Three ‘books on books, literarure, writing, & writers’ … The Girl Who Ate Books, Second Thoughts, & Where I’m Reading From

These three books are about ‘books.’  I bought these books some time back but was not sure if I should write about them.  Two of these are by Indian writers and their books have been reviewed fairly well and are being talked about in newspapers, magazines, on the internet and so on.  The spark that created a flicker of interest in buying and reading these books was Vinod’s birthday some months back.  He wrote in his blog how his friends gift him books on his birthday and that he has a list ready for such occasions.  He also said a friend of his gifted him Nilanjana Roy’s The Girl Who Ate Books.  I thought I too am a friend of his and asked him which book he’d like as a birthday gift.  He promptly said, Navtej Sarna’s Second Thoughts.  I liked this … no “no, ya, why, ya” kind of hedging … I like to read, I want books, if you want to give me books, I will tell you what I want.  So, I sent him Second Thoughts directly.  He was glad, of course. 

A couple of weeks after I sent him Second Thoughts, I wondered why don’t I buy these two books for myself.  I enjoy reading books about books.  I enjoyed reading Pradeep Sebastian’s The Groaning Shelf, and subsequently Vinod turned my attention towards Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris and had gifted me Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road.  I did some online research to see what these books contained.  I used to sometimes read Sarna’s column in The Hindu Sunday Supplement, and so I was familiar with his writings.  I knew the book would predominantly lean towards literature.  Roy’s book seemed to cover a wider range.  And since I was on a ‘books on books’ spree, I searched for some more books with similar themes and discovered quite a few.  I settled for Tim Parks’ Where I’m Reading From. 

 

 

The books arrived within a few days.  Shruti and I were having a conversation about plagiarism in research and all the ensuing problems, anti-plagiarism software, and so on.  When I opened The Girl Who Ate Books and browsed through the contents, I saw a section on Plagiarism!  That section had three essays and those were the essays that I read first, and so far.  I haven’t started Second Thoughts yet.  Tim Parks’ book has very interesting essays like ‘Why Finish Books,’ ‘E-books are for Grown-ups,’ ‘What’s Wrong with the Nobel?’ ‘Does Copyright Matter?’ and many such ‘lateral’ essays related to books, readers, and literature.  There are a few more 'books about books' that I have wishlist-ed, and I am waiting for my pocket to become warm once again.

250 Posts on this blog ...

This ‘gloat’ post is actually the 252^nd … the third part of the ‘bibliothrillers’ series was the 250^th, but I didn’t want to break the series with a ‘gloat’ post to announce my 250^th to the world … so here it is … I have now written 250 posts on my blog!!

It is a very meagre achievement actually, considering this blog is almost 8 and a half years old … even if I had done one post per week from the beginning, I should have written around 400 posts by now … the first year was really good actually … I was sort of ‘prolific’ and wrote 74 posts … then I thought I’d continue to write with the same pace … I was thrilled that I could write all these posts on a variety of subjects … not a great range really … mostly about fountain pens, books, a few on music, and some on travel … from 74, the number slid down drastically to 24 in the next year, and it was a progressive decline for the subsequent two years – 12 and 10 posts … recovered slightly in the next three years, but maintaining a bleak average of around 22-23 posts a year …

Many a times I felt like surrendering altogether and posting ‘The End,’ but somehow I also felt this blog was one thing that liked doing, however sporadically and that I should continue … so, last year I pulled up my socks, tied my shoelaces tightly, tightened my belt (huh!), and set off on a determined journey to write at least 50 posts by the end of the year … I almost reached there … with 47 posts … another 9 posts and I would have reached 250 last year itself … I was aware of this, but I didn’t want to hurry by posting just about anything … this year didn’t begin with optimism and for two months, I didn’t write anything … and I really wanted to close down this blog … in March I made a tentative restart by putting up a really ‘down and out’ post … and tried to remember the good times I had during my year end trip to Shimoga and wrote three more posts about that visit … April was lost to ‘busyness’ of exams in college and or was it also because it is the cruellest month?

I went to Abids after 6 months and a book that I bought there spurred me on to write a series on ‘bibliothrillers’ … and here I am now …

I realise that most of my posts are sort of ‘essay’ length, and sometimes the narrative flags and sometimes people don’t have the time to read through the entire thing … all fountain pen enthusiasts are not book lovers and all book lovers are not fountain pen enthusiasts … and either of them may not like reading about HMT watches … but what to do, I am like this only … I don’t know who reads my posts or how many read my posts … there are some regular readers, I know … I was also rather touched when a couple of my readers pointed out that I hadn’t been posting for quite some time (during those bleak times) … and then maybe sometime in 2014, rather late, I discovered that my post could be linked to my facebook page … that got my posts a few more readers, going by the likes and some comments … and two book review posts on ‘chai and tea’ actually got published in an online journal thanks to KBS Krishna’s persuasions … that gave me some confidence that my posts are ‘readable’ … and more recently, rather shamelessly, I concede, I also started putting my post links on my linkedin profile page …

So, thank you all my readers for your likes, comments, and ‘view’s … and invisible support … 300 by the year end?  No way … it’s a long way to Tipperary … namma thipparaLLi balu doora …