tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post5782171898782096979..comments2024-03-28T22:51:28.222+05:30Comments on The Middle Stage: On Manjushree Thapa's Tilled EarthChandrahashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-5826378011675535882007-12-23T22:09:00.000+05:302007-12-23T22:09:00.000+05:30Manjushree THapa is a fantastic writer which she h...Manjushree THapa is a fantastic writer which she has already proved in THE TUTOR OF HISTORY and FORGET KATHMANDU. i am great fan of her and her writing. Tilled earth is trend setting in a way that has new style of story telling and style. i had never seen story of five lines!!!! keep it up, Didi.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-58370785188983263862007-06-29T08:53:00.000+05:302007-06-29T08:53:00.000+05:30Space Bar - Yes, we left Manjushree Thapa behind a...Space Bar - Yes, we left Manjushree Thapa behind after sentence 1 of this comments string. But never mind, all general discussion of literature leads back somewhere into particularities.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-36544236105268044762007-06-29T08:48:00.000+05:302007-06-29T08:48:00.000+05:30Anirudh - These aren't the old times of scarcity a...Anirudh - These aren't the old times of scarcity and privation any more; everything is available, though for some kinds of books you have to work harder than others. <BR/><BR/>In my college days I used to read lots of books from the British Council and the Max Mueller library because it was hard to get those books otherwise. Also, there were some remarkably pretty girls to be seen in these locations, as there were fewer places to hang out in those times than now. <BR/><BR/>Now I've been collecting books seriously for about a decade, and hav a nearly self-sufficient collection. I even have a substantial amount of high-quality but hard-to-find literary criticism, such as Northrop Frye's <I>Anatomy of Criticism</I>, Roger Shattuck's <I>Forbidden Knowledge</I>. or Harry Levin's <I>The Gates of Horn</I>, which I've just been looking at. Last year at a bargain-basement shop in Cambridge I was thrilled to find Jose Ortega y Gasset's <I>Meditations On Quixote</I>, which I promptly bought. Three books I don't possess yet and have borrowed from libraries on more than one occasion are Nabokov's great <I>Lectures on Literature</I>, Konstantin Mochulsky's marvellous biography of Dostoevsky, and Joseph Frank's <I>Through The Russian Prism</I>, a copy of which exists, incidentally, in your very own college department library.<BR/><BR/>There are two poles here: wanting to own each book limits what I read, and not owning books I read makes for a limited kind of reading. I do the best I can within these boundaries, prefering possession for the most part but making exceptions for rare or out-of-print books.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-55624838179848362352007-06-29T06:00:00.000+05:302007-06-29T06:00:00.000+05:30I love the way this discussion has less than nothi...I love the way this discussion has less than nothing to do with Manjushree Thapa; in celebration of which (not that I have anythign against her or her book, but I love side tracks), here is Billy Collins' poem, 'Marginalia':<BR/><BR/>http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1130.html<BR/><BR/>I love books that have been scribbled in just that little bit more than I like scribbling in books!Space Barhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08251329008160756254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-8168243893225816292007-06-29T04:26:00.000+05:302007-06-29T04:26:00.000+05:30I'll address the rest of your reply later but for ...I'll address the rest of your reply later but for now, one question: Doesn't having to own each book limit what you read? Like you, I buy a fair number of books from sales and second hand bookshops but I still rely on my book network (friends, family, acquaintances) and library for a lot of the books I read. Not that I've read all, or even most, of the books I own but quite often, I get an urge to read a particular book and it is rarely feasible to buy the book.akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-44783614904138416992007-06-28T22:32:00.000+05:302007-06-28T22:32:00.000+05:30Anirudh - Well, I work almost full-time in books n...Anirudh - Well, I work almost full-time in books now, so the review copies I get are for keeps, and even otherwise I mostly possess everything I read, because I buy a lot from sales and secondhand shops. For that reason I generally don't borrow books from friends, because I can't leave any marks on them.<BR/><BR/>If anything, taking notes while you're reading, even if it is fiction, greatly increases the enjoyment of the experience, because it feels like all the secrets of the work are opening up for you. Novels are not like movies anyway, where hitting the pause button would interrupt the flow. You can read novels at exactly the pace you want, and over the span of days rather than hours. You only stop to make notes when something has struck you as being especially significant, and it's good to think about those things. The pleasure of reading is to a good extent a function of the care and knowledge you bring to the work as a reader.<BR/><BR/>Sometimes I take a look at novels where I haven't made any notes, and it feels like I haven't read them at all - I can't tell any more what I liked about them. To my mind books are lovingly written works that also ask, as a record of your engagement with them, to be written in.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-55784947581844215512007-06-28T14:41:00.000+05:302007-06-28T14:41:00.000+05:30I also take notes in the margins sometimes. But fo...I also take notes in the margins sometimes. But for that, one has to own the book (or do you find some way around that), no? Also, instead of increasing the joy of reading the book, it sometimes takes away from it -- especially in the case of fiction -- since it keeps breaking the flow of one's reading. You never feel that way?akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-44319514601763313722007-06-28T14:22:00.000+05:302007-06-28T14:22:00.000+05:30Swar - No matters what revolutions there are in sc...Swar - No matters what revolutions there are in screen- reading technology, I don't see how one could write notes in the margins. And if they find some way around that, I'll exercise my ingenuity to find something new to complain about - such as that you can't lie on your back reading your computer in bed.<BR/><BR/>I've only read some of Solzhenitysn's essays, such as "A World Split Apart", his famous spech at Harvard University in 1978 ("I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.") But some of his novels are so large that they scare the reader off. <BR/><BR/>Zivkovic I have to say I've never heard of. But it's clear that between him and Solzhenitsyn they've claimed two of the first four circles.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-20822727160607393872007-06-28T13:35:00.000+05:302007-06-28T13:35:00.000+05:30as playwriting is making a pauper out of me, i am ...as playwriting is making a pauper out of me, i am training to be a parapsychologist. and you might just have to change your mind on screen-reading in the future. some exciting inventions are coming up - to soothe the book lovers' bellyache.<BR/><BR/>Have you read Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle'? Just found out that there is another very good novel called 'The Fourth Circle' by Zoran Zivkovic, which sounds as complicated as the First.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-6659057860545230142007-06-28T12:42:00.000+05:302007-06-28T12:42:00.000+05:30Sundeep - Yes, I don't like reading books online e...Sundeep - Yes, I don't like reading books online either. There's something about the feel and heft of a book that is lost on a computer screen, and of course you can't take notes in the margins if you're reading online, which to me is one of the points of reading books.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-31922681773255501152007-06-27T11:07:00.000+05:302007-06-27T11:07:00.000+05:30I used to be able to read books online, not anymor...I used to be able to read books online, not anymore. Anyway, here's a link to Lysistrata in .txt: <BR/>http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/alyss10.txtSundeep Pattemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16864022386751179469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-20249374679229179162007-06-27T10:20:00.000+05:302007-06-27T10:20:00.000+05:30Swar - Strangely enough Lysistrata was just the pl...Swar - Strangely enough <I>Lysistrata</I> was just the play I was thinking about - what could be a funnier plotline than a nation's women who won't sleep with their men till they stop going to war? But I don't know if I have a translation with me - an edition of Aristophanes's plays I bought off the streets recently doesn't have it. We'll see.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-36341192220599248542007-06-26T15:23:00.000+05:302007-06-26T15:23:00.000+05:30Chandrahas, do you allow requests?Lysistrata, Lysi...Chandrahas, do you allow requests?<BR/><BR/>Lysistrata, Lysistrata! of those pugnacious women. then you can tackle Willa Cather.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-37083638218535371442007-06-26T11:01:00.000+05:302007-06-26T11:01:00.000+05:30Anirudh - Well, the pieces for Mint aren't too bad...Anirudh - Well, the pieces for Mint aren't too bad, are they? And usually they're longer here than they are in the paper. I think that just recently I've written about some good non-fiction, in particular, which I wouldn't have looked at were it not for the paper.<BR/><BR/>The thing is, I've had a great deal of commissioned work lately - which is good news, as I've got to make a living just like anyone else - and as I'm also working on a longer project, there isn't much time left over for new pieces for my blog. There's no point in doing something if you can't do it well.<BR/><BR/>But I agree - there's a fun in writing about old and forgotten books and personal favourites that there isn't sometimes in weekly reviewing. All that should resume very soon - I'm thinking of doing something next month on Aristophanes, or another post on Cather.Chandrahashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07483080477755487202noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9082470.post-59609127680439148702007-06-26T10:34:00.000+05:302007-06-26T10:34:00.000+05:30This seems like a book I'd like to read. And why, ...This seems like a book I'd like to read. And why, oh why, have you stopped putting up anything but your pieces for Mint? Where are Constantine Cavafy and Willa Cather?akhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15385267278249934192noreply@blogger.com