I’m feeling really jumpy today. I have so many things to write about, but all these ideas and words seem to have spilled all over my brain like jelly beans. Bright, jelly beans – all purple, yellow, bubble-gum pinks, tangerine orange, Kermit green, neon blue – spongy little gel-spurts of color inside my head. It’s impossible to get hold of these beans, much less string them to make some sort of a sentence. I think I’ll simply make a list of books that I have but haven’t read yet:
1. Inventing Memory by Erica Jong (I’ve read ‘Fear of Flying’. It’s excellent.)
2. Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh (I still think his best work is ‘Shadow Lines’.)
3. Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
4. Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie (I honestly have not read this one yet because I want to be worthy of reading it. It’s a strange feeling, inadequately expressed, but that’s the only reason I reverently touch the spine of this book every night before putting it back on the shelf.)
5. How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto
6. Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (This one I borrowed and am reading it now. I don’t much care for fantasy fiction, but my colleague seemed delighted by it. Thought I’d give it a try. Liking it immensely so far.)
7. Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (This book is the reason Indians learn to read and write English, apparently.)
8. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (I had loved Tipping Point.)
9. From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (I haven’t read any other Stephen King novel. But have cringed through several movie adaptations. There’s one book, ‘Art of Writing’, though, that I strongly recommend. It’s a sort of a guide on how to write novels. King got this idea when he was playing in a music band with other writers – and Amy Tan was one of them. One day he asked her what question she wishes she were asked by reporters, when they interview her.
She said ‘…no-one asked about the craft.’ This book, ‘The Art of Writing’, is apparently a response to that unasked question.)
10. Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (I’d started reading this book and it was quite entertaining. But I misplaced it somewhere. I do want to finish this book in some nice coffee shop between movies or when I’m travelling somewhere. Seems that sort of in-transit read.)
11. City of Djinns by William Darlymple (Took it up, read a few chapters, left it…took it up again, read the same chapters, left it…etc. etc.)
12. Age of Kali by William Darlymple
13. One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow (Law…Harvard…all the things I’m besotted with.)
14. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez (It’s time now…it’s high time now…)
16. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (I stopped reading it mid-way when I started getting nightmares about the Mumbai riots. But increasingly, with a shifting sense of an ‘insider/ outsider’ duel inside my head, this book is becoming a very important one to read now.)
17. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
18. Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
And these are the books on one shelf in one room. I think I’m set with the reading for the rest of this year.
1. Inventing Memory by Erica Jong (I’ve read ‘Fear of Flying’. It’s excellent.)
2. Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh (I still think his best work is ‘Shadow Lines’.)
3. Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
4. Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie (I honestly have not read this one yet because I want to be worthy of reading it. It’s a strange feeling, inadequately expressed, but that’s the only reason I reverently touch the spine of this book every night before putting it back on the shelf.)
5. How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto
6. Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (This one I borrowed and am reading it now. I don’t much care for fantasy fiction, but my colleague seemed delighted by it. Thought I’d give it a try. Liking it immensely so far.)
7. Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (This book is the reason Indians learn to read and write English, apparently.)
8. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (I had loved Tipping Point.)
9. From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (I haven’t read any other Stephen King novel. But have cringed through several movie adaptations. There’s one book, ‘Art of Writing’, though, that I strongly recommend. It’s a sort of a guide on how to write novels. King got this idea when he was playing in a music band with other writers – and Amy Tan was one of them. One day he asked her what question she wishes she were asked by reporters, when they interview her.
She said ‘…no-one asked about the craft.’ This book, ‘The Art of Writing’, is apparently a response to that unasked question.)
10. Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (I’d started reading this book and it was quite entertaining. But I misplaced it somewhere. I do want to finish this book in some nice coffee shop between movies or when I’m travelling somewhere. Seems that sort of in-transit read.)
11. City of Djinns by William Darlymple (Took it up, read a few chapters, left it…took it up again, read the same chapters, left it…etc. etc.)
12. Age of Kali by William Darlymple
13. One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow (Law…Harvard…all the things I’m besotted with.)
14. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez (It’s time now…it’s high time now…)
16. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (I stopped reading it mid-way when I started getting nightmares about the Mumbai riots. But increasingly, with a shifting sense of an ‘insider/ outsider’ duel inside my head, this book is becoming a very important one to read now.)
17. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
18. Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
And these are the books on one shelf in one room. I think I’m set with the reading for the rest of this year.
Comments