Books, Authors and a Zombie..

Sometimes I dread the spell authors can have over me. Like I am their zombie carrying around their book like it possessed me. Totally, that is. They can make me sit through the night with my body aching on all counts, pleading me to keep that book away and go to sleep but I will still go on. Seriously, who controls me here??

This is not something that has cropped as a disease now. I think I have been hard wired to be zombied by authors. It started off with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. When going to school included a 7 km bicycle ride and a 30 minute school bus trip to reach school one way, I have spend most of my standing time in the bus with a book in one hand and lost in detective findings. I was one of those rare (not sure if it was really rare) creatures who would make a list of all the books in a series and check mark them as and when I complete each one of them.

The next one on the zombie list is no surprise - at least, for a major percentage of the reading population. Before you move any further, I declare myself a Potter fan. So, if you have heard enough of Harry Potter, please skip this, else continue. Being an adult when the Potter fever was everywhere, I totally believed that it was for kids. I didn't bother to even turn towards Potter-mania, until the day I said to myself - 'Let me try'. And I am so thankful that I did after all the books in the series were out. Otherwise, I don't know what would have happened to me during the wait for the next book. Another author who totally zombied me with her lesser known 'The Casual Vacancy' too.

The list continues with A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Fault in our Stars, The Goldfinch.. The list goes on - the zombie and her authors...

Note: A post half drafted in 2014 and completed today. Just to know my own heights of procrastination.

Farm City

The Education of an Urban Farmer - That completes the title. But that surely does'nt complete all the education this book gave me. Education about the good old American Thrift while I always thought that thrift was an Indian virtue and spending was American. How ill-informed have I been!! This book has left me wondering, whoever can match the spirit of the American thrift and living life with a certain vigor, the way one dreams of living.

I guess I picked the book precisely because I did'nt do what the author, Novella Carpenter did, to the weed -choked, garbage-strewn abandoned plot next to her house in inner-city Oakland. When I moved to my house in sub-urban Chennai in late 2010, 'squatting' did not exist in my vocabulary. Still, I did dream about veggies, fruits and even chicken in the vacant plot next door much to the shock of my hubby who was wondering aloud if I still had my brains intact. The difference was that I did'nt bring the guts to realise my dream to reality. Alternately, I limited myself to planting herbs and greens in pots within my territory. This book has inspired me to take my gardening to the next level whenever I go back, with or without the adjacent plot being vacant. Think I will go hunting for whatever plot lies vacant in the area. :) The difference of course will be that I will have to hunt the owner before I did do anything, else I may well be doing the gardening in confinement :D

This book not only shares the charms of growing ones own food and enjoying it, but also the trials and challenges involved. Sometimes it makes me wonder, if I, calling myself green, having a similar ambition as the author, will endure similar hardships. But as the author upgrades from the Turkey to Rabbit to Pig, I as a reader also enjoyed the fruits of labor from the different mouth watering delicacies described, though I have'nt tasted one single dish mentioned in the book. The book did remind me of my childhood days when we raised chickens at home by feeding them with veg and non-veg scraps, cleaning after them every morning, protecting them from birds of prey (sometimes losing them too) and finally seeing them being killed for feeding us. I still remember being shocked the first time of seeing the act being done in front of my eyes but the questions related to it came much later in life. One of the endearing aspects of the book was the sharing of the food grown and the friendships that grew from the food. Sometimes losing the food was too heart-breaking but I guess, like in other aspects of life, we just move on.

Reserving the best of what I have taken from this book - The Bees. In all my farming dreams (which is almost everyday) till I read this book, I have'nt thought of these small wonders. Yes, I am still such a novice. I owe it completely to this book for giving me such a close look into the bee hive. Like the author says, there are some things we don't know about bees, but this book has told me a lot about bees with the exception of the 'Bee Movie'. There is a lot of action in this book, but to me, the most thrilling one was the immigration of the new hive to Novella's garden in Chapter Twenty Three. No doubt, the sweetest product from Farm City is the Honey.

Check out the author's blog Ghost Town Farm for the latest Farm Produce.

Without Reservations

This is the second time I am here in the United States. My relationship with this country is not all love love. Yes, I do love it for some reasons while I actually dont for many other reasons including the one that I am so far away from the souls that are close to me. The first time around, I missed everything about me and my life as I knew it, before coming to this country of abundance. This time around, I did sufficiently prepare myself to all that awaits me, both good and bad, in this foreign land. Even beyond it all, I think I was'nt prepared for a situation, without the presence of my dearest friend, Ap. A situation that is magnified in distance by geography and hours. It is not such an easy task to fill in such a huge gap. And that is precisely what this wonderful book, "Without Reservations" by Alice Steinbach managed to do by building a beautiful bridge across this huge distance with the utmost ease. When reading this book, it felt like reading or rather talking to Ap, all along. I did'nt call her or talk to her anytime when I was reading this book, lest I call her at the wrong time and end up disappointed.
 
This is not the first book that I am reading of this author, but surely the best of the three written by her and the two read by me. (The story of the first book I read back in 2008 is for another day) This being a travel book, it takes us through the alleys and side streets of some of the beautiful cities and small towns of France, Italy, London and Cambridge. Beyond the places visited through this book, the varied experiences of the author and the people she meets along the way is what is so endearing about this book. In the process, it took me through my own life experiences, the people who have been part of it and gave a fresh perspective to these experiences.

I have had some great takeaways from this book, but I worry if I can share it all here, since it might become a copyright issue. :) Felt like I was rewriting half the book to myself again.

"As I set out each day, I felt like a young child again, one who had'nt yet learned the rules of manmade time: the rules of clocks and calendars, of weekdays and weekends. Except for the primitive markers of day and night, time lay ahead of me in a continuous, undefined mass. I began picturing it as some kind of strange but friendly beast whose appetites and desires were unknown to me."

"Is belonging that simple? A matter of attitude? Or is attitude just another form of self deception?"

"I do not believe in regret, Regret is an illusion. It depends on what might have been. And that is a waste of time"

"At home I had friends like this, women with whom I could exchange in bold shorthand strokes whole parts of our shared history. It was what I missed most on this trip: my women friends. I could always count on them to boost me up or take me down a peg when I needed it."

"She found the life that suited her, I thought, closing the book. Work that interested her, a house she loved, good friends who came for tea and of course, the company of her cats. It was a simple life but by no means an unsophisticated one."

"It is your time, not your money that you should spend wisely."

"Real friendships, are as rare as happy childhoods." :)



"Fugit hora, memento mori - Latin phrase translated means, 'Time flies, Remember you must die' Why do they say that on tombstones? Would it not be more useful to say that 'Time Flies, Remember you must live'?"




Footnote: As the world goes round and round, think it high time, each one of us realises, Time Flies, Remember we must live. Incidentally, Alice, remembered to live until March 13th, 2012.

Rules of the Road

Sometimes I wish I could be able to read every written word in the world. With the advent to the internet and the flourishing blogging community and even without it, I am sure any of you reading this should be saying to yourself that this could be the most atrocious thing anybody could think of. But reading something that you have picked out of nowhere and then enjoying it thoroughly, in itself is such a joy. The first time I experienced that was when I read a book by Alice Steinbach which uplifted me from whatever morbid mood I was in then.

This time around, I read "Rules of the Road" by Joan Bauer which made me feel nice. A simple tale of a teenager girl's escape from her current situation to travel on road from Chicago to Dallas along with an elderly lady and how it impacts her and the way she looks at things after that. Not a travel book, but the thought of sitting behind the wheel and traveling with the character transports you places. Some of those brief instances when you feel that there are some things the author is saying instead of you (think that happens in every book I read) gives a sense of belonging. Like we are part of the book and the journey.

My takeaways from the Book:

"If you set your mind and heart towards a healthy way of living and thinking, you'll find a way to climb out of the biggest pit life throws your way"
"God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid. Close to everything a human being needed to know was somewhere in the library" A human being only has to have the need to know...

One True Thing

One True Thing was one movie that embarked me on a journey that I had not anticipated. The brilliant potrayal of a family and the different emotions which all of us go through in our families sends us down memory lane. Meryl Streep as the mother will remind each one of us of the everyday sacrifices our mothers had to make to make us what we are and what our family becomes. Renee Zellweger as the ambitious daughter will remind every woman of how she wished in her growing years that she does not grow up to be her mom and how later in her life she identifies her mother as the strongest person and wishes that she had at least a fraction of the strength her mom possessed.

A scene where the mother inspite of her own illness tells her daughter that she needs to make her own career reminded me of my own mother telling me the same thing when I was going for my first day at work. Had it not been for her strong words then, I doubt if I would have ever accomplished the little I did.

This is my salutation to the selfless years of the life of all mothers from whom we have all borrowed our own lives.. Thank You Amma..