Facebook Fast – A month on…

It sounds absolutely outrageous to cut oneself off from social media in today’s day and age, when the whole world seems to be living their life online. I guess the growing crowd compelled me to move away from it, like any introvert would.

Or perhaps the endless scrolling through selfies and happy faces really did get me. I realised the peer pressure of having a beautiful life was stressing me out. Add to that mindless, uninformed political opinions of of people I have probably just met once in life.

I just decided one fine day to sign out of Facebook from phone. It wasn’t a great decision that took a lot of thought. I just grew tired, irritated after realising that I had again wasted half an hour, scrolling through things that did not make me happy.

It was supposed to be a temporary thing. But it lasted, and suddenly I feel like I have the gift of time.

I turned to more positive social media platforms and dedicated my free time to follow people who are creating meaningful content on the one thing I love – reading.

In my free time, I turned to YouTube, Instagram and Blogs to inspire me to read more, or to study more. If I take a study break and then search #studygram or something of that sort.. I see wonderful people making such beautiful notes, that it makes me dive right back to studying.

The bibliophile community online feels much more positive and inspiring. I did a little cheat though. I created a fake account to follow two of my favourite book groups on Facebook, and of course to keep an eye on my boyfriend. 😛

I am able to finish my books much faster without constant notifications coming from Facebook. I feel less depressed and better positioned to actually accomplish the stuff I want to do in my life. I don’t have to look at selfies anymore. I can’t tell you how much I grew tired of them!

I used to post random thoughts on Facebook usually, and that prevented me from actually letting those thoughts flourish into full length articles.

And ugh, don’t even get me started on the number of click-bait articles and ads, and ads, and ads.

Will I go back to Facebook? Eventually I guess I’ll have to. It has many year’s worth of photos and professional connections. Perhaps it ll be only when I have the time to sit and declutter my timeline, rid myself of all the people I really have no intention of keeping in touch with, and have nothing in common with.

 

 

The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris – Book Review.

Where I, a person with no legitimate literary qualifications, pass my judgement on books I read.

Written by Jenny Colgan

The Plot:

30-year-old Anna Trent is going through a bit of a bad time in life, when her old French Teacher gets her a chance to work in a chocolate shop in Paris.

What I thought:

I did not enjoy the book much, and was geared to trash it completely. However, as an after thought, I realised that the fault is not in the novel itself. Rather I am reading it at somewhat a wrong age.

The author describes Paris quiet beautifully, using very evocative language and making it seem as though the city is a wonderland. I have never been there, so I can not vouch for the accuracy of the descriptions. The picture painted by Colgan seems very tempting. Judging by her words you’d think Paris is all about the food, the wine, the flamboyant social life, love, sex.. and chocolates.

The plot in itself was quite predictable. There weren’t great twists and turns, which is just as well since, like chocolates, this book is a comfort read. I would go as far to describe this as a fairy tale in the modern day setting, where damsels in distress are rescued by men who can cook.

I am a little averse to novels where the guy – who usually is the centre of attraction for all women – suddenly notices the innocent female protagonist and falls in love and mends his ways. However, here the love part happens not because of the women’s beauty but their ability – which to some extend saves the novel from becoming absolutely frivolous.

The fact that everything shapes up so perfectly one after the other in this novel, leaves you a little sceptical because – you know – life is never that perfect.

Still, I would say that my opinion of the novel is coloured by my own experiences in life and I simply do not believe in happily ever after stories.

To a younger audience that is new to the concept of ‘love’ and have the whole life laid out ahead of them, this book may be a great read.

The take away from this book is to move ahead in life and listen to your heart even when everything around you seems to be at it’s worst. And that chocolate can pretty much solve everything.

Who should read this:

• Readers between 15-20 years of age.
• If you have been reading a lot of heavy stressful books, bite into some chocolate 🙂
• If you are in a spot in life where hope seems scarce
• If you are moving to Paris (or any new place) and are scared.

Who should not read this:

• If you are in a steady relationship and understand that love is not magic, but hard work on most days 😛
• Grown-ups struggling with real life problems like rent and bills and stuff.
• If you don’t like chocolate. Or France.

Thanks for reading!

Read my previous review here: Unladylike, by Radhika Vaz

Waiting For Arundhati Roy..

Back in school when my best friend had first made me read God of Small Things, I had never imagined it would change the way I looked at fiction. Up until then I guess the best books I read had been the popular Sydney Sheldons and Dan Browns, and my idea of contemporary Indian writers was Chetan Bhagat.

It took me a while to get a hang of the book though. The incomplete phrases, the abstract style just did not sit well in my mind that had so far been conditioned by mass-appeal fiction. I left the book after some two chapters.

But my best friend was usually never wrong about books and it had won a Booker. So I decided to start again. It made more sense the second time. I laboured on. Before I realised, I was sucked into this Arundhati Roy dimension. It wasn’t just another piece of fiction. It was a piece of real life captured in words. The emotions she was dealing with were so intense that words could not have described them. And so she did not let the words take over her story. The story dictated the words, and they were placed just like they would be in our minds. Scattered. Incomplete. Real.

I cried my eyes out for the book. And when I finished. I immediately began again. The brilliance of her writing meant that even after reading the book 20 times, it doesn’t get old. The words get more life, the story gets more meaning. More detail.

I was so disappointed that she never wrote fiction again. And whenever I found myself wishing she had written another fiction, I read God of Small Things all over again.

I never liked non-fiction, and for the life of me I never managed to finish any I picked up. So I never ventured into reading any of her essays. I closed my ears to any news item that went against her. I worshiped her to the extent of being blind to anything that threatened to corrode my faith on her writing – especially since it was all based on that one book.

In a twist of fate, I got a chance to live in Kottayam, Kerala for almost a year. That’s the place the book is set in, and to my delight I saw what she saw. I saw the sheets of rain battering down, I saw the fat blue flies, I saw the dampness of the place making the pages of my books go wavy between the covers.

I read God of Small Things again, this time it was to my boyfriend, over the phone. He was trying to get to know my favourite author. And we were trying to get some sense of shared space in our long distance relationship.

Reading it while in Kerala made the book come alive at  a whole new dimension. My boyfriend became a fan too.

Since he did like reading non-fiction, I decided to gift him her other works. But somehow her essays did not sit well with him. Unlike me, he never had the blind worshiping attitude and he read more of her, about her. I slowly saw him turn away from my favourite author. To him, she was a writer of excellent skill, but of uninformed, radical opinions that did not sit right even in his communist frame of mind.

I abandoned any intention I had of reading her non fiction works.

The number of feathers she ruffled in India, made me more awestruck than ever. This lady cares for nothing. She is unapologetic in sharing her opinions, fearless in the face of public ridicule, and as independent as a human can be.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to meet her. Or if I even want to, seeing that in real life an idolised figure rarely matches up to one’s imagination.

But I did want to read more from her. More fiction.

And today is the day. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness will reach me in a day or two perhaps.

The reviews have been mixed. And honestly it would be too much to expect anyone, even Arundhati Roy herself, to be able to trump God of Small Things. I have been giddy with expectation.

For me it is no less than a reincarnation, since I only know Arundhati Roy through her first book.

 

Possesion: A Romance – Book Review

Where I, a person with no legitimate literary qualifications, pass my judgement on books I read.

Written by A.S. Byatt

The Plot:

The story begins with a literary researcher finding drafts of a letter written by Randolph Henry Ash to Christabel LaMotte (both fictional victorian era poets) who are not known to have had any correspondence with each other, giving a chance to our protagonist, Roland Mitchell, to go hunting for a love affair from the past.

What I thought:

This novel arrived at my doorstep much as the lead character in the book found those letters – mere chance. Perhaps it was the universe’s conspiracy, because judging by its cover, its name, and the fact that it describes itself as ‘romance’ I would have never picked up this book myself. But I randomly signed up for a book gifting chain, and this one came from a stranger with a sweet note. I decided to read it after all because the cover said ‘Booker Prize Winner’.

The first chapter too is not very appealing. Although if you have a thing for old libraries perhaps you’ll be hooked instantly. The book does trudge along at a rather slow pace at certain points, I skipped over some portions and came close to giving up often.

Having said that, if you survive past some of the slow chapters, the book picks up brilliantly after a point giving you a rush that you never thought was possible in detective-like a novel with no bloodshed, no guns and no knifes. Just words.

And oh! What words. The language does keep you hooked. The sentences are beautifully woven, and you’ll often want to go back and read it again. And note them down.

It is not a romance with a happily ever after, but in line with real life where mortality has ensured that no story really ever sees an end. There is always an unfinished factor to our lives. That’s the taste this book leaves you with.

The last page, the last line left me with a sense of how fickle our lives really are, and what means a world to us today is going to be nothing but ashes and dust.

I digress. The book isn’t all philosophy. It is a lot more about language and academia.

A particular concept from the book did stick on to my mind, where two of the characters speak of metaphor. Our need to look for meaning and symbols in nature, or in poetry – colouring what we see with our experience, our sexuality. The protagonist stresses on how we have lost our ability to experience nature in its purity and are casting our own thoughts over it.

I thought it was pretty cool and I when I next meet my english teacher from school, I ll tell her that when the poet said that the curtains were blue, he was probably not referring to depression and perhaps simply meant that the curtains were damn blue!

The character build up is quiet inspiring. Byatt does not rush it, you continue to get to know the lead characters ever till the end.

Another thing I loved about the book was how it wove in writing styles of two different time periods, throwing in fictional literary pieces. It flits back and forth between the era bygone, and the 80s – and you just don’t seem to be getting enough of both.

Things you should know:

It won the 1990 Booker Prize. The novel was adapted as a feature film by the same name in 2002, and a serialised radio play that ran from 2011–2012 on BBC Radio 4. In 2005 Time Magazine included the novel in its list of 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. In 2003 the novel was listed on the BBC’s survey The Big Read.

Who should read this:

• Literary enthusiasts: If you want an insight into how the academia works (or worked). Or want a peek into the life of people who made reading stuff their career (sigh)
• If you are ticking off the Booker bucket list
• If you seriously are the type for whom good english is a turn on 😉

 

Who should not read this:

• Unseasoned readers: If you are still trying to build a reading habit, this one is going to put you off for ever. Give yourself at least 5 years to get used to novels before you reach for this one.
• If you are looking for ‘romance’ as in girl loves boy and they kiss and ‘make love’ and live happily ever after – this isn’t that kind of a book. Move on.

Thanks for reading!