Skip to main content

Great Books for Great Thoughts

My personal library: a view


Great thoughts come from great minds. We live in a time that seems to have sacrificed thinking at the altar of expediency. There is too much superficiality around because of lack of thinking on the part of human beings. Our religions have become mere rituals and some of those rituals have degenerated enough to be murderous. Our literature is increasingly becoming cerebral puzzles that at best tickle the brains. What we call culture today is nothing more than a shop-ware peddled thoughtlessly at social media platforms.

Thoughtlessness is a serious problem. Thinking has to be brought back to our lives. Perhaps the old masters can help us. That’s what I think. Hence I have taken up the A2Z Challenge thrown by the Blogchatter team.

The theme I have chosen for the challenge is ‘Great Books for Great Thoughts’. I intend to present 26 books to you starting from 1 April. We’ll have a sweet look at books from Arms and the Man to Zorba the Greek. We’ll traverse the dark, musty corridors of Kafka’s Castle, look at the intrinsic wickedness of human nature in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, realise the meaning of deep spiritual quests in Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, and so on.

Be with me in April. I assure you it is going to be worth it.


Are you participating in A to Z Challenge 2020? Sign-ups are open till April 5.
Do you have a theme for the month? Check out other Theme Reveals as-well.
And do check out A to Z Challenge to find more details.


Comments

  1. I have no doubt you will be giving us a wholesome list. I always look forward to your pieces. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Sonia. I'm sure I'll be able to present a challenging list at least.

      Delete
  2. Ooh this will help in adding to my library. Of course, thoughtlessness is an issue today that we need to deal with, and I suppose there's no better way to do it than through books and their discussions. All the best with the challenge! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. All the best! Looking forward to reading your posts!
    Please embed your Twitter handle in the Sharing Button.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not tech-savvy. I don't know how to embed the Twitter handle. Let me see.

      Delete
  4. Will be hopping in to find some good work to read.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great topic!
    List will be interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love your topic. Thinking indeed has become as essential a skill as common sense. And it pains me that people would rather react than reflect. All the best for April.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I loved this blog. One should always keep reading and learning.
    Stay motivated

    ReplyDelete

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

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...