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

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...

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...

Our gods must have died laughing

A friend forwarded a video clip this morning. It is an extract from a speech that celebrated Malayalam movie actor Sreenivasan delivered years ago. In the year 1984, Sreenivasan decided to marry the woman he was in love with. But his career in movies had just started and so he hadn’t made much money. Knowing his financial condition, another actor, Innocent, gave him Rs 400. Innocent wasn’t doing well either in the profession. “Alice’s bangle,” Innocent said. He had pawned or sold his wife’s bangle to get that amount for his friend. Then Sreenivasan went to Mammootty, who eventually became Malayalam’s superstar, to request for help. Mammootty gave him Rs 2000. Citing the goodness of the two men, Sreenivasan said that the wedding necklace ( mangalsutra ) he put ceremoniously around the neck of his Hindu wife was funded by a Christian (Innocent) and a Muslim (Mammootty). “What does religion matter?” Sreenivasan asks in the video. “You either refuse to believe in any or believe in a...

The Buddha in the Central Vista

Prime Minister Modi was taking a dip in the mineral water pond constructed on the bank of the Yamuna as part of his weekly photo op when Siddhartha Gautama aka the Buddha walked into the office of the National Committee for Correcting Civilizational Narratives (NCCCN) in Central Vista, New Delhi. An email was received by “Dr Sri Siddhartha Gautama Buddha PhD” from the PMO [Prime Minister’s Office] inviting him to attend a meeting “to authenticate and align the curriculum with indigenous perspectives as part of implementing the National Education Policy, NEP.” Siddhartha was amused on receiving the mail. “Is it possible they still wish to learn after proclaiming themselves the Vishwaguru?” He wondered with a wry smile. He was more amused to see the honorary doctorate conferred upon him by the Vishwaguru Vishwavidyala, in Spiritual Sciences. It’d be interesting to make a visit, he decided. When he entered the opulent office, whose floor was paved with Italian marble tiles, he reca...