Loud chuckles with "We Go to the Gallery" by Ezra Elia and Miriam Elia

 "We Go to the Gallery" by Ezra Elia and Miriam Elia

Is it a book? 

No. It is a fun DUNG BEETLE BOOK book. It is a very fun DUNG BEETLE BOOK book. It is an amazingly brilliantly funny DUNG BEETLE BOOK book of pictures and art.

Art and fun!? Ooooh... B-D

Before you drag your kids through the contemporary and abstract(is it?) art galleries, as I might do in near future, please read this book.

It will tell you why you should or not. :P

An ideal gift for expecting parents.

I loved the creativity in putting the new words, especially- almost every set of new words made many senses and those might not make sense to your child as he/she is still just a child.

For its brilliant funny creativity and making my self-conscious chuckles louder and louder(ahem!), I give this book full 5 stars.

Happy reading! :)

P. S. I think I am quite liberal in my ratings and try to accept first and then inspect if that makes any sense! :P

The death of meaning! :O (Source)

Period.

A quick short review of 'The Woman in Black' by Susan Hill

The book is one of the few relatively modern engaging horror novels. It is not a psychological thriller, but being written from the point of view of the protagonist gives it a flavour if being so, and I really liked that about the book.

The plot isn't a GRRM styled one in terms of excruciating details and intricate plotlines but I didn't miss the presence of that element. Perhaps it could also have been written as a short story, though I liked the length of the book. It is not grotesque but delivers the senses of fear through the perceptive senses of a rational, and I would say brave human being and relates simple but powerful descriptions of the natural occurrences, though mostly unrelated in logic but in the essence of fear with the supernatural occurrences, I would argue. But as you reach the end of the book, you do understand the enormous danger in the subtleties of fear with a heartbreaking consequence and end which I was literally dreading. Why that had to happen!?

The book is not completely unsympathetic to the perpetrator of the horrors. She had a terribly distressed and sad life, and there is an understanding of that pain. But understanding doesn't mean forgiveness or an open clearance to mad revenge and injustice. (On a completely different note, when I try to understand the workings of faith and religion this is the thing that I can never make understand both the parties- the ardent religious people and the hardcore atheists. Why, I wonder? May be there should be a little bit more patience in both the logical and illogical beings of the earth.)

I liked Susan Hill's style and perhaps would read more of her now.

I give this book 3.5 stars.

Happy reading! :)

P. S. I think I am quite liberal in my ratings and try to accept first and then inspect if that makes any sense! :P

Musings on 'The Ice Dragon by G. R. R. Martin

A sweet little story, but a little different ending would have satisfied me more. I was expecting the ice dragon to return to her someday, healed, from the lands of always winter.

She became a summer child! Why couldn't she be a laughing and crying(perhaps) winter child? Is it all metaphors or is it real? Well, the song of ice and fire seems more real than this story of little Adara and her loving, faithful Ice dragon.

I was wondering if she liked winter and the ice dragon more because it was the time her father hugged her?
 Was it all because of the absence of any apparent love and care in summer, and it all returned when the shock of loss or fear jolted her senses and brought her back to her emotions? Her feelings which were always deeply buried within her unknowingly from her fourth year when she had heard that conversation between uncle Hal and father and which now the fear of loss had finally let out on the surface?

Guess we will never know but will keep wondering...

That's the beauty of a short story, isn't it?

I give this story three and a half stars... :D

Dear void, happy reading! :)

Thoughts on 'Born a Crime' by Trevor Noah

You can tell that this book is not written by a professional writer but by a BRILLIANT SPEAKER. (Am I being dramatic? Not the first time.) It is AMAZING and you MUST read it. You can tell that the writer as a really honest descriptor. I love his perspective. It perhaps helps when you think critically without bias and find amusing some of the most horrible and saddest things that have ever happened in the course of the world history. Apartheid! From a child's point of view, and then an adult's.

This time was barely two or three decades removed from now in the past, and today when we talk so much about the human rights violation on the internet, as here now, somewhere these things are still happening in one form or another. Some of the times I was reading I was amused and chuckling here and there (Hail the great comedian!) but suddenly my eyes would tear up and the sadness remained. But still, I am not depressed. The best part of the perspective of Trevor Noah who indeed was born a crime is that in spite of the tragedies shaped up his life and which he writes (or in my head, speaks) of, he still had fun and you are still hopeful about the future.

Below I quote some of the most touching lines which sometimes stand on their own (for being wise or in other words plain T-shirt material :P), and my feelings on them (not that they matter! But perhaps they do too! :/ )

Born a crime by Trevor Noah

-----------------------------------------------------------------
“... It’s you and me against the world. ...”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“... I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return. ...”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The bond that Trevor and his mom share with each other is endearing. He was there because his mother wanted someone to call her own, just her own. Beautiful, and strangely sad with the hint of a tinge of a smile, isn't it? I am amazed by the personality of his mother. What an amazing woman!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“... Why do all this? Why show him the world when he’s never going to leave the ghetto?” “Because,” she would say, “even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough. ...”

... But I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don’t hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. ...

... Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being. ...

... It taught me that it is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. ... try being a black person who immerses himself in white culture while still living in the black community. Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I want to ask Trevor Noah about Teddy. What happened to him? What is he doing now? Where is he now? How did that incident affect him and Trevor's friendship - best friendship - with him?
(My goodness! Is it the story of his school or the story of a black market smuggling business!?)
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
... In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see their face. We don’t see them as people. ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(What an amazing book! The truths of life, his observations- they make me cry and laugh with joy!)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
... I chose to live in that world, but I wasn’t from that world. If anything, I was an imposter. Day to day I was in it as much as everyone else, but the difference was that in the back of my mind I knew I had other options. I could leave. They couldn’t. ...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(It is amusing and funny, but heartbreaking at the same time. But the good thing is that it doesn't leave you with a sense of hopelessness.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
... Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life. ...

... But I remember standing there watching my mom, flabbergasted, horrified that these cops wouldn’t help her. That’s when I realized the police were not who I thought they were. They were men first, and police second. ...

... It is so easy, from the outside, to put the blame on the woman and say, “You just need to leave.” It’s not like my home was the only home where there was domestic abuse. It’s what I grew up around. I saw it in the streets of Soweto, on TV, in movies. Where does a woman go in a society where that is the norm? When the police won’t help her? When her own family won’t help her? Where does a woman go when she leaves one man who hits her and is just as likely to wind up with another man who hits her, maybe even worse than the first? Where does a woman go when she’s single with three kids and she lives in a society that makes her a pariah for being a manless woman? Where she’s seen as a whore for doing that? Where does she go? What does she do? ...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
(And the gold!)
----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Trevor Noah with his mom
Courtesy: Sowetan Live

... People say all the time that they’d do anything for the people they love. But would you really? Would you do anything? Would you give everything? I don’t know that a child knows that kind of selfless love. A mother, yes. A mother will clutch her children and jump from a moving car to keep them from harm. She will do it without thinking. But I don’t think the child knows how to do that, not instinctively. It’s something the child has to learn. ...

For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

His narrative had made me understand an aspect of apartheid which my history books failed to teach me. I know it was slavery and racism of the 20th century, but I didn't still know what it actually was and was capable of. Hailing from a developing country myself, some instances are too familiar and so are some imprints of a fair-skinned rule even almost a century after freedom, and the inherent racism that we accept even though we were the victims.

I LOVED this book, and would recommend everyone to read it, even the not-so-voracious readers! It's frankness and the ability to try to keep moving forward provides you with not only a much-desired understanding somewhere but also gives you hope and a lot of chuckling smirks (that make you wise, eh!? :P )!

I give this book FULL FIVE STARS! :D

Happy reading! :)

Musings & review on "Siddhartha" by Hermann Heese

Musings while reading...

"Siddhartha had one single goal - to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow - to let the self die. No longer to be self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought - that was his goal. When all the self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of being that is no longer self - the great secret."

Siddhartha by Hermann Heese

(At page 21 now)- An ideal student Siddhartha (not one lost like me) but an essentially discontented one (just like me) goes out to discover the great secret- to conquer self and discover the innermost being, the aatma, that is no longer self- detached from pain, need, desire, anything human (perhaps!). He becomes a Samana and finds that the path he is following will never converge to his goal. (happens all the time, isn't it?) His ardent friend, Govinda, on whose mediocrity of thought was he quite sure of, surprises him. Siddhartha overpowers his own guru by the virtues taught by that experienced man - (basically hypnotising- the idea doesn't rhyme with me) and then the seeker and his follower go forth on a path which the seeker thinks is a way no new hope will come but the follower is eager in pursuing. They try to find what everybody is talking of. Will they find Gautama? And what will happen when they do?

(I know all this what Siddhartha seeks- it's so repetitive - then why am I still intent upon reading it? - May be something will come of it - such ideas pull me - why? Where? I know not. Cheesy, eh! ~ 01.49 am, June 29, 2017)

A review...

I had read this book almost a year ago. To be honest, it did not resonate with me that much. So much talk about nirvana, the goal, aatma! I am an Indian. I grew up with these ideas from both Hinduism, Buddhism as well as different interpretations from a Muslim or a Christian point of view. They, when spoken so much about, almost seem redundant. I had heard so much about this book, especially from non-Indian readers in Goodreads that I was really disappointed while reading it. Too much of philosophical talks sometimes seem futile. After almost 67 years after it was written, the end is the predictable. I felt a little annoyed by the protagonist of this book. I am sorry if it sounds judgemental, but this book is a perfect stereotypical viewof a western mindset's amusement and excitement with the "aatma" ideologies of the eastern subcontinent.

A classic by Hermann Heese

Some of the paragraphs stand out independently, which adds to the value of the book a lot. But the stiched into the story, the first half of the narrative seems superfluous. The writer ponders on and onn and onnn, and unlike Henry James' it made me a little impatient. The ideas are deep, very philosophical in nature but with a protagonist who is lost. It seems he is trying to be lost in his quest. His logic sometimes is crisp and intelligent and sometimes "uh!". I really don't identify with him many-a-times. He sometimes seems too full of himself to appreaciate the simplicity of a situation. Flesh is flesh, blood is blood- so why beat about the bush and not accept? He takes the twisted path even when the straight path stares right him in the face. Why? True, we do that in life many-a-times but again the instances used to exemplify that seems a bit overstretched. May be all of this is because there is a gap of half a century's shift in ideologies of the writer and me. Too much of spirituality is perhaps lost on a physics student. But there are a few things I also love about the character SiddharthaHe is fearless to ask. His confidence (sometimes overconfidence, maybe) is appreciable. He dares to take a path which no one has ever taken. He dares to challenge the unchallengable, and he finds his own way.

Those who find wisdom in this book probably look for their appearance as the novel enters its second half - the life of Siddhartha as a ferryman. He learns the same things, the same truth which somehow seems to be staring into his face from a long time and which he refused to identify or mistook for something else. But maybe that final "enlightment" and acceptance has something to do with age and finding what he couldn't before and which he almost forgot about. Now, I am sounding too vague! If this book is kind of a coming-of-age story of a soul, it is maybe a little sad from my perspective. I realte to Sid ( :P ) more when he is older, little bit calmer, and I appreciate that even when he forgot who he was, deep down he never gave up.

Concluding, it was a very different book. Made me wonder and appreciate and roll my eyes at the same but different moments, but I am glad that I read it. Perhaps, you should too. I kind of pushed my comfort zone with it, and gained a little uncomfortable reading experience which I think for some reason is a good thing. I perhaps would have loved this narrative, if this were a short story and not a novel. It is not as crisp as I want it to be, but who cares! Who knows, maybe half a century from now I will find it perfectly plausible.

I give this classic by Hermann Heese (sorry for being so daring, but it is dear old Sid, isn't it? ;) ), three-and-a-half stars! :\

Happy reading! :)