One more book tag
charukesi June 3rd, 2005
The tag has caught up with me - thanks to Sunil
Total number of books I own - never counted but my guess is close to 600 - most of them scattered across book shelves - the more loved and often read ones in a pseudo-antique shelf I picked off the Oshiwara old furniture market - plus another 200 or so lying back at home in Madras - which my mother keeps threatening to throw out if I don’t ‘want them’ - don’t want them? She means, carry them back to Bombay with you - clutter your house, not mine… Having lived off cartons for the best part of the last ten years, am now on a ‘Say not to cartons’ trip - so the books stay in Madras for now till I find a place for them here.
Last book I bought - no one can eat just one - lagi bet? I mean buy just one - Being Indian : Inside the real India - Pavan Varma, Bombay meri jaan - anthology edited by Jerry Pinto and Naresh Fernandes, A Hundred and One Days, A Baghdad Journal - Asne Seierstad
Last Book I Read - A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson rocks - he has a wonderful sense for the small things that make life more interesting and amusing… and he can laugh at himself…
And now reading - Being Indian
Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me - I don’t know if any of these books has changed my life in any way but I love reading them - over and over again…
Going to school in India - a delightful book on a subject that is very close to my heart - the front cover has a bright picture of children peeping out from inside an overcrowded rickshaw / handcart… And then my heart with pleasure fills…
84 charing cross road - reading other people’s letters can be so much fun! A collection of correspondence between the author Helene Hanff and a London bookseller, Frank Doel - the relationship spans over twenty years - against the backdrop of events shaking and making the world… Hanff so open and American, Doel all stiff-upper-lip and British - perfect… I smile and smile evey time I read the book - a must read for every book lover….
The essential groucho - edited by Stefan Kanfer - how can anyone take life seriously after meeting groucho - in print, that is? I can only pity and envy those who lived with him…
The remains of the day - this was the first book by Ishiguro that I read and this had me looking for more… the book is about many things - selective memory, misguided loyalty, that elusive quality called dignity, reflections on a life that seems wasted at the end of it all….
The meaning of it all - Richard Feynman - a man of science bravely and simply speaks on “the other” - religion and the place of science in society
Also ‘Candy is dandy’ - Ogden Nash
Laughing Gas - my favourite PGW - a pick-me-up that never fails to well, pick me up - I tried to imagine this fourth dimension as I struggled with multiple regression in class…
And then some…
Now to find some bloggers who have not yet been there, done that…
Patrix , Harini, Abinandan, Anita, Satya
“is close to 600″
- Is that all you have?
Sorry. Quizman tagged me first
Here are my book tags
oh, that is all, D - and I have been feeling so impoverished ater reading about cartonfuls and roomfuls in other blogs
P, when I tagged you, you hadn’t been-there-done-that yet - I was never in the race to nominate you first
glad someone else seems to like Wodehouse enough to have a Plum in their own “top five”.
Somehow, Laughing Gas is not one of those that I enjoyed the most. It’s one of those “love it or don’t care too much about it” Wodehouses….I fell in the second category.
how can you claim to be a book lover and not have Plum in your list?
but you are right about laughing Gas - people I know either love it or dont think it is even worth talking about!
84 charring cross road was a treat to read. have you seen the film?
The problem with putting a Plum book on the list is to be very cruel - because you don’t know which one to put, and you can’t put them all. I think I shall start a meme exclusively for PGW books
Chandru, I know what you mean but am sure all of us have our absolute favourites
Harini, haven’t seen the movie but am more a book than movie person… I did want to watch ‘Remains of the day’ though