Thursday, September 27, 2007

Nice day at the Box Office

(Alert! Due to the insane hours in which this post has been written, it might contain many typos, non-sequitors, broken clauses and suchlike. I know this, but have no time or inclination to correct it. Please to excuse.)

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)

Anyway, as a dedication to QT, I'll commence this roundup of my day, (a very unusual post by my standards, but banal by blogosphere's) from the very end - and continue a-chronologically. If that is the right word that is.

Anyway, finished the day at 11:30 at ESquare after a wonderful couple something hours of watching "Manorama - 6 Feet Under", all thanks to the tip from this man. Kailash Kher song accompanying the credits was really nice - need to find out more. Still, whatever people do - no one stays for the credits! Not even supposedly trivially inclined quizzing friends. One of the few Miss India contests that I have seen - I remember Gul Panag's most vividly. I was appalled at her lack of sense even then - (remember the inane comment she made at the next Filmfares about how Preity Zinta and she were somehow divinely connected due to the quite prominent dimples?) I'd never thought she'd get somewhere in life. At least not to a place where I'd be seeing her. Anyway, here I am - a person who choosed very carefully what movies he watched in a theatre, and she's played a major roles in two of those. Dor and of course, Manorama. Hmm.. interesting to see how this story ends.

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Had an unusually hurried trip to the British Council Library. Returned all the DVDs, not having seen, the somehow conjunctionally challenged Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Decided not to fill up my quota of 8 items with stupid DVDs, some of which will just contribute to my late-fee list - and picked up just books. Fewer, which I could hope to finish in a month. So here I am sitting with The Rupa Book of Ruskin Bond's Himalayan Tales,(I quite liked his other collection of Nature stories.) Ian McEwan's Saturday (again, was very impressed by Amsterdam, and he's been shortlisted again for the Booker's this year.) Graham Greene's "The Third Man" & "Loser Takes It All" (never read Greene before, shame on me!) and the prized-possession of today's raid "Notes from a Small Island" by Bill Bryson. The story of how I got the last one is quite interesting. I was standing at the counter checking my books out, when I noticed a teenagish girl with a bunch of books. The Bryson of course did not escape the eye, and I promptly and without inhibition (and you'll know how unusual this is for someone like me) asked hee if I could have it, if she's done with it. She did - and here I am, about to commence my third Bryson book, with "The Life and Times of the Thunderbird Kid" promised in the near future. Brilliant!

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Apart from that, I'm about to finish the quizically famous "Murders in the Rue Morgue" . This book of short storied by Poe, (with the rather intriguing cover catch-line "horror now has a name") has left me quite amazed. I've never grappled with a book, as I have done with this one. I must admit, that I haven't experienced real horror via literature, and I don't think Poe is the man to do it. From what friends tell me, this guy is what I need. Still, his writing is archaic, sometimes pompous - almost always incisive and rich. It's very very different - and I feel enriched as a reader, by a book for the first time in many reads.

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Now faithful reader, I must take your leave. For the night is long past it's youth, and the middle-age symptoms are about to hit. Till next time, cheerio!

4 comments:

J Ramanand said...

Nice of you to give your monies to M6FU - glad you liked it.

Amsterdam is nice: from a "heck, this is a short story blown into a novel and it won a Booker!". The other McEwan that I've read is "Enduring Love". Will slowly read the rest too - the man is a literary stud.

Who is Bill Bryson - never heard. Will check out.

As for Poe: well, despite blurb , isn't really horror, in the spine-chilling sense. It's more of a tales of the macabre. Dupin apart, stories like Pit and Pendulum, Tell-tale heart are classics. You will, in this more prolific day and age, find Poe a little old-fashione. You must try to place him in his own times, when this was quite novel, to give him his due.

May you continue to have more luck at BCL.

Abhishek said...

You must check out Bryson. Mainly a travel writer, with a humour bone, bigger than the femur. He has also written, in his own inimitable style, about Science(the brief history of nearly everything) and Language(Mother Tongue) much to the chagrin of other "experts" who smirk at his audacity to broach a topic, about which he has no moral right to preach.

kapeesh saraf said...

i want thunderbird kid. lend lend lend.

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