Absolute Khushwant

This latest non-fiction by Khushwant Singh is a very delightful and quick read. He shared his opinions and views on various events, subjects and persons like 1984 communal riots, 26/11 attack, Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, religion, Pakistan and many more. He also included a few chapters on his personal life. All through the book, one cannot help being awestruck by his honesty, straight-forwardness and frankness.

He openly declared that he hates Advani and announced that he had done irreparable damage to the country. He praised the present Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh as a man of integrity. He had both good things and bad things to say about various people. I was pleased to note that Mahatma Gandhi is his role model. I’m impressed by Khushwant ‘s energy and drive to work even at the age of 95. He is a truly inspiring person, especially with regard to his philosophy of time and work.

A few months ago, I read another of his non-fiction books – We Indians. It’s a short book about the idiosyncrasies of Indians. It’s comical, satirical and above all true.

I regret discovering this amazing personality so late. Even though I have heard about him for quite a long time, I haven’t really read anything by him expect his first novel, Train to Pakistan, which failed to make a lasting impression on me at that time. It is “We Indians” that evoked my interest in his works, particularly non-fiction.

I’m keen to read more about him and his take on various things.

My reading in 2010

The count this year is a modest 60. Not much change in the statistics. The same <20% still holds good for non-fiction. But, to my satisfaction, I’ve tried various subjects – from self-help (Nine Rooms of Happiness) to travelogues (The Lost Continent); memoirs (Angela’s Ashes) to pure technical stuff (Business Intelligence) and more.

I read more number of Telugu books this year compared to the previous one. I tried a few authors for the first time this year – Mohammad Khadeerbabu (Poleramma Banda Kathalu), Chilikamarti Lakshminarasimham (Ganapathi) and Bhanumathi Ramakrishna (Athagari Kathalu). I loved them all.

If I have to name a book from this year’s list, which I’ve liked the most, it would undoubtedly be The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It touched me, surprised me, and above all shook me. I read only a few mysteries (by James Hadley Chase) but more than a few  thrillers, which include The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson and techno-thrillers (Timeline, The Terminal Man, Pirate Latitudes) by my favorite Michael Crichton. I felt that the Millennium trilogy was ok – new and interesting.

I also covered a few family dramas and those, which I guess cannot be called pure chick-lit – Amy and Isabelle by Olive Kitteridge fame Elizabeth Strout, Letter from Peking by Pearl S Buck, Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan and a few by Maile Meloy. Each and every one of them left me thinking more about the lively characters.

I tried horror (Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein) for the first time and I have to admit that the experience was far from being pleasant. I deliberately avoided reading it during the nights and had to gather my courage many a times in order to continue with the book.

Another heart-felt book I was fortunate to read this year is The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk. It was simply amazing. The author had left me awestruck. Looking forward to read more of him. In fact, I just started his My Name is Red.

Coming to the Short Stories, I had better luck in Telugu compared to English. While Alice Munro’s (Too Much Happiness) and Maile Meloy’s (Both Ways is the Only Way I want) were just fine, it was Tagore’s collection of stories, which cast a deep impression on me. They were just brilliant.

Other books, which I cherished this year include – The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, The Secret of Laughter by Susha Guppy (Magical Tales from Classical Persia), Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt (Non-fiction), and Kane & Abel by Jeffrey Archer.

I feel blessed and I hope to read better, if not more, books next year.

The Nine Rooms of Happiness

I’m glad I read Nine Rooms of Happiness by Lucy Danziger, the editor of Self magazine and Catherine Birndorf, a psychologist. It;s not about coping with the big problems in our life – loss of a close one or divorce or failure or depression etc. It’s about those little thought and action patterns which curb our happiness, even if everything seems right on the outset.

The authors used the metaphor of house to describe different emotional states of a woman. According to them, the emotional house consists of 9 rooms:

• Basement: Childhood memories, memories from school days etc. In short, your past.
• Family Room: Where you deal with your family – parents, siblings, close relatives etc
• Living Room: Where you deal with friends aka your social life
• Bathroom: Where you face the issues of weight, beauty, aging, health etc
• Bedroom: Where you explore intimacy and love
• Kid’s Room: Where you deal with your children
• Office: your job, career, finances etc.
• Attic: The family heirloom, expectations of your ancestors (also your parents)

And there is a surprise Tenth Room, which is your inner sanctuary: A place to think about you, your purpose in life, relax and rejuvenate.

It’s a very easy read, with lots of stories from real-life. You are bound to relate to at least a few of them. The authors offer the reader lot of pearls of wisdom, which we can apply to, and thereby enrich, our lives. It’s amazing to realize how simple they are, yet powerful enough to change the course of our lives.

Some of the pearls include:

• It’s not all about you
• Stop controlling, start connecting
• Go or grow
• No one can complete you, but you. (I love this!)

I felt the relationship equation to be most useful to me, which is A+B=C, where A is you, B is the other person whom you love or deal with and C is the relationship between you. You cannot change B. So if you want to change C, the relationship, you have to change yourself. And this, you can do.

Things like unhealthy narcissism, striving towards perfectionism and many other day-to-day psychological patterns refrain us from really achieving and experiencing the holy grail – Happiness. The authors put it right in the first few pages that – Being happier is like being fit; You have to work at it. Happiness is a choice, choose to be happy.

And this book can be your companion.

Century

Hurray! I scored a century. Before you start wondering, let me make it clear that it’s not about any game; it’s the number of books I’ve read this year. Actually it’s a surprise to me too as I haven’t consciously strove for it, not unless I reached the 90 mark. I know that some bookworms out there take the 50 or 100 a year challenges, but I wasn’t motivated by them.

In fact, when I discovered that I read 58 books in 2008, I thought it was very unusual and have decided to read a lot less in 2009 as I wanted to spend more of my time on other things. But alas! The reverse happened.

Of course the number doesn’t mean much, it is quality that matters. I could have easily read little comics to make the count 100. Actually count was never a big thing on my mind, even though I experience a secret pleasure as I update my “Books I’ve read” spreadsheet.

I’m glad that I never had to compromise on the quality of the books I read in favor of the quantity. This year I read some really amazing books. While I can’t make a good job of picking up the top 10 (I tried, but soon saw the futility of it) or something like that, I would like to mention here some of the remarkable ones.

“The Great Indian Novel” by Shashi Tharoor was an exhilarating experience to me. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed its wit and humor. I had the honor of reading and appreciating George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”.  Arundhati Roy’s “God of Small Things” was a pleasant surprise for me. It’s a prose that is so poetic and beautiful. “Bridges of Madison County” was a heart touching love story, which left lingering thoughts behind. I also thoroughly enjoyed my favorite author Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”.

“Woman in the Dunes” had been a deeply affecting novel. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” was an enigma. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy was another disturbing but wonderful work.

I thought that I couldn’t appreciate the Pulitzer Winner, “Olive Kitteridge” much. I got bored at some points. But I’m sure I would enjoy and appreciate it more on second reading.

There also were some mysteries and thrillers in the list mostly of Agatha Christie, James Hadley Chase, Ken Follett and Michael Chrichton, which were quick-reads and a pleasure to read anytime.

“Inheritance of Loss” leads the list of disappointments. It was a sheer torture. Others include, among others, “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “Between the Assassinations” by Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger fame) and “Six Suspects” by Vikas Swarup (Q & A fame).

I must say that I’m very happy about the non-fiction books I’ve read this year. Though they constitute less than 20% of the total, each one is remarkable in its own way. “I Don’t” narrated the history of marriage right from Adam and Eve. “The Japanese Mind” explained, of course the Japanese mind (for the benefit of westerners, especially Americans). “Planet Google” was really very informative. I read all four of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, which of course were brilliant. Another useful book I read was “What do you want from me?” by Terri Apter on how to handle in-law relationships. “Freakonomics” was awesome, also was “Overthrow”. “The Accidental Billionaires” and “Games Indians Play” were among the not so amazing ones.

All in all, I feel happy about the books I’ve read this year and look forward to read more good books next year. But this time, I really want to cut down the quantity and take it slow. It’s seems funny that I have to make a resolution to read less, but given my addiction it actually makes sense. Also I have an idea to read only huge books in 2010, because I have an innate phobia for any book with more than 600 pages. I know this seems absurd but I just can’t make myself pick up such a monster, however good it might be. Consequently, I haven’t read Ayn Rand or Alexander Dumas or Margaret Mitchell till now. I just hate to hold onto the same book for long periods of time (more than a few weeks at the most) . But I’m not sure whether I’ll overcome this fear/aversion just now. Hmm…

Social psychology literature

The other day when I was browsing through the book shelves in a store, two books – The Mirror Effect (about the effects of celebrity narcissism) and The Dumbest Generation – caught my attention.  Clearly, these were books on the current socio-psychological trends or issues in America. Immediately a few more similar books came into my mind – Decoding Love (on the dating scene), What do you want from me? (about managing in-law relationships) Etc. All these books discuss issues more specific to the American society and they draw heavily on various research studies made by universities or independent research institutions in relevant fields.

I tried to come up with similar books in Indian context, but my attempt was in vain. I just wondered why there are no such books in India- not at least I know of. When I thought about the non-fiction products of India, I could only come up with self-help books like You Can Win, Mind Magic, Positive Thinking, How to pass your exams etc. I could find some with academic flavor on subjects like politics, economics, psychology etc, but none with commercial touch. I feel like the field of social psychology hasn’t been studied much in India, at least not in a systematic way. And howmuchever it happens, it’s locked away by the academicians and doesn’t usually reach the general public.

Anyways, upon intense googling, I found two books which talk about the social picture of India – The Great Indian Middle Class (by Pavan K. Varma) and The Indians: Portrait of a People (by India’s foremost psychoanalyst and cultural commentator Sudhir Kakar and anthropologist Katharina Kakar). And I was pleasantly surprised. Of course these are not exactly what I hoped for but at least these set the direction. If there exist others like these, I am hopelessly unaware of them.

Another thing that bothers me is that such books are really not very popular and hardly ever come into limelight. I guess this is mainly because of the reading habits and preferences of Indians. In India, reading is neither cultivated as a habit since childhood nor generally encouraged later. Consequently a very small proportion of the literate population is serious readers. Well, nothing can be done about this outright to reverse the scenario but I just wish good books are really more accessible and more widely marketed.

The other day when I was browsing through the book shelves in a store, two books – The Mirror Effect (about the effects of celebrity narcissism) byDrew Pinsky & Dr. S. Mark Young  and The Dumbest Generation (affect of the digital age) by Mark Bauerlein – caught my attention.  Clearly, these were books on the current socio-psychological trends or issues in America. Immediately a few more similar books came into my mind – Decoding Love (on the dating scene) by Andrew Trees, What do you want from me? (about managing in-law relationships) by Terri Apter etc. All these books discuss issues more specific to the American society and they draw heavily on various research studies made by universities or independent research institutions in relevant fields.

I tried to come up with similar books in Indian context, but it was a vain attempt. I just wondered why there are no such books in India- not at least I know of. When I thought about the non-fiction products of India, I could only come up with self-help books like You Can Win, Mind Magic, Positive Thinking, How to pass your exams etc. I could find some with academic flavor on subjects like politics, economics, psychology, business etc, but none with commercial touch. I feel like the field of social psychology hasn’t been studied much in India, at least not in a systematic way. And howmuchever it happens, it’s locked away by the academicians and doesn’t usually reach the general public.

Anyways, upon intense googling, I found two books which talk about the social picture of India – The Great Indian Middle Class (by Pavan K. Varma) and The Indians: Portrait of a People (by India’s foremost psychoanalyst and cultural commentator Sudhir Kakar and anthropologist Katharina Kakar). And I was pleasantly surprised. Of course these are not exactly what I hoped for but at least these set the direction. If there exist others like these, I am hopelessly unaware of them.

Another thing that bothers me is that such books are really not very popular and hardly ever come into limelight. I guess this is mainly because of the reading habits and preferences of Indians. In India, reading is neither cultivated as a habit since childhood nor generally encouraged later. Consequently a very small proportion of the literate population is serious readers. Well, nothing can be done about this outright to reverse the scenario but I just wish good books are really more accessible and more widely marketed.