MEME-TAGGED BY MANASI.
The title's got nothing to do with the song of the same name by Queen. The appropriate people will understand appropriately what I appropriately meant and convey their approbations later for it.
So here goes...
Disclaimer: Throughout this "meme"ing, I assume that books such as "Introduction to Electrodynamics" and its ilk don't count... I also assume that the below information can be totally untrue and be products of my fertile imaganation, atleast in parts...
TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS I OWN:
Pitiful. It all comes with packing up and moving to seven different places by your eighth standard. So, everytime you pack, you're obliged to sacrifice some to the old-paper dude.(Of course, it's economically pretty satisfying...) So, now that the reason's been given... last time I counted... 216!!!
LAST BOOK I BOUGHT:
Umm... lemme see...umm...ho... Aah... OH GAWD!!!!! I can't remember the last time I BOUGHT a bloody book. Rummaging through my extensive inventory... NOPE, none of them were BOUGHT, not in the recent past... Ok, make it Last Book I GOT... after similiar number of Aahhs and Umms... Sons of Fortune by Archer, I guess.
LAST BOOK I READ:
The Negotiator- Frederick Forsyth. For the second time, actually. And that too for getting some necessary background on a project of mine. Currently going through The Greek Myths... searching for a name for my alter-ego, now that Anniyan's been taken!!!!
FIVE BOOKS THAT MEAN A LOT TO ME:
Five??? You sure you want five??? I don't even remember the plot of five books that I read, ANY five... so I just have to make do with the five books that spring to my mind.....In Descending order, as in 5-4-3...
Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde... What a perfect storyline, very beautiful explanations for the unexplainable. And the stuff about man being not one... but two... and very possibly many more, As a 12-year old, it left me very impressed.
Gladiator!!! Oops...movie ;)
Airport- Aurthur Hailey. Again, a story which defines the word "build-up". When you're building up towards something big, you tend to sag somewhere in between, lose the plot or do some such silly thing. No such problems in this one. All coherently and seamlessly stitched up to the finale.
Mahabaratha. HAS to be. Have read "n" number of versions, including comic book ones. Yudishtra's Question-Answer section with the Yaksha by the lake and Abhimanyu's piercing through the Chakravyuh... moments to remember...
Mater of the Game- Sidney Sheldon. This was when i'd just graduated form Alistair Maclean and Perry Mason. So, this was my first "big-league" book, and though there may have been countless others same as or better than this, it remains etched in memory.
FIVE POINT SOMEONE- OK, I can't stop talking about this book so DON'T get me started off. Oh god, what a book!!! I mean, you've got to go through it to appreciate the feelings in the book. The pain, the fear, the hopelessness, the everything......... If I were to write an autobiography, my college section will just replicate this book.
MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE CHARACTERS:
Mr.Hyde- "for Hyde alone was pure evil."
Portia of Merchant of Venice... good legal loophole discovered.(even if it was ACTUALLY done by Shakespeare)
All those heroes in the Maclean novels. Silent, brooding, bloody brilliant.
There was this Russian agent in The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum. Don't remember his name... he sets himself on fire and runs through the villains' stronghold so that this American agent fellow can escape...with his girl! Such Chivalry!
A BOOK THAT DIDN'T MEAN SQUAT TO ME:
Most of them don't... They're all for entertainment aren't they? So what is this about books "meaning" stuff. Of course, there is this book that holds the dubious distinction of being the ONLY one which I started but couldn't bring myself to finish. The Bourne Legacy... A BLOODY poor continuation of the outstanding Bourne trilogy. GAWD! That book pained me.
So......THAT took a lot of time! Whew, I'm NOT blogging for a while now.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Sunday, June 12, 2005
To Blog or not to Blog
To say that the title is the umpteenth time that the much-maligned Shakespearean line of indecision has been twisted would be an understatement. If Hamlet were alive and had royalty on the line, he would probably be closing in on Bill Gates’ title of the richest man or something. Or maybe, if he had been Spanish, he would have uttered something like 'Estar o no estar'. Or again, if he had been Dutch and if the question troubling him involved the E.U constitution, he would have uttered a vehement Not To Be, along with 4 million other Dutchmen. (Disclaimer: I have no idea what the Dutch population is or how many of them voted against the E.U constitution. The Random Number generator in my head picked 4 million, and so 4 million it is.)
By now, I should make clear that I’m not doing a thesis on what Hamlet should or shouldn’t have said. This is not even an essay on whether the Dutch should have thrown out the E.U constitution or not. And it’s certainly not a piece where I’m showcasing my newfound mastery of the Spanish language (which is considerable, but I’ll do that some other time). Unlike our Superstar’s Chandramukhi, which went through 2 hours of meaningless songs and clichéd dialogues before finally making you sit up and take note of Jyothika’s acting, I shall get directly to the point.
Point being- What does a person do, when he has such a thing called summer vacation, apart from eating, sleeping, waking up, watching T.V, eating and watching T.V, switching off the T.V, switching on the computer, going through the entire library of songs, eating, sleeping, waking up... (If this were a computer language, here is where I would close the iteration loop.)
Seriously... You’re already acquainted well enough with all the VJs on every music channel from MTV through Channel V to Sun Music. And you’ve already seen the episode on Discovery where they build the Eurofighter jet. And you can be sure you know every shot off every ball in Dravid’s 233 in the Adelaide test, having watched it in the name of Cricket Gold or Super Doubles or Team India programming or some such innovative name for a highlights package. And you can’t bear to sit through the torture that they showcase in the form of English movies being dubbed into Tamil (unless, of course, its Titanic... proud to say I watched it the day before my Physics boards.) Oh, and almost forgot the one that beats ‘em all… Formula One commentary in Tamil!!! “Ippo, ivar arumayaga ‘car’ai vaegamaga ottikkondirukkiraar”. Yeah right, genius, the drivers are paid 7-figure salaries to trundle around the track as if they were in a Maruti 800.
And then there is this highly crippling disadvantage of a dial-up connection. If you ever want to feel frustrated with life to the point of crying, I’d recommend downloading a song with dial-up at around 6 P.M. Speeds of 1.5 kbps have been known to send the most stable person into bouts of insanity. So you give-up on that and turn to the songs you already have on your comp, courtesy of an extended source-pool of friends, friends’ friends, friends’ friends’ friends...y’know. But again, how many times can you go through the same Maiden-Metallica, Pink Floyd, Nirvana... and end up at Eminem! And you listen to him trash his parents so much that you wonder why they gave birth to him at all. I mean, surely it was some kind of mistake, y’know maybe... (Here’s where I stop on this particular line of thought... I want to maintain a “family viewing” rating on this Blog.)
So...you tell me. WHAT does one do??? And I’ve got to go now ‘cos all this has put my schedule slightly off track. Gotta go sleep. And wake up in time for the evening snack. And then of course, the evening movie on T.V. And dinner. And…
By now, I should make clear that I’m not doing a thesis on what Hamlet should or shouldn’t have said. This is not even an essay on whether the Dutch should have thrown out the E.U constitution or not. And it’s certainly not a piece where I’m showcasing my newfound mastery of the Spanish language (which is considerable, but I’ll do that some other time). Unlike our Superstar’s Chandramukhi, which went through 2 hours of meaningless songs and clichéd dialogues before finally making you sit up and take note of Jyothika’s acting, I shall get directly to the point.
Point being- What does a person do, when he has such a thing called summer vacation, apart from eating, sleeping, waking up, watching T.V, eating and watching T.V, switching off the T.V, switching on the computer, going through the entire library of songs, eating, sleeping, waking up... (If this were a computer language, here is where I would close the iteration loop.)
Seriously... You’re already acquainted well enough with all the VJs on every music channel from MTV through Channel V to Sun Music. And you’ve already seen the episode on Discovery where they build the Eurofighter jet. And you can be sure you know every shot off every ball in Dravid’s 233 in the Adelaide test, having watched it in the name of Cricket Gold or Super Doubles or Team India programming or some such innovative name for a highlights package. And you can’t bear to sit through the torture that they showcase in the form of English movies being dubbed into Tamil (unless, of course, its Titanic... proud to say I watched it the day before my Physics boards.) Oh, and almost forgot the one that beats ‘em all… Formula One commentary in Tamil!!! “Ippo, ivar arumayaga ‘car’ai vaegamaga ottikkondirukkiraar”. Yeah right, genius, the drivers are paid 7-figure salaries to trundle around the track as if they were in a Maruti 800.
And then there is this highly crippling disadvantage of a dial-up connection. If you ever want to feel frustrated with life to the point of crying, I’d recommend downloading a song with dial-up at around 6 P.M. Speeds of 1.5 kbps have been known to send the most stable person into bouts of insanity. So you give-up on that and turn to the songs you already have on your comp, courtesy of an extended source-pool of friends, friends’ friends, friends’ friends’ friends...y’know. But again, how many times can you go through the same Maiden-Metallica, Pink Floyd, Nirvana... and end up at Eminem! And you listen to him trash his parents so much that you wonder why they gave birth to him at all. I mean, surely it was some kind of mistake, y’know maybe... (Here’s where I stop on this particular line of thought... I want to maintain a “family viewing” rating on this Blog.)
So...you tell me. WHAT does one do??? And I’ve got to go now ‘cos all this has put my schedule slightly off track. Gotta go sleep. And wake up in time for the evening snack. And then of course, the evening movie on T.V. And dinner. And…
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