March 2010 Events

March 2010 Events

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5 days 5 books a review by Anaggh Desai

Those who are active on twitter in India would definitely know @anaggh.Most of us from twitter world have re-tweeted his humorous and many a times his philosophical tweets.He has made me laugh whenever I am feeling low with his tweets.

With due permission from him I have taken this from his blog since it makes an interesting read.Read and Enjoy! Thanks Anaggh...hope to see more reviews from you with regards to book which I can share on this blog as well!

Indian Authors need to be IIT or IIM?

Posted in Reviews; Recommendations; Appreciation |

A dedicated fiction reader, who once upon a time used to complete a 400 page book during a Bombay - Delhi - Bombay flight including the waiting time at the airports; over the past year or so found my reading habits breaking away completely, more maybe from the fact that I do not travel at all these days, a little less from the fact that have been watching more movies, tweeting?

Having said that had decided to rectify the situation this year. Flipping thru Flipkartsometime a fortnight ago, saw some Indian authors, whose books sounded simple, in terms of story & price both. Ended up ordering the following:

Love, A rather Bad Idea….All it gives is a lousy hangover by Anirban Mukherjee
Zero Percentile..Missed IIT Kissed Russia by Neeraj Chhibba
Nothing can be as crazy by Ajay Mohan Jain &
The Dork by Sidin Vadukut (heavily tweeted on twitter by his well wishers)

Whilst this was in transit, I made a trip to Malvan and picked up a book at the Goa airport - Devil in Pinstripes by Ravi Subramanian having read his earlier ‘If God was a Banker’

Then overcome with work, did not even glance at those till, last week, when glancing through them, saw that most of them were 200 pages easy to read font & decided to go for them & so began:

Devil in Pinstripes - A good book taking a look at the Banking & financial segment, boss, mentor, couple relationship etc. nudging & offering some insight of what it is all about in a superficial way.

Dork - A good enough book, that gives an insight into Management placement, Consulting industry, taking a swipe at the perception & hype created vs how actually it works.

Zero Percentile - Halfway decent writing, that takes a look at lower middle class home, destiny mish mash. A book that can be missed without missing anything

Nothing can be as Crazy A decent book on the Banking Industry with neither a complete coverage on banking or institutional politics. There but cannot be there.

Love, A rather Bad Idea - A breezy book trying to convey that IIT has everything that the world can show and friendship, love, loyalty overcomes everything.

Having said that, some common factors which are not so surprising:)

Out of the 5 authors 2 are from IIT & 2 are from IIM or combination of both.
All the books can be called “ILIT” that has sex, loyalty, destiny, family & happy ending with of course IIT or IIM as background.
A bit of superiority “we were there, we are better, and now besides we can write” comes through.
The cost of the book is sub 200/- something like ‘chiclit’ take it on the flight & throw it.

As the DNA & Sunday Midday of 22nd February says that 1000 copies is enough to break even all of them have broken even, if nothing else but through their network, loyalty, friends & relatives.

What is painful is that such intelligent (obviously with IIT & IIM tags) people have chosen extremely mediocre, flat subjects to write their novels on, truly hope that they come out of their comfort zone & contribute more.

The Question this raises now is - “Do Indian Authors need to be IIT or IIM”

BUT in the end Hey they have written, published & people read, whilst I have not, so whilst this may sound, it is NOT sour grapes.

Review : Dork The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese

Parul  reviews the book:

Way back in 2004, when Sidin Vadukut first wrote his Travails I was not a blog reader or writer. Still, this post did the rounds as an e-mail forward and was cause for many giggles, guffaws and sniggers across cubicles. In the tradition of self-effacing humour, it clearly pulled out all stops. A few years later when I started writing a blog of my own, I discovered the phenomenon called Domain Maximus, a blog that never fails to tickle the funny bone and often draws the complaint that it is not updated frequently enough. Readers are not willing to accept that Sidin Vadukut may be busy in his day job as the managing editor of Livemint.com, his nearly-obsessive but consistently funny Twitter updates or writing his next book.

The first of the Dork trilogy arrived at my doorstep via Flipkart. The first and eminently pleasant surprise was the price of the book. At INR 149 (Rs 50 off, don't you just love Flipkart?), it doesn't hurt to pick up the book, even if one is just mildly curious about it. I read it in two days and that can only happen if the book engages at a personal level, at least when one is in the lifestage that I am in (child/ren running riot in the background), it is. Most bloggers turned authors will tell you that it is reasonably difficult to maintain one's voice as one makes the transition from hitting publish to will you publish me. It is almost as if the moment one decides that the time has come to pen the masterpiece that has been sitting in the old noggin, the creative juices all decide to dry up in a single, impressive flash. Sidin evades that admirably, managing to retain his trademark humour as he reveals the diaries of one Robert 'Einstein' Verghese - the dork, the hero.

If you have had the opportunity to meet a low on social skills - high on naivete MBA student, Einstein (an ironical dorm name bestowed on him by seniors) will come across as familiar. Ranked 41st in his batch at a WIMWI, Einstein manages to delude himself that Goldman Sachs and McKinsey and Co. all want him on Day Zero of placement day and the much-coveted foreign posting with a fat bonus waits just around the corner. Instead he finds himself at Dufresne, a mediocre, mid-level consulting firm where he bumbles along in his own inimitable style. Perhaps the MBA jokes are too contextual and the consulting satire too specific but the book still manages to hold one's attention and more importantly create some laugh-aloud moments. It would be interesting to know the reactions of readers who do not have any experience with products of the Engineering Graduate - MBA from premier institute - Consulting/Banking/PE Job cycle.

Back to Einstein - the desire to find love and sex (possibly in reverse order of importance) is also raging strong and he regards all the female characters in the book with the same lustful eye, without getting too much action. Basis some well-timed confusion and deception, he manages to go steady with the girl of his campus dreams, only to hanker after someone else.

All in all, a very good first effort and it would be interesting to see what else Sidin has in store for the readers in the remaining parts. We can never have enough funny writers, I say.   

So we have a guest review!

Woohoo we have a first guest review for Sidin Vadukut's book!The book is reviewed by Parul Sharma.Parul is a well known blogger in the blogosphere and a published author.Her book 'Bringing Up Vasu: That First Year' was published last year and I highly recommend the book to all mothers and wannabe mothers.

Thank you very much Parul for the review.It is an honor to have you writing for our blog as a guest writer!So the next blog post is the Review of Dork:The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese.

Remember I had invited all you people who love to read books and review them?Do send  us your review posts  at bookwelove[at]gmail[dot]com and we'd publish it here!

My review :The Diary Of A Social Butterfly

This book was another random pick while browsing at Crossword..and I must admit it has been worth every penny.I have laughed like never before..It was just so funny.But before we go to the story a little bit about the author :Moni Mohsin. Moni Mohsin writes a popular column called "The Diary Of A Social Butterfly' for Pakistan's Friday Times.Some of the selections from the column make up this book.Moni has grown up in Lahore and now divides her time between Lahore and London,where she lives with her husband and two kids.
So the story as the name predicts is that of Butterfly Khan who lives in Lahore in a 'big fat Kothi with a big fat garden' .She lives with her husband who she calls Janoo and their son Kulchoo.She is the typical high society lady who loves party-sharty,ball-shalls and lives life to the fullest ! Butterfly,the protagonist is shallow,obtuse and so full of herself....you may have seen or met a Butterfly at some point of your life.She is so engrossed in her social life that she is totally cut off from reality.The state of her country be damned,all she wants to do is be seen and heard at all important social functions.So the 9/11,Lal Masjid Siege,the US Afghan war and the death of Benazir Bhutto for her are just a hindrance to her social life.She shops at Harrod's in London,in America you see her buying in her words 'MAC ki lipsticks and D&G ka sent (read scent) and La Prarry (read la prairie) ki face cream and landcomb (read lancome) ka mascara' wears Jimmy Choo shoes and designer joras from the best designers the country has to offer.She is the star (or rather likes to believe that she is) the star of every page three party she attends.Janoo is the counterpoint to her silliness.. she calls him 'sarrhial' and 'buddha'  meaning cranky and old!She has a name for everyone Janoo's mother is the old bag his two sisters are the gruesome twosome.
Moni Mohsin has managed to give us a humorous and entertaining book on the party circuit of Pakistan or rather any country in the world.She has successfully managed to make  the character very believable
This book is a must buy for all the women out there.It's wicked,it's funny and really really entertaining!

Life in the time of Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Life
By Gerald Martin
 
A biography of the life of an author who, to me, redefined the reading experience with his One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the time of Cholera, and my introduction to the genre that continues to fascinate me, magic realism! I approached this rather weighty tome with the rubbing handed eagerness I normally reserve for eat all you can buffets and the unabridged works of PG Wodehouse.
I kid you. Seriously though, the sheer size of the book scared my eyeballs out. Sure, I love Marquez and his work, but the thought of plodding through so much intricate detail about his life was daunting. Interesting yes, but daunting. After all, if this had been written by Marquez, and had he liberally thrown in his trademark magic realism I would have lapped the book up. Right now, I approached it with wariness. And it turned out I was right. For starters, this is not a book for anyone who has not read Marquez. And secondly, the author, Gerald Martin has spent close to two decades of his life researching this book, which in itself is a clear indication that this biography is not going to an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. Ironically of the years spent researching the biography, the biographer spends only a month in the company of his subject. But he does conduct around 300 interviews with family, friends, associates, detractors and acquaintances to gain a complete insight into the life and times of Marquez. He retraces the family tree, legitimate and illegitimate. He recreates the childhood homes Marquez grew up in, which formed the genesis of the fabulous dynastic family homes that feature in his works. In short, he has done his job as a biographer impeccably. Does he get an insight into the mind of the Nobel Laureate? The jury is still out on that.
An interesting anecdote here: In a January 2006 interview with a Barcelona newspaper, Gabriel García Márquez, whose memory had begun to fail, deflected a question about his past. “You will have to ask my official biographer, Gerald Martin, about that sort of thing,” he said, “only I think he’s waiting for something to happen to me before he finishes.” (Janet Maslin in The New York Times)
No, one has to concur that Martin is no Boswell to Marquez. There is no obsequiousness, no fawning. And perhaps the lack of poetic prose in the biography was essential in a book dedicated to a man known for the sheer lyricism of his prose.
Gerald Martin has studied 20th century Latin American fiction, worked on Latin American history and brings to the biography an indepth knowledge of the milieu in which Marquez wrote his works. Would I recommend this book? It is no easy read. I would state that straight off. For one it is the kind of book that is heavy. Literally and metaphorically. It is not the book you pick up to immerse yourself in while working on your tan on the beach. But if you are even remotely curious about the life of a writer who has singlehandedly created a literary genre which has redefined the way we look at fiction, this book is a must read. As a source of reference for students researching Marquez and his work, this book is invaluable.
(By Kiran Manral)

The Confession of Sultana Daku

By Sujit Saraf

Fiction set in the past fascinates me, for the simple reason that it is to me a glimpse into an era gone by. The book opens on a night in a jail in the 1920s. To be precise, 7 July 1924, a notorious dacoit leader, Sultana Daku, is waiting to be led to the gallows the next morning. Sultana is the leader of a gang of Bhantu dacoits, low caste folk, notorious for theiving and robbery in the villages of the United Provinces. He waits for the arrival of Lt Col Samuel Pearce at the Haldwani jail where he is lodged. He then proceeds to tell Pearce the story of his life, which he wants to be written into a letter to his son who is lodged in another jail. High on charas and the reminscences of a man about to meet death, he tells the gora saheb the story of his life. A life that has been crammed with daring feats of heroic burglaries, narrow escapes, of life as a bhantu outlaw, his love for Phulkanwar, a nautch girl, and the betrayal that cost him his freedom and led him to the gallows.
Sultana believes his destiny was written to be a criminal, but he hopes that his son will have a different life. Although he wants his son to learn the tricks of the trade, it is in his hopes and fears for his son that we see the human face of the fearsome dacoit emerge.
The author had earlier written The Peacock Throne. The novel is not just a fictionalised account of the life of a dacoit, but a commentary on the social fabric of the times, a task skilfully done despite the narrative being in the first person.
On an aside, since the mother in law has grown up in the area around Haldwani, I did ask her if she has heard of the legend called Sultana Daku and to my surprise she had. And had apparently studied about him in her school text books. Which made the book all the more interesting to me, because this was a character who had existed, and who was a legend, whom the local people had grown up listening to stories about.

Reviewed by Kiran Manral