Skip to main content

Books and 2017

My little library

2017 was a relatively bad year for me where books are concerned.  First of all, I couldn’t read as many as I wished.  Secondly, quite a few of the books I read don’t deserve a second read. 

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness disappointed me.  “The socio-political activist in the author has superseded the literary artist,” as I wrote in my review.  I concede that we live a painfully fragmented world and writing fiction is a highly challenging job.  How does a writer fathom the depths where too much debris of fragmented things and people, fragmented gods and legends lie scattered in utter chaos?

PaulaHawkins’ The Girl on the Train is thelast book I reviewed in 2017.  “The Number One Bestseller” is a good entertainer and not serious literature.  Evil reeks heavily in every page of the book.  I was left gasping for fresh air by the time I reached the last page of the book.  Once again I was left longing for good literature.

Two of the best history books I read during the year are Christians, a Malayalam book and Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.  The former traces the history of Christianity in the world and in Kerala with the dispassionate authoritativeness of a historian.  The latter is a brilliant look at mankind, its evolution, follies, achievements, and possible future.

Jose Maliekal’s Standstill Utopias? is a book with a difference.  Written by a Catholic missionary priest, it questions the nature of much religious activity carried out in the country with a particular and academic focus on the Madiga people of Andhra.  Teesta Setalvad’s TheFoot Soldier of the Constitution: A Memoir could have been a much better work with a little more editing.

The best book I read in the year (end of 2016, in fact) is MyName is Red by Orhan Pamuk.  Uniquely crafted, intellectually challenging, imaginatively stimulating, the novel is wonderful though it won’t extract a second read from me. 

I look forward to a better year as far as reading is concerned.  I hope to discover some good works in 2018, works that explore the human dilemmas and agonies with breath-taking imaginativeness.   


PS. Written for IndiSpire Edition 201: #Books2017

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniDecember 28, 2017 at 10:20 AM

    I have read three of the novels mentioned here. I found the ministry captivating,didn't find it bias, and although raw at the start, the novel went ahead to create a literary piece, with questions that still persists in my mind. With more experience, perhaps, I would be able to get the answers to those questions.

    Of course, Sapiens is the best book in non fiction category which had a tremendous impact on me. The history of mankind through evolution both biologically, intellectually and politically revealed the dynamics of why our world is so and what can we expect to converge into in the distant future.

    The girl, as you have mentioned is entertaining and I really don't mind reading such thriller once in a while.

    I am keeping my name is red on my to be read shelf for the coming year.

    Right now, based on your suggestions in multiple blogs, I am reading Zorba the Greek. And my, my! That is a novel! Simply loving it. The contrast between buddhu and zorba is evident. And am eager to see what zorba does after making the slop on the mountain, and how the narrator comes in piece with his inner buddha. Such a masterpiece. I am awed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 28, 2017 at 9:33 PM

      I missed you here for quite a long while.

      I never said Ms Roy is a biased writer. Far from that, she is a committed writer. As committed as a religious person. Every leftist is as committed as any religious person. A good novel rises above that commitment. Rises to the level of deeply learnt personal truths. Ms Roy does not seem to have learnt those personal truths.

      Zorba remains my favourite even now, years after I read it first.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Raging Waves and Fading Light

Illustration by Gemini AI Fiction Why does the sea rage endlessly? Varghese asked himself as he sat on the listless sands of the beach looking at the sinking sun beyond the raging waves. When rage becomes quotidian, no one notices it. What is unnoticed is futile. Like my life, Varghese muttered to himself with a smirk whose scorn was directed at himself. He had turned seventy that day. That’s why he was on the beach longer than usual. It wasn’t the rage of the waves or the melancholy of the setting sun that kept him on the beach. Self-assessment kept him there. Looking back at the seventy years of his life made him feel like an utter fool, a dismal failure. Integrity versus Despair, Erik Erikson would have told him. He studied Erikson’s theory on human psychological development as part of an orientation programme he had to attend as a teacher. Aged people reflect on their lives and face the conflict between feeling a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction (integrity) or a feeli...
7 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more