch the fun. From there on, the horse jumps in steps of two and one, the bishop goes diagonal, the rook goes straight. Claire hyperacts, bytes off more than she can chew and what with two dads, keeps getting grounded. Peter manages to see black and white in a grey world. Hero wants to be a hero, its almost like he is looking for villains who will make him one. Bennett is "protecting his family" and that excuses everything. As the two percent of Nathan that cares for Peter excuses the naked greed of the remaining ninety eight. Sylar is well, Sylar... i wonder if they even bother to write new dialogs.


Finished with Philip K Dick's Counterclock World. Dont read this if you plan to read the book, but i wouldnt recommend the plan unless you like that kind of thing and know what you are getting into. Its not bad, the concept is an interesting one, a world where from 1986 time has started to go backwards. So dead people rise from their graves, get cured of whatever illness that killed them, get younger, become kids and finally disappear into a womb. Its filled with stuff that makes you chuckle at the cleverness, conversations start with goodbye and end with a hello. Food comes out of your mouth, is packaged and sent to supermarkets. And my favourite, oh shit is now oh food. The Library is the evil corporation, in charge of eradicating books that describe stuff that has no longer happened. (See how interesting it can get? One day they'll eradicate all of Mozart's music just because. But then, Mozart will rise from the grave and imagine what he'd create!) My problem is that i need a story! A setting like this, however imaginative, is just the background. I need characters in it to have adventures (which they do), to fight evil (which they do) and for there to be a spectacular end to it all (which there isnt). I'm beginning to see the beginnings of a faint line in the SFF universe. Asimov, Frank Herbert, Adams, Practchett, Orson Scott Card are all one side. The Le Guins and the Philip K Dicks on the other. Arthur C Clark is sitting on the fence, mocking me, daring me to push him over. And i cant. While his setting is his story, i love reading him so.

One second yesterday was the 123456789th one since epoch. Geeks all over the world celebrated. And i find this out from Pune Mirror. I will go drown myself now.

Milestones

Sometimes you have to look back to know how far you've come.

I came home today to a rearranged room. The "library" had moved in and the only occupied shelf in it was finally filled not with raincoats, not bills, not orphaned bits of clothing, but books. My books. Stuff that I had bought. Bought. Put a big smile upon my face. And i knew, the only person who would really understand that smile was me from 10 years ago. I wanted to go tell her, look, we did it! Just stood there for a while, drinking it all in. For the first time, i wanted a photograph on my blog. Something to say i was here. Did a quick scan and realized about half of them were SF. Of course at this stage of my addition, what surprised me was that half of them were not.

I just hope that somewhere, me at the fag end of my 30s is dancing with excitement, wishing she could come and tell me the same. Which would be really something, because now, where are the dreams?

He's the dude

He was one of those dangerous people who are soft, squidgy and cowlike provided they have what they want. And because he had always had what he wanted, and had seemed easily pleased with it, it had never occurred to anybody that he was anything other than soft, squidgy and cowlike. You would have to push through a lot of soft squidgy bits in order to find a bit that didn't give when you pushed it. That was the bit that all the soft squidgy bits were there to protect.

Douglas Adams, in Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency

How does he do it? How does he look inside and come out with just the right words? And how come with words like squidy and cowlike, it is still so perfect?

Off the wagon

I seem to have fallen into the bad habit of vomiting god-awful first draft of my posts and then spending forever cleaning them up. Its beginning to seem like work. I dont like. The latest theory attributes this obstruction of ahem... literary flow to withdrawal symptoms - I havent touched a book in a while. I should have known i'm not strong enough for cold turkey.

Men at arms, here i come!

I think i may have found love

Science fiction section at Landmark. On a weekday. An immensely fulfilling i could die right now feeling slowly spreads through me. Not to be confused with the more familiar i wish i was dead feeling.
Philip K Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Orson Scott Card, God bless you all.

Now reading: The Manticore's Secret. Very good. Although it did seem like the end came because he ran out of pages. My favourite part is the one with the Unwaba. And the third one is called The Unwaba Revelations! I'm torn between the lure of instant gratification and the rewards of patience.

The God of Small Things

Eshtapappychachen Kuttapen Peter Mon

The name has been ricocheting off the walls of my head since yesterday, each time with a different first name.

Rajupappychachen Kuttapen Peter Mon

Channapappychachen Kuttapen Peter Mon

Its funny, how well it goes with the names it meets off the walls of my head.

I dont want them to end. Estha, Rahel, Ammu, Chacko. Every morning, amidst all the chaos, i sneak into their world. And come out only when my folks very conscientiously pull me out and kick me off to work. I dont think i've felt this way about a book in a while. And inappropriate though it is, almost every page reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird. I get the same wistful feeling i did when i read that one. Of wanting to go back to my childhood, as an invisible, adult, observer, as the omnipresent narrator of my story.

She warns you, oh she warns you on every page that its all going to end badly. And yet, even that cannot stop life, and the love for it, from seeping though. Small victories of small people need not fade away in the face of war, she shows. They can be scooped up and scattered in a book about war, such that they become bigger than the war.

P.S. At some point, it occurred to me that i could do this as a book review. And a much later point, it occurred to me that i havent actually finished the book.

Booooooks!

You open the bookshelf and find 6 unread books waiting to be consumed - it is times like there that make me glad i earn what i do.

Of course, by the time i could put this post to paper (Yes, i am writing this on paper and will type it out later, and No, i do not know of a better way to spend my weekend), the number of unread books has dwindled to 3. So i am halfway between dreams-come-true-land and nightmare city.

All 6 were procured as part of sales in various book stores, none, as far as i can recall, at any discount. Now i know the power of a Sale, it is just a legitimate excuse to go crazy! I was showing off my catch to a cousin and he says,

Cousin: I cant believe it! All of these are so good you went and bought the original?
Me: Original? Arre, nakli books bhi koi leta hai kya?
(Rich, coming from someone who until a year ago regularly drooled over roadside book stalls.)
Cousin: I don't know how you can get yourself to pay full price
Me: Guilt.
(That is one of the prime movers of my life. I mean, what excuse do i have to not go and buy the original? The book means much more to me than the 250 rupees i spend on it. And Pinocchio would call me a liar if i said i couldn't afford it. It was guilt that make me, ME, go and pay full price for HP7 on the day it came out. That is how powerful it is.)
Anyway, i don't suppose you will understand it. The same way i don't understand how you can get yourself to spend so much on branded clothes.

And with that,we agreed to disagree. And launch our own small war on piracy. I buy original books, he buys original clothes. The only thing we need to complete our League Of Extraordinary Fools is one who watches only original movies!