Accidental Blogger
A general interest blog
Category: Books, Authors & Poems
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I’m a reluctant technophile — working for a dotcom in the 90s made me not so much a technophobe as a marketing-phobe — I enjoy new gadgets even as the utopian claims of advertising are an insult to the seriousness with which we regard the English language around here. So I greet the Amazon Kindle,…
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Secrecy and Deceit is a detailed chronicle of Crypto Judaism in Spain, Portugal and their colonies in Latin America . David Gitlitz’s voluminous book – 600+ footnoted pages, is a meticulous account (much of it gleaned from Inquisition records)that traces the history of Iberian Jews between 1238 to 1992. A funny story I remember my…
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This year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature, Doris Lessing recently expressed her views on the political events of the past few years. According to her the 9/11 attacks were "not that terrible." She also confessed that she "always hated Tony Blair from the beginning" and that George W. Bush is "a world calamity." Lessing is…
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Lester Hunt is in the mood for Kurt Vonnegut – revisiting a favorite book from his youth and its iconic author. He recently re-read Cat’s Cradle after a gap of many years and enjoyed it the second time around. In a very good review, Lester grants the book its place on the "classics" pedestal but he…
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Sam Fentress is a Jack Kerouac of sorts. He travels the roads of America looking to find not himself but Biblical signs and bill boards – messages to praise and persuade. In his many sojourns he has found farmhouses, grain silos, restaurants, hair salons, gas stations and even traffic signs bearing Biblical messages. An artist…
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An essay in the New York Times Books section counts some famous books which may not have seen the light of day, had the judgement of publishers like Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and others been the last word on their literary value. In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language…
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Prof. Brian Leiter (Law & Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin) has remarked upon a brief article recently published by Prof. Jonathan Wolff (Philosophy, University College London) about the preponderance of boring writing in academia. (They implicitly seem to mean humanities and social science writing, since it is difficult even to apply the criterion to…
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Story Wallah, edited by Shyam Selvadurai is the most comprehensive collection of south Asian diasporic writing that I have encountered. All the authors included in this anthology were either born outside the Indian subcontinent or emigrated out of there. Many of the contributors were new to me and others are old hands. The book is…
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Reader John Selogy wrote: "I work in software marketing which can be maddening but creative at the same time. I live in San Jose and produce abstract, completely unsaleable electronic music when I’m not working. The other day I was editing a copy of T.S. Eliot reading Prufrock in a track of Adobe audition which…
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Myths and legends, like scientific discoveries often require careful planning. Few precious myths are born of Eureka moments . Most are orchestrated for maximum mass appeal by injecting elements of awe, mystery and the fantastic (think religious narratives). But rarely are we privy to the inner machinations that lead to the birth of a popular legend.…
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Jack Kerouac’s famous iconoclastic book, On The Road was already some thirteen or fourteen years old and the events described in it another decade older, when I first laid my eyes on it . The Beat generation, whose sensibilities were shaped by jazz, poetry and mind altering drugs was nearing middle age and the Hippie movement…
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The hoopla over Year 7 has finally come to an end. Bookstore owners are gnashing their teeth that the publishing juggernaut of Harry Potter has finally rolled to a stop."What next, now that Harry Potter’s done with?", they agonize.Fans are jubilant at its arrival after the long, much hyped midnight launch parties, even stamps are…
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In The Name Of Identity (Violence And The Need To Belong), a slim but ambitious book by author Amin Maalouf, may create a bit of a dilemma for a librarian attempting to categorize it. Bits of history, anthropology, religion, philosophy and politics are interwoven in Maalouf’s long essay about "identity." His informed and open minded…
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The beguiling city of New Orleans has inspired many a literary mind. Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Ann Rice and John Kennedy Toole, to name only a few. In Toole’s memorable satire, A Confederacy of Dunces , New Orleans is as much a living, breathing character as the motley human crew who populate the book. (I…
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Some 200 million copies of his books in fifty languages have sold worldwide. But I am not sure how many American readers may have heard of Hergé or his creation, Tintin. This year is the birth centenary of Belgian born children’s author and journalist, Hergé. Georges Remi reversed the initials of his birth name and…
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