Still mindblown….

Since Hannah’s done the sensible review, I’m simply going to gush :)
This left me breathless. It is one of those flawlessly crafted books. I’d been meaning to read this for years, and all the fuss they make about it is totally deserved.
I think I’ll have to read it again to get my head around it, so overwhelmingly good.

Much fun, but I prefer his The State of Poetry.

This was read-in-a-go material. Chinese-American writing has almost always never disappointed me, it’s all been an improvement on Amy Tan :)
Typical American was extremely well-written – The Namesake, which I just read, isn’t even a patch on it. TA is far superior in terms of style, content, specificity, characters, and what have you. And just a lot more interesting as a story. And it is so poignantly, profoundly humourous. I mean Amit Chaudhuri can wax lyrical and Jhumpa Lahiri can wax lucid, but their writing is just not grown up enough to match this.

Shimmers in places but right now the narrator is being very annoying.
Finished reading – was beautifully written, that’s about it.

Disappointing. I like her clear prose though the story said nothing new. It was a fairly mediocre book on most counts. But I do look forward to the film. A similar book that I thought was much better done is Bone. Wonder why it isn’t better know.

Easily one of my favourite books..and Pico Iyer’s too.

Okay, this is Bond as I like it. Wait..let me correct that. As I’ve imagined him. Since I am one of those people who read all the books first and then watched the films, I had a picture of Bond that none of the other actors ever measured up to. They were all too perfect and invincible. But Craig has just the right dash of vulnerability and flawed-ness. Film? Hmmmm…not bad. Enjoyed the repartee. Fantastic, and fantastic as in pretty improbable, chase in the beginning, great torture scene – again not cinematically, but in keeping with Bond in my head. Good paisa vasool, definitely. Okay, will say it, loved Craig.
Ah, and a story about watching this film.
I got up for the national anthem, looked around a bit, and decided to sit down. D thinks gestures like these are puerile, and if I feel so strongly about it, I should write to a paper or something. But I told him that writing isn’t the only way to challenge what bothers you. What if someone who isn’t articulate enough to write to a paper feels that way? Maybe if enough people who feel the way I do did what I did, it would be ‘heard’ or debated. Basically there are ways and ways of registering protest, however trivial the issue might be.

An Imaginary Life is one of those books whose deft language cuts through the thick tissue of life to its spirit, to the very meaning of being human. It illuminates one’s purpose and place in the unending complex of otherness that one’s being is caught in.
Or something. Lol.
Loved it.

To put it simply, this is a beautiful book. Its language is surprising and lyrical. Mister Salgado’s house comes alive like a house in an exceptionally vivid dream. And those descriptions of food, the love cake, the crab curry and appams…drool!
The only thing I didn’t like was it being framed by the whole moving to London bit. I loved the story that’s in Colombo – a secret place, a private neighbourhood, not the public metropolis of London. Leaving that aside, the Sri Lankan bits are by far the better written ones, in Triton’s young, still unassured voice.