Finally, after five years, I am out of my ebook phase. My eyes are the happiest at this news. I owe many of the excruciating backaches and eye sores to this phase where I would download ebooks and gobble them all. I would lie down, holding my laptop like a book. Many of my avid book-lover friends would ask with a disgusted cheated look, "How can you read from the laptop?"
My reply would be that I do not have to pay for the books. But lately, my eyes have refused to tolerate the strain I have been putting them under. More than that, I should credit my falling out of the ebook phase to two paperback books I happened to read. I enjoyed them more because it was there in my hand and there is a special joy in having the freedom to turn the pages. Also, I can hide my novels inside my notebook and read in boring classes.
In the last week, I have read Chuck Palahnuik's Fight Club and Janet Tashijan's The Gospel According to Larry. After all the romantic bullshit I have been reading in the past few years, these books were a welcome welcome change. I feel as though my son has come back from "vidhesh" after an year or so.
I had not seen the Fight Club movie. I was never intriguied enough to see it. Now, after reading the book, I do not want to see the movie even though I have it on the best authority that the film is also great. But nothing can compare to the words in the novel - they are so alive and visual that I have already seen the film in my mind. The book reads more like a screenplay.
And the concept Palahnuik has brought into the fore is so simple that it is awe-inspiring. Self-destruction being the key to mental peace rather than the stupid pointless self-improvement books and classes and meditation.
The mechanic says in the book, after rampant road rage, "You had a near-life experience".
That death is the closest you can get to life.
Poignant and soo beautiful.
Not surprisingly, I am looking forward to gobbling down the next Palahnuik book.
The second book I read was Janet Tashjian's Gospel According to Larry (got nice cover as well). A funny philosophical story that comes out as very plausible. It is story of Josh Swensen, a super-intelligent teenager in love with his best friend and who talks to his dead mother at the makeup counter of Bloomingdale's. A quiet unassuming humorous guy who is also Larry, an anti-consumerist alterego he created on the Internet just as a project and that goes on to become a national phenomenon. The book's USP is its character who genuinely wants to contribute to the world and how you can see yourself in him and him in everyone. We grow as the character gains wisdom with his strange yet every-day experiences. Smartly written with lots of laugh-out-loud moments. Hoping to get the two sequels as well.
Presently reading Arvind Adiga's The White Tiger.
The fact that in under a month, I have to start and finish the following, is not helping my newly re-found love for paperbacks and hardcovers:
1. Dissertation
2. Three projects
3. Assignment on religious ideologies in politics
4. syllabus report
5. Three tests
6. News bulletin
Special thanks to Shri Priya [For Fight Club and the White Tiger and Landmark (for the sale!!!!)]
