Weekend Rambling

Finished the Brooklyn Folllies - Paul Auster spins a nimble tale, a postmodern paean that deftly explores human follies. It's a bit too clever for my liking, the loose ends come neatly tied in co-incidental sequences. It doesnt detract the fact that he is such a good writer though.

Also trying to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and feel like I am living in some kind of Greek tragedy except that it is in Detroit. Its very, very good so far. It sings.

Book of the week: Malaysian Maverick Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain . Will write another post about it.

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Everyone seems to be watching Glee. What is this? I miss being part of popular culture (with the resolute exception of Big Brother). I miss the simple things like being part of a TV series or show, waiting every week for the next installation. Once upon a time M and I used to do TV dinners almost every night. Our favourites were The West Wing, House and Gray's Anatomy (M wasn't too mad about Gray's but for me, it was the droolicious Patrick Dempsey that did it).

Now, there is too much mayhem to have a TV routine. A good weekend is one that is spent in Jungle Gym.
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My maternity break is almost over. Oh, the misery of going back to work. Of driving everyday into the city (did I mention that I work in downtown KL, 10 mins away from KLCC which means perpetual battle with the traffic EVERYDAY).

Oh,if only I had the guts to quit everything and write a novel. If only.

But I need to feed two children.

Books read, loved and loathed

Books read 09

Jan/Feb Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

March The Trial by Franz Kafka ,Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh

April What was Lost by Catherin O’Flynn

May The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

July Norweigian Wood by Haruki Murakami , The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

August Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2010 Reads Jan-March

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck – cry fest which was nurtured by pregnancy hormones.

One Night at a Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat – Stay away unless you have too much time on your hands. I picked it up after watching the inspring 3 Idiots which was based on another book by the same author. I didn’t expect too much noting its ‘popular’tag but this was absolutely badly written drivel. To be fair, I read it till the end but it never got any better.

The Return by KS Maniam- Re-read. It gets better actually after the 5th chapter or so. I do think its an important piece in terms of Malaysian reading with all the necessary questions of identity and corresponding angst, driving a stake in Malayan ground and all that.

The 5 People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Hey to be fair,I wanted to read something light during labour and maternity. It was between this and Paul Astler’s Brooklyn Files. Give me a break okay, I was in no mood for CK Prahalad and saving the world.

Growing Up in Terengganu

The last person I recommended Growing Up in Terengganu (GUiT) to was my articulate Italian friend, Dr. I. Although she is a top city lawyer, she is a big Italian mama at heart and truly enjoyed the culinary delights that spewed out of the book. Delish Terengganu concoctions are redolent in GUiT and she assured me that she was salivating reading about all those teeming cucurs and kuehs.

The writer, a certain Mr. Awang Goneng is a delight himself, being purveyor of Terengganu vignettes. A good friend, I have had the privilege of joining him and his lovely wife for lunches, teas and dinners (including some involving lobsters).

I myself missed AG's readings in KL, the one involving singing especially, as I was over 9 months preggers at that time and was having one of those false labour alarm days. I did get my copy of GUiT signed at a later day in 1 Utama. I devoured the book in three sittings, absorbed by the salty Terengganu monsoon and the escapades of folks.

Kak Teh tells me that GUiT is now up for Popular-Star Readers Choice Awards 2009 for non- fiction. I do hope that with the attention, the book will be read by more Malaysians everywhere. And I do sincerely hope that it wins because it is one of the rare books that captures a slice of Malaysiana, wraps it up in lilting prose and warms your heart.

Go grab a copy now y'all.

kamala

I belatedly discovered the quiet passing of Kamala Das Suraiyya.

Her poems had been an influential part of my early 20s where I was a bit of a man-hater type feminist.

Perhaps, more than Adrienne Rich, Rachel Carson and Catherine McKinnon, Kamala Das had impacted my young self. The angry young woman phase that I was going through found solace in a woman from a fairly repressive culture - Kamala could boldly explore sexual longing, feminine wiles and freedom. Every word of her poetry reeked with pain and pleasure.

Of course, she has also been contradictory in her ways. In her late age, she took on the burqa which confused and infuriated people. The eloquent Huree Babu explores the Kamala Das phenomenon.

Rest in peace.

When I die
Do not throw the meat and bones away
But pile them up
And
Let them tell by thier smell
What life was worth
On this earth
What love was worth
In the end

highly recommended

After a whole year, I managed to watch a whole movie at ONE go ie no interruptions for feeds/sleep/play-with-me-now-mommy screams....and I managed to catch Slumdog Millionaire on DVD. Can't recommend it enough. How did a British director get into the psyche of the sprawling Mumbai slums. Dharavi pulsates.

Now, I need to go get Vikas Swarup's book Q&A from which the movie was based to see how it was translated into film.

Highly recommended. Frieda Pinto is a vision.

08 The Year in Books

January



Sons and Mothers by Colm Toibin

Growing Up in Terengganu by Awang Goneng

The Gathering by Anne Enright

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

In the Country of Men by Hisham Mather

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (lyrical but still unfinished)



January 29- May 6: Sprong pops out. No reading unless The Baby Bible aka The American Academy of Pediatrics counts



June

New Complete Baby and Todler Meal Planner by Annabel Karmel

123 Brain Games for Baby by Jackie Silberg

Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan



July

How Children Learn by John Holt (Unfinished)

Empire's of Profit by Daniel Litivin



August

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

How Babies Talk : The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life: Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek



Oct - mid Dec

I start work so hardly any reading for pleasure unless Newsweek and the Financial Times count



Current

Trying to read The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Loving 'Evening is the Whole Day'

For two whole days now, I have been holed up at home, sporting eye bags from lack of sleep and leaving baby with maid for tending. Guilty I know but the object of my adoration- Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan.

At heart it is a book about love and loneliness framed by hyphenated identities, what it means to be Malaysian and Indian. The present time is set in 1980 but I think most if the issues are still relevant. Looming over the characters is Ipoh. Although I never went to school there, at many levels, due to family connections, I consider myself Ipoh mali. I was delighted with the Ipoh details and anecdotes.

Growing up I always wished my name was Jennifer or Amy or something more American sounding. Besides, nobody in my books ever sounded like anyone I knew in real life. In real life, my big cousin sister was action-action for not friending us.We drank from kovalai's, bought bread from the roti man and tapau-ed food from FMS Bar. On special days, we got to makan at Station Hotel. And run to the corner shop for tinned milo, dried chinese plum, kandos, axe brand medicated oil. Every Divali, we went to get kain for tailoring from Kwong Fatt textiles. This is the Ipoh of Aasha and family. It is also the Ipoh I know and love.

Finally, a book that sounded like all of us with real people, grappling with their hyphenated identities and fractured by family secrets. Rich in detail and finely executed, the characters leap with intensity, the narrative is taut and kept me rapt right till the end. Incidentally, the last sentence is one of the most powerful ones I've read for a while-it captured every anguish and made my throat dry.

Yet there are some problems. Appa's farcical descent bears a false note, a change so abrupt that it appears more to feed some tragicomic need. Also, the need to tie the occupants of Big House to 1969 was built with gusto only to crash and then suddenly disappear. That part seems to be almost diembodied from the rest, a Necessary Section towards making The Book a Serious One. What causes Appa's incendiary chants to fade away is never really explained. Also, the need to rely on Arundhati Roy-esque language is A Perplexing Matter to Consider. How necessary was it to the narrative? Why bother when the tone already works?

Still, I am being finicky.

This is a remarkable first book and Preeta Samarasan pens a truly Malaysian tale. The dialogue is scintillating, its cadence and singsong beauty made my heart leap. She also captures the Malaysian Indian psyche with candour. The attachment to fair skin which denotes beauty and class. Children must not call house-help as servants but the mothers are free to gloat how well provided their own servants were treated. When Kooky Rooky sits to gossip with Amma at the kitchen formica table, I tell you, it is a scene that has been repeated on countless kitchen tables. More importantly, the untold class distinction between the urban Indian who feels superior to the rubber estate fellow, like what Suresh says: 'a real estate woman she (chellam) is'.

Go out and grab a copy y'all- not just Malaysians but lovers of good fiction everywhere. This is a stunning debut and I will look forward to more of her work. I hope that the book receives the adulation it richly deservers.

A Wedge of Dusty Sunlight

Verdict on Atonement? I am not nearly done yet but I think I've bee reading it at the perfect time- with fabulous summer sun. The first part of the book is set amidst a sun dappled day and harrowing night which sets the tone of lightness/darkeness, happiness/unhappiness throughout.

I am reminded of atmospheric reading. How reading a book at a particular time or place enhances the experience.

A few months ago, when I was sieged with grief and loss, I re-immersed myself in Anne Fadiman's charming little book on books Ex Libris Confessions of a Common Reader.She says this:

I begin writing Ex Libris when it occurred to me how curious it was that
books are so often written about as if they were toasters. Is this brand of
toaster better than that brand of toaster? At $24.95, is this toaster a best
buy? There is nothing about how I may feel about my toaster ten years hence,
and nothing about the tender feelings. I may yet harbour for my old toaster.
This neatly omits what I consider the heart of reading: not whether we wish
to purchase a new book but how we maintain our connections with our old
books, the ones we have lived with for years, the ones whose textures and
colours and smells have become as familiar to us as our children's skin.

I entirely agree because I cannot ever think of books as acquisitions. My favourite books have personalities and lives of their own for which I am eternally grateful. I strongly believe that as much as I choose my books, they choose me as well. Why do I end up reading a particular book at a particular time? Book karma, that's why. The good ones sometimes tiptoe into the radar subtly, camouflaged amidst the louder and brasher ones. Books are a lot like men.

When I remember all the books that accompanied me over the years, my younger self comes tumbling out again. Some of these books have grown up with me, like Franny and Zooey. There is a much scribbled Potrait of the Artist that stores my 18 year self. How can these just be cheap books, expensive books, torn books, leather bound books, picture books? Between the covers are memories, pain and laughter. Rereading them is a kind of comfort food effect, a feel good warmth without calories. Some pages bear old food stains, obviously because I tend to read during meals a lot. There are also chunks of underlined passages which would have particularly caught my attention and often, scrawny scribbles of my thoughts. Sometimes, other stuff that have been submerged for years spring out-movie tickets, shopping lists, forgotten postcards, payment receipts, parking fines, blades of grass, an odd stamp or two.

Some books have travelled with me far. A few years ago, on a sweltering July day, I sat down at the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh reading Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz. Amidst the lazing cows and half clad sadhus, this is a book that continues to influence my work and shades my thinking.

All cried out at 22, the book that helped me get through my first break up was Sons and Lovers. Like Miriam, I felt that I would never find a man to truly love me because no man will be able to reach out to my soul. I was too complicated and to be part of any man's life, much less the superficial a***hole with whom I was going out with. But I also saw that Miriam deserved better and surely I did too. Slowly, I picked up myself and the year.

In Kota Kinablau I walked with sea spray in my hair and dried flower bracelets laced on my wrist. My colleague Nora slept while I stayed up reading The Inimitable Lightness of Being to make sure we would be up by 4 am to make it to the seafood wholesale market. My mother made the most delish prawn stir fry from the purchase later in the day and my copy of Kundera's book still has some of those stains.

I remember the night I spent in a hotel room, unable to sleep as my first trial loomed in the morning. I had re-read my files and notes 25 million times and it made me fidget. So I opened Angela's Ashes which I had bought that afternoon at the airport. The sodden, gloominess of the lives of the McCourt boys kept me rapt, and I dozed off after a few hours. The memories of my first trial remain intermingled with the McCourts.

I've also traced the steps some of my favourite characters and poets. When I went to Bath, I brought along a copy of Persuasion to re-read all the Bath escapades again. Anne Elliot is my favourite Austen heroine and the sense of tracing her steps as well as the dishy Fredrick made my heart skip a few beats. Last week, I went to the Keats museum in Hampstead. With the gradual change in season, I re-read my favourite poem, Ode to Autumn. The words tumbled with a calming cadence.

Reads

-Looks like I may actually end up reading Harry Potter what with this intense hype building all around. I used to follow the series quite religiously until the 3rd book (is that Order of the Phoenix?) but my interest sort of fizzled out when I realized that Rowling was actually borrowing so much from other writers. But I am one of those sad consumers who gets easily swayed by marketing glitz and may just fall for this one as well. It's kinda nice to be part of the madness in a way.

- If you really, really want to read just one book this year, my recommendation is something from last year's Booker Prize. I finally finished The Inheritance of Loss. I can only use superlatives to describe how well Kiran Desai writes. The whole book is poetry in motion, a luminous exploration of displacement and identity. Her ultimate strength is in the language- it has an uncomparable cadence and beauty which took my breath away.

-Summer reading is currently work related so I won't bore you with that though I am quite tempted to pick up Alistair Campbell's Diaries. I've been following the dramatization on TV and am enjoying all the high drama behind the Blair years. Campbell's role was something like Director of Communications at No.10 and he was spin doctor extraordinaire. Which made him one of the most unpopular persons in the country at that time. Or was it Cherie Blair?

Mid-year Book Audit

Wot, is it seriously going to be June soon?

To be honest, I am quite happy that the first half of 2007 is going to dissipate. It's been an extremely difficult few months and I want to really look forward to June.

XXX
It's an apt time I suppose to do a mid-year review of books read, loved and loathed.


1. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Full of dark passions. Felt like a criminal at the end of it.

2.The Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Ho-hum. I wanted to turn the pages to know the propped up secret, which however evolved into a disappointment. I can't quite place this book though. I didn't hate it but it didn't do much either.



3. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
This was read while recuperating from surgery and hence had time out from work. I'm probably the last person to have read it – absolutely everyone seems to have devoured it. Verdict? Yeah, mind blowing in ambitiousness but at some level, I am not sure if I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. There was also this hint of reincarnation thing going on which I think didn't quite work. Still, a writer with great dexterity.

4. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Cute and disturbing (how weird is that?)

5.The Secret River by Kate Greenville
Australian history has been explored in many books but this one has a lyrical beauty to it. Not without its flaws, some bits plod on but overall good writing, capturing the heritage of guilt and sadness with numbing clarity.

6. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
The best book I've read this year, so far. I cant sing enough praises. The dialogue leaps, the characters are unflinchingly alive and a story that rips your heart out. It explores the Biafra war- the war by starvation which Nigeria plunged into the mid-late 60s by looking at three central characters. My friend Sam who is an Ugwu (the tribe that was massacred) said that he cried reading it. So did I.

7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Currently reading (part of my self imposed requirement of interspersing my reading with classics which have been missed over the years).

Non-Fiction

Lots of re-reading Between Facts and Norms by Jurgen Habermas, The Communitarian Persuasion by Philip Selznick, Global Capitalism (ed by Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens), Bounds of Justice by Onora O'Neill.

Misc

Oh, I also made some lovely tandoori chicken and lamb inspired by Ranjit Rai's delectable book Tandoor.

we move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intended and this is verbal privilege

says Adrienne Rich.

XXX

The Namesake, the movie is better than the book. When I found out that they were making a movie of the book, I wasn't very keen. How would it translate, I thought? For a start, there wasn't much dialogue and most of the book was introspective reflections of the characters, particularly Gogol. But the movie reflects scriptwriting at its best- I loved how the character quirks have been fleshed, especially Ashima and Ashok. And Calcutta was another character as well.

I remember feeling the angst of Calcutta many years ago in Anita Desai's Voices of the City. There it was a city of desperation and pain. Now, in The Namesake, it is a Calcutta of coming and going, heaving and lurching, absence and longing. It's been a long time since I left a cinema hall feeling moved.

XXXX

I have been holed in at home a lot these days, working furiously. Inevitably have fallen into the routine of watching old TV re-runs at lunch time including Ally McBeal and Sex and the City. What strikes me is how male centred these shows are. Sure, the main characters are women and their friends and lives. These women are successful, beautiful and talented. And yet, their lives revolve only around men, the ones that they like, the ones that they think are cute, the ones that got away and broke their hearts. If these shows were such hits, do they reflect how women are wired? That life must revolve only around men?

I think one of the most progressive series on TV ever has been the Golden Girls. Bunch of girls living a full life with or without their men.

Time to reach out for Marilyn French, who talks about chic-lit type of books but the context is the same:

'Male character is less important than male centrality. In a male centred novel, the heroine clearly needs a man; whatever her fate, the male reader does not feel threatened since he knows she could be happy if only she had the love of a good man-one very like himself'

Introduction to the Woman's Room
Marilyn French

I think of my young cousins who read/watch this stuff and the kind of impact such shows and chic lit can have on them and shudder. I am not anti-man. I live with one and they are generally quite fulfilling (emotionally and physically) but the premise shoved to women of all ages in such literature and media is that without a man, life is somehow hollow and meaningless.

Time to burn all that chic lit? Too radical?

Top 10 books of all time

I hate lists of all kinds. I am one of those persons who goes grocery shopping without a list and always forgets the garlic/tomatoes/coriander (and ends up coming home with a horseradish). I am the one who forgets the toothbrush on the weekend away because she didn't make a list. In my final year exam in law school, I forgot to bring the Criminal Procedure Code and realized too late that I should have made a list the night before of all the things to take into the exam hall (one of the lecturers had an extra copy, no doubt in anticipation of nuts like myself).

I know people who make major decisions in life by sitting down and drawing a line marking Pros and Cons on a paper or computer. They are able to make life altering decisions based on such a list. I envy the method and precision that goes into such a task because it is something that eludes me. Most of the biggest decisions I make are ones that remain a congealed mess in my mind until I just decide.

I tried to do it once. I wanted to follow the rational and sensible path. Should I make the big career change that I wanted? A list will get me there, I thought. But as I drew the dividing line with a black marker on a fresh paper, I knew deep down that what I wanted would not be the most sensible thing to do. To leave a well paying job with all the prospects for the great unknown? I didn't know if what I wanted would make me happy or if it was right or where things would head after that. In all probability making a list would urge me to do otherwise. But in the hinterland of my heart, I knew what I wanted. I threw the piece of paper away.

I am a resolute non-list maker married to an assiduous one. The ever methodical M has lists for everything including a master list for travel which is filed according to event-weekend away, annual trip, short trips. I am kind of used to it though-I grew up with a whole load of Virgoans who made lists for everything under the sun.

It didn't daunt me then when Sharon Bakar put her loyal readers (me! me!) to task with the Star challenge for their Top 10 favourite books of all time. Here's mine:

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Possession by A.S.Byatt
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

There are a few must haves on the list like Old Man, Lolita, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Anna Karenina. Beyond that, Catcher in the Rye may be a bit esoteric but if it has touched so many young people and continues to do so, surely it must feature? Midnight's Children because it changed the feel, sound and soul of English as a language.

Portrait of the Artist was tossed around with other stream of consciousness novels notably To the Lighthouse but I chose this simply because it is my personal favourite. The Unbearable Lightness of Being had to be mentioned, being a paean to post-modernism. Possession because of its mastery and expanse. And the one book that leads me into the heart of nobility and restraint -The Remains of the Day.