Galahad's Blandings

Finally, a Blandings castle novel which I loved just as much as my favorite Jeeves and Wooster novel. Till I read Galahad at Blandings, I had thought of Blandings as Wodehouse's secondary creation - quality comedy lacking the genius of usual Jeeves novels. But Galahad changed all that - Lord Emsworth is as absent minded and pig-minded as usual, Lady Hermione as bossy as other wodehouse aunts, but Galahad exceeds all expectations.

Galahad at Blandings has a very subtle rigor to it - a literary rigor which keeps the plot tightly in line, making none of the twists and turns distracting. The positive character of Galahad gives an extra pace to the novel - something that was missing in Blandings minus Galahad, like Leave it to Psmith. If you read between the lines, you will notice a subtle balance of characters - Wodehouse plots the story in a way where no character is used too much. Well, packed with the usual supply of lovers, tangles, pigs, menaces and of course, lots of love, this ranks right at the top of Wodehouse novels.

Overlook Press page for the book
Amazon Link

India After Gandhi

Well, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is not a literary masterpiece - nor does it talk about our culture. So what is a work on political history doing in this blog? To point out exactly that - lack of focus on things other than turmoils in post-independent India. The book discusses the struggles of India at great lengths, but does not seem to be interested in its triumphs just as much. Also, the book does not provide even a cursory look at the cultural changes in modern India.

The book is very readable, and does not get boring even for such a huge work - it is nearly 1000 pages long.

Visiting the Frick Collection

Until today, my favorite museum in New York had been the Met - especially because it houses my favorite painting. But today a strong contender to the #1 museum spot came up - The Frick Collection.
Eventhough it is one of the more famous 'small museums', I had never bothered to read up about the Frick, so when I visited it today on a whim, the pleasure of seeing the rare collection was doubled by surprise. And oh my, the collection suits me so very much!!

Housed in 18th-century styled palace of Mr. Frick, the collection of European paintings is absolutely astounding - if you get a chance, in addition to observing Rembrandt's self portrait from close up, go all the way back to the end (near the boucher room) and see the painting. It is a long way, but the effect of his golden dress and the face in shadows is worth the walk! Turner's waterfronts are as pleasing as ever, but Paulo Veronese touches your wisdom with The Choice Between Virtue and Vice and Wisdom and Strength. The house itself is as breathtaking as some of its paintings - the elegant drawing room nearly, not quite, as appealing as Rembrandt's The Polish Raider or Renoir's portrait of a young mother with her two children.

One of the special attraction to me were the books - the elegant display all along the walls in the reading room adds a special, rarely seen, effect to the display of other art work.
Also, almost none of the paintings are 'protected' behind ropes and enclosures - on the downside, though, you cannot take your kids if they are less than ten years old :(

Museum entrance is at 70th street, 5th Avenue. It is open 10 AM to 6 PM from Monday through Saturday, whereas on Sundays it operates from 11 AM to 5 PM

The Lost Symbol

Disappointing. Dan Brown's new novel was utterly frustrating. The storyline is dull, and writing lacks the rigor of 'Da Vinci Code'. Only thing I could remember after reading this was an old saying: "It is much harder to stay somewhere than to get there". Dan Brown has definitely not lived upto the high standards set by his previous novel - The Lost Symbol is more in the league of his earlier works, like Angels and Daemons, which were, in my opinion, mediocre at their best.

The identity of the antagonist was not well-hidden, and the plot is very predictable. One of the reasons Da Vinci Code was so exciting, at least for me, was that the whole mystery unfolded gradually, without explicitly forcing a treasure hunt on the readers. It started out as a genuine murder mystery - but Lost Symbol forgets all such pretense and jumps into a treasure hunt from page one, and the ideas he has used for the mystery lack the pull. And the science seems to be a bunch of words :(. Dan Brown's style of emphasis - using impressing statements in italics - works only if the content is powerful. Without that, his new novel is something like poor style without good content.

Thor vs Odin

The second installment of Dirk Gently's adventures, 'The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul', was much more exciting than the first. Full of typical Douglas Adams quips, it was an awesome read.

The last time I saw such humane side of gods was in the great epics - Mahabharatha, Iliad etc etc. Douglas Adams reminds of a lost style of writing - free of all the mundane philosophy into the true imaginations of humans who create the gods. To put it in a nutsehll, there is a difference between talking about imaginations and imagining things - and Adams is a citizen of the latter class :).

It was a pity I lost the book when I had another 50 pages left to finish the book - the first time I lost a book in at least four years :(. Well, pain of losing a book is nearly as bad as joy of buying one.

Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks to the tip from Anj, visited the street on upper west side where Edgar Allan Poe once lived - on 84th street between Broadway and West End Avenue.Adding to the environment, there is a cosy cafe called "Edgar's Cafe", where unfortunately I did not like the food :(. But this walk certainly reminded me of those boyhood weekends when I had just started to read English literature - stories like 'The Gold Bug' and 'The Tell-tale Heart' have a place of their own in every reader's heart, as does my family's old-fashioned, leather-bound, red coloured short stories of Poe in our village bookshelf.

My Golden Treasury - Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom

I sure love Lord Byron a lot :). Well, his romance always seems to have a purity to it, a rare purity and love that can make the stoniest philosopher go soft. At least, that is what I feel whenever I read, and re-read, Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's Bloom. The blend between the solemness of death, the grief, and the innate emotions of human life in this poem is amazing for me. The perspective provided by nature, and the disdain for the philosopher, make the poem a truly moving one.
Full text.

Victor Herbert

In one of my aimless walks of upper west side, found this interesting plaque on 108th and Broadway (if I remember correctly), outside the house where the composer Victor Herbert lived. (Click on the image for higher-resolution picture).

Rememberig Roerich

Of the many museums of New York, there is a small, almost hidden, gem of a museum on the upper west side, The Roerich Museum. Setup in a house on 107th St, between Broadway and Riverside Dr., it houses a very representative collection of Roerich's paintings, books and a few portraits from his son, Svetoslav Roerich. Those Himalayan scenes rich in colour always leave a deep impression on my mind. The paintings have a way of occupying our minds, peace and quiet of the mountains seem to be around us.

Museum is free for all, and is open from 2PM to 5PM Tuesday - Sunday. It is closed on Mondays.

Magical Memories - 1

The moment I am recalling today happened around Feb 2009. This was a classical Hindustani concert in downtown manhattan, sewhere around soho. I went there with four of my friends, and I don,t even remember the artists :(. Please don't get me wrong - it was a very, very good concert. The aalaaps, the tunes lingered in my ears for quite sometime after the actual concert. But most importantly, I rember that day because that kicked off a long series of visits to other concerts and performances that form an unforgettable part of my new York life :).

My Golden Treasury - She Walks in Beauty

This, I should confess, is my The Poem - the one that gave me my favorite English poet. That true romantic, Lord Byron, has captured the spirit of romance and beauty as inseparably and touchingly as I could have dreamed for in this masterpiece. Full Text.
Incidentally, this was adopted for a musical, Phantom of the Opera, long time back - Youtube link.
And oh, I had even translated this to my mother-tongue, Kannada!!

My golden treasury - The Bridge of Sighs

After a long time I re-read one of my favorite poems: The Bridge of Sighs by Thomas Hood. Its smooth flow, the genuine feelings of beauty and sadness touch me like few other poems do. Ironically, this is the one poem whose translation is, at least for me, much more beautiful than the original: The famous Kannada translation DhukhaSetu (ದುಃಖ ಸೇತು - ಬಿ.ಎ೦.ಶ್ರೀ, ಇ೦ಗ್ಲಿಷ ಗೀತಗಳು). If you can read Kannada, do read that once - you will love poetry forever.

Why buy books?

Because it is the best way to support literature. Because collecting books give a sense of pride few other hobbies give. Because family libraries are built over generations, not days. Because our children grow up seeing things around them, playing with them. Because what we adore, and treasure for all our life, defines us.

Douglas Adams beyond the galaxy

Most if us know Douglas Adams as the genius who told us the adventures of Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. But you have not explores him fully until you have read Dirk Gently. I read the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency recently - thoroughly enjoyed it. A pity Dirk's adventures have not come out in a single volume yet - you will have to buy them separately, but it is totally worth it!! Amazon link.

I am yet to read the next volume, The Long Dark Tea-time of the soul. If the first Dirk Adventure is anything of a clue, second must desereve much more than a tea-time glance. Amazon link.

White tiger - a skewed miscelleny

This work, which won the Man Booker Prize for 2008 - turned out to be quite disappointing -and horribly skewed. True, it is very well written, and is highly readable. But substance matters more than style.
Here is why Arvind Adiga is not the modern Gorky: many of the experiences he details in the novel can not be possibly his own. I do not believe he ever rally worked as an tea server in one of the most backward parts of India, among other things. So when an author interprets other people's experineces instead of his own, there us always the greats risk of misinterpreting the facts. And I am afraid that the white tiger misinterprets a lot of facts about modern India.

But I am Also quite happy about this book, because it is a good attempt to describe one part f India. And good efforts are worth a good round of applause at all times. Like all novels about a society, this is open to a huge number of critisms - remember to read this with a view to the reality that is India -a reality no author in history has ever been able to capture in one lifetime, let alone one volume.

Amazon Link

iPhone and reading - stanza

Almost every book lover who owns a smart phone yearns for a way to read books on the go. Lucky for us iPhone users, there is a great app -stanza, by Lexcycle. It is free, has cool features to browse the book, you can bookmark pages, and most importantly, it is integrated with project Gutenberg. So you can seamlessly pull old classics from project Gutenberg and start reading.

Page display is not great - it does not format project Gutenberg books for ur iPhone - but remember that real books are still the best way to read books :) I use this only for those short durations when I can't read a real book. Check it out on ur iPhone app store!!!

Inventing Wodehouse

P G Wodehouse - The name brings memories of peerless comic writing, of Jeeves, and Bertie Wooster - and paperback prints not worth a second look by the poor souls who do not know Wodehouse. Before the Overlook Press started to come out with their beautiful hardbound volumes, I had a real hard time buying wodehouse prints that also looked good on my shelf. But the new hardbound Overlook Press books are a real gem - they call their collection 'Collector's Wodehouse', prepare their editions from the first British printing, and use a nice typeface designed in 1740.

For those of you who care to buy books that can also last long in your bookshelves - here is your chance to preserve Wodehouse.

And oh yeah, I found Amazon prices to be lower than store prices for many of these books :)