Book Review: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin

Title: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time
Author: David L. Ulin
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
ISBN: 9781570616709
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 160
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

The minute I read of this book, I knew I had to buy it. There was nothing else to do but to read it. The title encompasses a lot as it, however one had to know what was there in between its pages. I mean, as I have said several times before, I love reading books about books, about other people’s reading experience and what do they make of books in today’s world. At some point, even I used to think that the “art of reading” would wither away, but I am glad that that’s not the case. In fact, if anything is to go by, then most people are reading today than ever before, or at least some of them do a very good job of pretending to read.

Books matter today more than they ever did or at least that is what I believe in with most conviction. So when I read books such as these, they just fill my heart with a lot of joy. “The Lost Art of Reading” is a fascinating inquiry into why literature is important and its role in today’s time and age, when we are surrounded by Facebook and Twitter and more so the Internet in general. Do people have the time to read? Has reading lost its importance? Is it dying? These and many more questions are asked and answered by Ulin to the best of his capacity, which makes for one of the most entertaining books on the subject which I have read in a very long time.

The book almost covers every periphery of the reader’s thoughts, aspirations, and what to read next as well. He addresses the craft of writing and how most writers adapt and change. I loved how he spoke of the art of reading a book, the reader’s involvement so to say and how that completely changes the writer’s world and efforts. Ulin takes it a step further and speaks of rereading the book and what goes in it, how perceptions change and how also sometimes writers become favourites and some are left behind.

Ulin speaks of the people who influenced his writing and how his works contain some of their elements (Anne Fadiman, Joan Didion to speak of). What I also found interesting towards the end is the way he also manages to make a case for digitization and how it only leads to helping the cause of reading. Maybe his view of “medium of reading doesn’t matter” is correct to a very great extent and at the same time I cannot imagine myself without a physical book. Pieces such as these just take your mind on a different journey of books and reading. And this is precisely why I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks reading is a dying art. Read this book and you will change your mind on that one.

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Book Review: With Borges by Alberto Manguel

Title: With Borges
Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Telegram Books
ISBN: 978-1-84659-005-4
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 77
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

The world is full of strange coincidences. Stories that you hear. Some that are true and some that you want to believe happened. Then there are the coincidences that happen to you. That you find very hard to believe. One such coincidence took place in the life of Alberto Manguel – a celebrated writer and bibliophile, which changed his life in more than one way. He was all of sixteen, working at a bookstore, and one fine day in 1964, in Buenos Aires, walks a writer in to the shop, asking Alberto if he would be interested in a part-time job reading aloud to him as he is blind. The writer was none other than Jorge Luis Borges. That changed in lot of ways the way the sixteen-year old would view the world from thereon. He would also chronicle his experiences with Borges in a book called, “With Borges”, which I have just finished reading.

“With Borges” is a simply written book. It is almost a dedication to Borges and to his love of words and stories. Borges somehow knew that he would end up blind, just like his father and maybe this led him to memorizing everything, well almost everything. Words, stories, verses, the structure of his house and the books in the library, of which he was the director. Manguel traces the life of a writer and of the person in this short and brilliant work of seventy-seven pages. For me, reading this book was an experience of envy – I was envious at the encounter and how that culminated to a beautiful friendship. To me that was the most important quality of this memoir.

There are parts that I could not help but underline and reread them. The ones where they talk books and what Borges wants to read. I wished the parts on Borges’s craft were a little more elaborated on. There is only this much that seventy-seven pages can do, however Manguel does not waste a single word. No word also seems out of place or not needed – almost like a short story written by Borges. Manguel talks about the way he also transcribed some of Borges’s writing for him – it was as though the writer knew what he wanted to write, the power of imagination but after all was not gone. I started reading Borges when I was nineteen and since then I haven’t stopped. I go back to his stories time and again and they somehow infuse new life in me at the end of it. This memoir almost did that. Manguel’s writing is beautiful in the sense that it is honest. From speaking of Borges’s mood swings to the way he was about literature to also his bookshelves, Alberto covers every single ground. I guess it is experiences such as these that also sometimes led Manguel to heavily feature Borges in almost all his books.

One thing I am sure of – I will certainly go back and reread this gem of a book on Borges, on reading, on bibliophiles, on the need to continue to read even though you cannot, to see the world with your dreams and to the love of reading. This short masterpiece has it all. A must read for budding readers and writers.

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Books and My Mother

It could only begin with one sentence or rather two words, “I read”. There is no other way to begin my love for books, the intense passion towards them and almost the thought that I believe in so strongly: Everything began in my life when a book was given to me. My mother has always been a reader. With time she reads less, however in her time when she did, she managed to read almost everything that was worth reading. From a very early age, the concept of reading was engrained in me and my siblings. Watching movies was not encouraged all that much, so we had to invariably fall back on books to give shape and colour to our dreams and weave the web of endless imagination. The idea of reading time appealed to all of us. We would wait for that time of the day, when having completed our homework and gone through the monotony of studies, we could reach out and finish the book that we had started, or at least try and finish it. To us, that was the world.

I remember my siblings and I saving all our pocket money (well most of it in retrospect) and going to “Reader’s Paradise” at Breach Candy with my mother and buying books. Each would ensure that different books would be bought, so we could share. The first thing we did at school was join the school library. Our mother borrowed International books for children for us from the British Library. In short, there was never a short supply of books. There were everywhere in the house, sneaking up on us from every corner. There were friends – some old and some new and my parents taught us about them, and made us see their importance.

“Cable TV” was the new buzzword while I was growing up. Almost every household had subscribed to it, except ours. My parents were dead against the idea. They did not want us to watch “rubbish” was my mother not-so-eloquently put it. Books on the other hand were encouraged to be bought and read all the time. There were no restrictions except at night-time, where just like other kids who loved reading, we would carry the handy torch to bed and read under the covers.

Life is something else when you are growing up in a world of books. Where you see your parents read. Where your father and mother speak of authors and discuss literary references. That is the power of the written word I guess. The good thing was that my parents never forced books down our throats. What we didn’t like and what we liked was purely left to us. We made our choices even then and rightly so. The usual “Black Beauty” type of books and “Hardy Boys” fanfare was not for me and Mom knew that. Somehow I leaned towards Enid Blyton and the usual comics and my parents did not force me to read anything else. My father tried with gifting me my first copy of “Wuthering Heights” and I will always be grateful to him for that. Heathcliff was my first hero and continues to be so. My mother followed suit and decided that it was time I was introduced to Dickens. I was all of thirteen and read Oliver Twist, and after finishing the book, I became more mindful about my parents.

The world I grew up in encouraged ideas and thinking. As the years progressed, birthday gifts as books became a little more advanced. From Ayn Rand to receiving a copy of Lolita from your mother is something else. She also spoke to me about Lady Chatterley’s Lover and recommended that I must read it. I do not think it was from the perspective of a sexual education, however when it came to literature, my mother believed in not hiding any aspect of it. In her time, she grew up with Mills and Boons, reading three in a day, back to back and made no bones about it. At the same time, she loved her Henry Millers and Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen to Harold Robbins and Georges Perec. Her reading spectrum has always been wide, which sadly is not the case with me. I am a lot pickier and she is not. She gives the book a chance going by the plot (if it interests her) and continues with it, no matter what one has to say. She considers me to a book snob and doesn’t like that. And yet we constantly look to each other to decide what to read next. Always asking each other what was the last read like. Book shopping for her is instinctive. She picks up what fancies her and that is that. There is no changing her mind then. She is as possessive about her collection as I am about mine. No book should be out of place and her order should not be messed with, even if she has no particular order.

I will always be grateful to my parents and more so to my mother for encouraging the reading habit. While the child can develop other hobbies from friends and at school, the culture of reading is homegrown. To a very large extent, it has to take place when parents read to their children and I am glad mine read to me. They opened new lands for me. They made me learn the power of imagination and how important it was to visualize in the mind through the written word. They were not the regular parents and in retrospect I am glad they weren’t. Books ruled their lives and in turn they made them rule mine. They did not impose it though. There were times I just wanted to go down and play. They encouraged that as well and yet they knew that I would always get back to the written word. The world of books would lure me and it did. It continues to do so.

Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Title: The Shadow of the Wind
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 9780753820254
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 544
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

I have always believed that a book finds you, if it wants you to read it. I think that happens to most of us – to the reader who waits patiently for the book to come along and take him or her on a ride that cannot be forgotten. Two people and very different people at that told me to read, “The Shadow of the Wind”. I had the book in my possession, however had not read it till then. I always wanted to, but did not. I guess my time had to come on its own. I had to wait for the book and it has been a wait worth it like no other.

“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is everything you expect from a well-written book. The plot makes you turn the pages. The sentences and language make you fall in love with the writer’s thought process. The characters make you connect with them at all levels of human emotions and more than anything else, this book is about love for literature and reading, and not letting the written word die.

The book is about the search of a boy, Daniel Sempere for the truth about the fate of Julian Carax, the author of a mystery novel (also named The Shadow of the Wind). Daniel adopts the book when his father, a bibliophile and a bookseller takes him to the metaphorical (or real) Cemetery of Forgotten Books and it is there that he owns the book and gets embroiled in its author’s life. He sets out to search for more books written by him and to know what happened to him. In all of this, he learns of someone who is named after one of Carax’s characters and has set out to burn every single copy of Carax’s books and will not stop at anything. Daniel gets involved with him as well and the story thickens. It is one tale after another, intertwined and encompassing the length and breadth of great storytelling, till the reader with bated breath reaches the end of the book. The book is about Barcelona’s deepest and darkest secret that is about to be revealed, which of course the reader has to discover for himself or herself.

Zafon’s characters are haunting and well thought after. He is the master of mood setting. Every page speaks of scenes with mists, clouds, evenings, darkness, the pale lamplight, thunder, rain and Zafon brilliantly so makes the reader a part of his atmosphere and setting, so much so that I actually thought I was living all of it in Barcelona (where the story is set). Zafon speaks of books like living beings, which I also think they are and he makes them real for the readers in his book. To a very large extent, the book is extraordinary because of the way the author is treating every word – with great caution and love. When this happens in a book, it is but natural that the reader will also read every word with great love and joy.

With reference to the setting, which is Barcelona before the Spanish Civil War, Zafon talks of politics and life with great passion and almost wants the reader to know how important the setting is to the story. Books about books have always fascinated me and this was also one of those reads. It is very difficult to classify “The Shadow of the Wind” in one genre and yet to a large extent I think the book belongs to Literary Fiction as it covers almost every aspect of life and living. There is courage, intrigue, love, fairy tale quality, Goth, redemption, politics, love, hate, passion and almost every other emotion and characteristic that you can think of in the book. The quality of writing, the old school setting, the power of storytelling, the characters and the plot, all come together and speak of books and reading and the love for them. I could go on and on about this book and the writing, but you know what I mean when I say: Read this book soon or let it find you the way it found me.

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Book Review: Bitter Almonds by Laurence Cossé

Title: Bitter Almonds
Author: Laurence Cossé
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 978-1609450892
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 172
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

It is so important to be educated. Is it not? So much so that we – the ones who are educated almost take it for granted. A privilege of sorts. We can never imagine not being literate. To us, that is the core of everything, which as I said often gets overlooked for whatever reason. I tried teaching someone once a long time ago, taught him to read a little and to me that remains closest to my heart. It was not much but it mattered and reading “Bitter Almonds” by Laurence Cossé brought back all those memories all over again. The idea that a book can do that is sufficient enough for me to keep reading, to keep turning those pages, as I pick one great book after another and that is the power and hold that books and reading have on me.

“Bitter Almonds” to put it simply is a book where one woman teaches another how to read and write. Having said this, just as any other book that look deceptively simple, this one too has many layers to it, which will warm the cockles of your heart (so to say) as you get further into the narrative. The story is based in Paris and centered on two women – Edith and Fadila, her sixty-year-old housemaid (an immigrant from Morocco), who is completely illiterate.

Edith doesn’t understand how a person can be illiterate. She doesn’t get how Fadila must be undertaking the day to day activities of life without knowing how to read or write. Edith then takes it on herself to ensure Fadila is educated and in the right manner. It is not going to be an easy task for Edith and yet at the end of it all and during the lessons, there forms an unexplainable bond between the two women – like they have known each other for years and lifetimes across this one. The thought processes, the emotions, the lives merge and this how they find their friendship, which is both delightful and heartbreaking.

This is the kind of book that I had wanted to read for a very long time by Laurence Cossé, more so after reading, “A Novel Bookstore” which is not only unusual in its plot but also highly satisfying as a novel. Of course one cannot compare the two books; however, “Bitter Almonds” is in a league of its own. Cossé takes us into the hearts and minds of these women and lets us know what friendship and love is all about. She simply describes the world and the relationship of these two women in the book – the way it is – without boundaries and the time it takes for them to trust each other.

“Bitter Almonds” is written with great care and tenderness and maybe that is why it speaks to you the way it does. The translation by Alison Anderson is but of course superlative, given that I also loved her translation of “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery. It is very important that the translation speak to the reader with the same intensity that the original would, had I known how to read French.

The book spoke to me on many levels – of not being able to make sense of life when one doesn’t know how to read or write (and I shudder at the thought if I was ever illiterate), of maybe the need to help someone or change a person’s life (because I also think that we do not do that enough) and of the basic connection of the soul and heart beyond language and literacy.

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