An acclaimed young author, Skype... and Kalidasa's immortal Sanskrit epic

What greater comment could be made on the state of Indian education than a man sitting in India learning a dead Indian language through Skype?

The man sitting in India is author Aatish Taseer, the son of noted Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and Salmaan Taseer, the Pakistani politician who was assassinated by his own bodyguard in Islamabad two years ago.

The man teaching him a dead Indian language — Sanskrit — via Skype is his professor at Columbia University in New York.

And the excerpt above is from Aatish Taseer's fascinating piece on Kalidasa's epic, The Birth of Kumara, which I discovered very recently in the "You Must Read This" section on the NPR website.

Taseer, whose widely praised memoir, Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands, was published in 2009, describes The Birth of Kumara as "one of those miracles of literature in which the divine and the temporal; the symbolic and the real; and the big impulses and the exquisite detail run together seamlessly".

He then explains why this assignment is so important to him:

For me, with the cultural impoverishments of my colonial education, it meant something more: my first foray into a literary past that I thought was closed to me.

How well Taseer expresses himself! Read the column in its entirety to understand the power of words: "Cosmic Love: A Sensual Sanskrit Epic Revived". Check out the comments, too.

• "You Must Read This" presents conversations with writers about the books they love to read and recommend. So, afterwards, feast your eyes on the other gems in this section. As for NPR, Wikipedia has a comprehensive page on this privately and publicly funded media organisation based in the U.S.

There's a new star on the Indian mass-market fiction horizon...

...and his name is Ravinder Singh. He is the author of I Too Had a Love Story (1 lakh copies in three months), Can Love Happen Twice? (3.5 lakh copies), and the just-released Like It Happened Yesterday, which had a pre-launch order of 2 lakh copies.

All three books have apparently struck a chord with young readers because they are easy on the wallet — as well as on the brain.

As Ravinder Singh himself says in an interview with Sonal Nerurkar in The Times of India Crest Edition, his readers would be intimidated by "dictionary-oriented literary fiction".

Ravinder Singh, or "Ravin", as he is known, struck gold with his very first effort, I Too Had a Love Story, which was published in 2008:

[It] is based on Singh's experience of first love, which ended tragically with the death of his fiancêe Khushi in a car accident. The book is an intimate recount of their romance, starting online with pinky-swear passion, deepening as they discover shared values and common goals. Lacking poetic language or nuance, the book scores in earnestness and ardour. "I may lack literary skills but I speak from the heart, " Singh says.

Nerurkar, whose article is headlined "Maharaja of Mush", writes that, initially, Ravin was upset by the lack of attention his work received from the mainstream press. But today he feels differently:

"There are those who feel we are spoiling the world of writing," he says. "But if there is demand, there will be supply." The perception that literary works are better than mass market fiction is changing, Singh feels, and he's doing his best to turn the tide in his favour.

RAVINDER SINGH AT THE LAUNCH OF HIS NEW BOOK.

Ravinder Singh is also the subject of the cover story in last week's Mint Lounge, titled "The School of Singh", in which Somak Ghosal profiles not only Ravinder Singh but also Durjoy Datta and Sachin Garg — all three are acknowledged champs of mass-market fiction.

Read the Mint Lounge cover story here.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Why we should applaud Amish (and ignore what purists say about his writing skills?)" and "Chetan Bhagat on how to take your English to the next level".

• Can Love Happen Twice? and Like It Happened Yesterday are available in the Commits library.

• Photograph courtesy: Aniruddha Choudhury/Mint

Meet the Twitter exec who finds inspiration in the 200 books she reads every year

Claire Diaz-Ortiz is, according to Wikipedia, an American blogger, author, and speaker who leads social innovation at Twitter.

Diaz-Ortiz (pictured) also has more than 45,000 followers on LinkedIn and almost 3.3 lakh followers on Twitter, which does not surprise me now that I have read her inspirational post on LinkedIn: "What Inspires Me: The 200 Books I Read a Year".

Here's an excerpt:

Reading has been my favorite pastime since my earliest memory, and in my adult years books have become some of my greatest inspirations. I read more than 200 books a year, and most of these books are non-fiction. Business, inspiration, and leadership top the charts in terms of what I spend most of my time reading, and I the reason I put so much of my energy into reading these particular categories is because books in this genre, again and again, have changed the way I think.

Read Diaz-Ortiz's post in its entirety. And then check out my post: "Why you must read".

PS: I am now Claire Diaz-Ortiz's 3,29,602nd follower on Twitter.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Your Inspiration Roadmap: More Than 60 Ways to Get Motivated"

If you want to understand what journalism should be...

...and if you want to know what journalism can be, read this great book — by a great writer — about one of the world's great newspapers:

Follow it up with this terrific piece in Vanity Fair: "A New Kingdom: Gay Talese Sounds Off on The New York Times — Past, Present, and Future".

Here's an appetiser — an excerpt from Gay Talese's response to the first question he is asked in the Vanity Fair interview:

GAY TALESE

Journalism is for the young. Young people who go into journalism as a calling are entering, I think, the most worthwhile profession that is possible, and the reason I say that is that there is no profession or industry or calling that tries very hard to tell the truth and to sell the truth and to make the truth make money. The truth is hard, first of all, to get. And harder still to communicate. And more hard to make money on!

• You will also want to read the new book that again puts journalism and The New York Times front and centre: Page One: Inside The New York Times and the Future of Journalism (edited by David Folkenflik), and follow that up by watching the documentary on which the book is based.

• Afterwards, visit the official Gay Talese website here and learn more about the work of this legendary journalist and novelist.

• ADDITIONAL READING:

"Journalism: The best job in the world", by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Editor Bill Keller on how The New York Times chooses Page 1 stories, from a brilliant series in the Times, "Talk to the Newsroom"

The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again 

• UPDATE (April 23, 2014): Amazon has just delivered Honor Thy Father, Gay Talese's bestseller about one of America's most notorious Mafia families. According to one critic, no other book has done more to acquaint readers with the secrets, structure, wars, power plays, family lives, and fascinating, frightening personalities of the Mafia. Honor Thy Father will be placed in the Commits library... soon.

Is there a book or two from your past that helped you see yourself and your world in a whole new way?

Every Sunday morning, I receive Dr Mardy Grothe's e-newsletter:
     

A WEEKLY CELEBRATION OF GREAT QUOTES IN HISTORY
           (AND THE HISTORY BEHIND THE QUOTES).

Dr Grothe has featured in this space many times before. A psychologist by training, he is an author and, as his website puts it, an engaging and entertaining speaker who gives scores of seminars every year to CEO groups that are part of an international network known as The Executive Committee (TEC).

I am reproducing the relevant portion of his latest piece here because, today, he is discussing a very important topic:

"Life-Altering Books"

BY DR MARDY GROTHE

The quotation in this week's Puzzler ["How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book" — Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden] illustrates one of history's most fascinating themes: the idea that people can be changed — sometimes in dramatic ways — by the reading of a single book.

In the lives of countless people over the centuries, a life-altering book can be as influential as a lifetime of instruction from family members, clergy, and teachers.

It happened several times with Ralph Waldo Emerson [Thoreau's friend and mentor], whose life was impacted in significant ways by the confessions of Rousseau, the essays of Montaigne, and the confessions of St. Augustine. In 1840, he sent a copy of Augustine's book to a friend along with this revealing note:

    It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime
    to be drunk with some book which probably has
    some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us...
    and having exhausted that cup of enchantment
    we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards
    in the hope of being in Paradise again.

Several decades later, Emerson returned to the subject of pivotal books in an essay in Society and Solitude (1870):

    There are books...which take rank in your life
    with parents and lovers and passionate experiences,
    so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

FRANZ KAFKA

The concept of life-altering books was clearly on the mind of Franz Kafka, when he asked in a 1904 letter to his friend, Oskar Pollack: "If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?" He then answered his own question this way:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
A book should serve as an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.

I can think of several books that helped to break the frozen sea within me, including the one featured in this week's Puzzler. I tell the full story in my I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like book, but the brief version is that I read it [Walden]when I was a 20-year-old college student in the middle of a major "identity crisis". After reading the first couple of pages, I couldn't put the book down. And by the time I finished reading it, I had recorded several dozen passages on library index cards and tacked them up on the bulletin board above my desk. Some of those passages ultimately went on to become such an important part of my life that I can recite them from memory today, more than fifty years later.

How about you? Is there a book or two from your past that helped you see yourself and your world in a whole new way? As you think about which books belong in that category, take few moments to peruse this week's selection of quotes on the theme:

   "Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts
    which other men have prepared
    to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life."
          Jesse Lee Bennett

   "It is chiefly through books
    that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds."
          William Ellery Channing

   "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity,
    and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen
    by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."
          Robertson Davies

E.M. FORSTER

"The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves."
          E. M. Forster

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books."
          Bell Hooks

 "It is from books that wise people
 derive consolation in the troubles of life."
          Victor Hugo

   "If we are imprisoned in ourselves,
    books provide us with the means of escape.
    If we have run too far away from ourselves,
    books show us the way back."
          Holbrook Jackson

   "Books go out into the world,
    travel mysteriously from hand to hand,
    and somehow find their way to the people who need them
    at the times when they need them....
    Cosmic forces guide such passings-along."
          Erica Jong

"People don't realise how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."
          Malcolm X

   "The real purpose of books
    is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking."
          Christopher Morley

SALMAN RUSHDIE

"The lover of books is a miner, searching for gold all his life long. He finds his nuggets, his heart leaps in his breast; he cannot believe in his good fortune."
          Kathleen Norris, in These I Like Best (1941)

"Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul — what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?"
          Salman Rushdie

• ALSO READ:

Tell me, please: What role has reading played in your life? (Another thought-provoking post by Dr Mardy Grothe)

Reading this book will change your approach to life

25 books that will give you a better perspective on life and also help prepare you for the workplace

• EXTERNAL READING: From the New York Times: "What motivates one human being to chuck a book at another?"

The classic cricket book even non-fans will enjoy reading

‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’

Since I first read this quote many, many years ago, I have entertained thoughts about reading the book in which it appears. But it was only last month that, serendipitously, I happened to think about it — the exploits of Dhoni & Co. in England may have had something to do with it — leading me to order the book from Amazon pronto.

And, then, some days after the book was delivered, I came across this reference to it in an interview in Books & More magazine (edited by Commitscion Padmini Nandy Mazumder; the interviewer is good friend Pratibha Rao).

Q Which was the one book that inspired you?

Boria Majumdar It is undoubtedly Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James. The first time I read it, I understood nothing of it. I read it because people said it was the best book on cricket. Only when I read it the fourth or fifth time, I understood what the book wanted to say. I’ve now read it 47 times. I’ve been to the C.L.R. James Research Library in the West Indies and stayed for a long time in Barbados where James is buried — that’s the impact the book has had on me. For what I want to do — understand society through the lens of sport — there is no better book than Beyond a Boundary. 

Enough said.

• For the uninitiated, Rhodes scholar Boria Majumdar is one of India's foremost young cricket litterateurs. He is also an op-ed columnist for The Times of India, a sports expert with Times Now, and author of books such as Twenty-two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket and The Illustrated History of Indian Cricket.

Why I'm reading — and enjoying — the first volume of the Paris Review Interviews

"The Paris Review books should be given out at dinner parties, readings, riots, weddings, galas — shindigs of every shape. And they're perfect for the classroom too, from high schools all the way to MFA programmes. In fact, I run a whole semester-long creative writing class based on the interviews. How else would I get the world's greatest living writers, living and dead, to come into the classroom with their words of wisdom, folly, and fury? These books are wonderful, provocative, indispensible." — Colum McCann, novelist and Hunter College professor

***
"I have all the copies of The Paris Review and like the interviews very much. They will make a good book when collected and that will be very good for the Review." — Ernest Hemingway

***
"At their best, the Paris Review interviews remove the veils of literary personae to reveal the flesh-and-blood writer at the source. By exposing the inner workings of writing, they place the reader in the driver's seat of literature." — Billy Collins

***
"A colossal literary event — worth the price of admission for the Borges interview alone, and of course the Billy Wilder, and the Vonnegut, and and and and . . . Just buy this book and read it all." — Gary Shteyngart

***
"The Paris Review interviews have the best questions, the best answers, and are, hands down, the best way to steal a look into the minds of the best writers (and interviewers) in the world. Reading them together is like getting a fabulous guided tour through literary life." — Susan Orlean 

***
"I have been fascinated by the Paris Review interviews for as long as I can remember. Taken together, they form perhaps the finest available inquiry into the 'how' of literature, in many ways a more interesting question than the 'why.'" — Salman Rushdie

***
"Nothing is lonelier or riskier than being a writer, and these interviews provide writers at all stages the companionship and guidance they need." — Edmund White

***
"The Paris Review interviews have always provided the best look into the minds and work ethics of great writers and when read together constitute the closest thing to an MFA that you can get while sitting alone on your couch. Every page of this collection affords a ludicrous amount of pleasure." — Dave Eggers

• What is the Paris Review? To learn all about the literary magazine that was first published in 1953, go here.

• UPDATE (JULY 24, 2013): The second volume of The Paris Review interviews was delivered by Amazon this evening. So much to read, so little time. Sigh.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Why the writer should be considered the "hero" of a film, any film", excerpts from a Paris Review interview with Oscar-winning director Billy Wilder.

It feels as though I have unearthed a gold mine and discovered a time machine at the same time: When reading a book becomes an experience of a lifetime

History, be it fact or fiction (!), fascinates me. One of my all-time favourite books is Travels with Herodotus, by the legendary Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. I have also enjoyed the sagas written by James Michener and James Clavell. And every now and then I dip into I Wish I'd Been There: Twenty Historians Revisit Key Moments in History.

So how could I not order A History of the World in 100 Objects from Flipkart after I first chanced upon the book at a Reliance TimeOut store? (It's called "showrooming", Reliance. Get used to it.)

For more than a fortnight now, whenever I have had the time, I have been obsessively reading up on each of the historical objects described intelligently and — yes — lovingly by Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.

A History of the World in 100 Objects, which is based on the BBC Radio 4 programme of the same name, is such a treat that I find myself re-reading almost every chapter.

---
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT
"This wonderful book transports us to every corner of the globe." — TOM HOLLAND, OBSERVER
---

And, after I am done with each chapter — I am a quarter of the way through the book, object by object, one object to a chapter — I head over to the BBC site dedicated to the programme. Here I can listen to the original radio programme, go through the transcript, examine the selected object in glorious colour, read additional comments by experts, study relevant timelines... it feels as though I have unearthed a gold mine and discovered a time machine at the same time.

---
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT
"Vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks, and delights." — GILLIAN REYNOLDS, DAILY TELEGRAPH
---

From beginning to middle to end, each chapter fairly radiates energy. Neil MacGregor tells the story in so vivid a style that I keep asking myself: How does he do it?

For instance, MacGregor has to come up with a hundred different chapter introductions; he has to meld historical facts and dates with his own interpretations and understanding; he has to incorporate the views of experts; he has to explain why each object is important in today's context; and he has to come up with a hundred different chapter endings.

And, this is perhaps just as important, he has to make it interesting for the reader from first word to last. 

---
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT
"One can only remain grateful to Neil MacGregor for inviting us, his readers, on this wonderful journey." — RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE, THE TELEGRAPH, KOLKATA 
---

Let us take, at random, a few opening lines (not the entire first paragraph):

OLDUVAI STONE CHOPPING TOOL (1.8-2 MILLION YEARS OLD): "This chopping tool is one of the earliest things that humans ever consciously made, and holding it puts us directly in touch with those who made it."

OLDUVAI HANDAXE (1.2-1.4 MILLION YEARS OLD): "What do you take with you when you travel? Most of us would embark on a long list that begins with a toothbrush and ends with excess baggage."

CLOVIS SPEAR POINT (11000 BC): "Imagine. You're in a green landscape studded with trees and bushes. You're working in a team of hunters quietly stalking a herd of mammoths. One of the mammoths, you hope, is going to be your supper."

PARACAS TEXTILE (300-200 BC): "Looking at clothes is a key part of any serious look at history. But, as we all know to our cost, clothes don't last — they wear out, they fall apart, and what survives gets eaten by the moths. Compared with stone, pottery, or metal, clothes are pretty well non-starters in a history of the world told through 'things'." 

CHINESE ZHOU RITUAL VESSEL (1100-1000 BC): "How often do you dine with the dead?" 

There is plenty to learn, too. An arbitrary example:

LACHISH RELIEFS (700-692 BC): The strategy of shifting populations has been a constant phenomenon of empire ever since [the time of King Sennacherib, the Assyrian ruler]. Perhaps our nearest equivalent — just about in living memory — is Stalin's deportation of peoples during the 1930s. Like Sennacherib, Stalin knew the value of moving rebellious peoples out of strategic areas and relocating them far away from their homelands.

And here's the concluding paragraph from the same chapter:

Sennacherib was not quite as bad as Stalin. Cold comfort for the victims. The Lachish Reliefs show the misery that defeat in war always entails, though of course their main focus is ... Sennacherib in his moment of triumph. They do not record Sennacherib's less than glorious end — assassinated by two of his sons while he was at prayer to the gods who had appointed him ruler. He was succeeded by another son, whose own son, in his turn, conquered Egypt and defeated the pharaoh Taharqo, who is the subject of the next chapter. The cycle of war that Lachish Reliefs show — brutal, pitiless, and devastating for the civilian population — was about to begin all over again. 

Oh joy! I have waiting for me another 75 chapters bursting with such scintillating writing.

---
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT
Mary Beard reviews A History of the World in 100 Objects in The Guardian: "Brilliant on radio, Neil MacGregor's 100 objects also make a marvellous book".

I'm so glad I've this book waiting for me

Amazon.in delivered Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews a few days ago. I have been waiting to tuck into it after I finish what I am reading now (Following Fish, by Samanth Subramanian, and three other books). And snacking on Anvar Alikhan's review in Outlook last night has only served to whet my appetite.

Here's an excerpt:

We have everybody from Donald Rumsfeld to Angelina Jolie, from George Soros to Imran Khan, from economist Paul Krugman to Albert Underzo, co-creator of the Asterix comics. There’s even Saif Gaddafi, the doctoral student son of the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi (though one wonders what wicked thought process led to him being invited). These personalities are drawn into conversation by the FT’s interviewers over a leisurely meal at any restaurant of their choice, accompanied by a bottle — or two — of wine, which, of course, is a wonderful device to get them to drop their formal persona, and reveal a little more of themselves than they otherwise would have.

Read the review in its entirety here: "Autocrats of the Talking Table".

And here, on the Financial Times website, you can read one of the more recent Lunch with the FT columns: "Kim Dotcom: Over salad and club sandwiches at his $24m rented mansion in New Zealand, the internet’s most wanted man says his crazy days are behind him".

Rajesh Parameswaran: An exciting new practitioner of the short story form

Rajesh Parameswaran is some cat. His book of short stories, which I bought for the college library a few months ago, is unlike any work I have read by young Indian practitioners of an art form made popular by some of the great writers, such as O. Henry and Raymond Carver (regrettably, when it comes to short stories and Indian writers in English, I am not able to recall the Big Names, though Manto comes instantly to mind if I think of regional writing, while our very own Anjum Hasan is an excellent representative of the youth brigade).

I was reminded of Parameswaran's book last night when I came across an interview with him in the latest issue of Open magazine. He says he is writing a novel now — one more book to add to our library, for sure — and he talks about how different writing a novel is from writing short stories, but, all the same, he remains a champion of the short story form, as is evident in this excerpt from the interview:

Q. Do you see the short story as a sort of testing ground for fiction writers?

A. No. I think that’s a little bit of a dismissive way to think about it. There are so many writers whose careers are [the short story] — George Saunders, Lydia Davis, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munro. I think it’s a great form in and of itself. I still will write short stories. It takes less time to fail at a short story than it does at a novel. So if you want to fail a lot and fail quickly, as they say, then you can do that with a short story in quick succession. To me, that was reassuring. I did end up spending years and years at it, but I think the idea of spending six years on a novel and failing, at the time was, to be honest, more than I was willing to risk.

In the interview, Parameswaran also talks about how reading influences his writing and what he does to combat writer's block. Read the article in its entirety here: "The Carburettor".

And you can read The Hindu's review of I Am an Executioner here: "Beyond the Pale".

• ADDITIONAL READING:

The short story that "did more in nine pages than most novels do in nine chapters"

An innovative and revolutionary short story series in "Mint Lounge"

If great stories bring people together, then Wattpad helps people bring great stories together

When I want friendly and learned voices to give me advice...

...on which book to read and why I should read it, I turn to my two prized possessions:

and

• CLIFTON FADIMAN (May 15, 1904 – June 20, 1999), co-author of, and the motivating force behind, The New Lifetime Reading Plan, was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio, and television personality. Here is an excerpt from his obituary in the New York Times:

He lost most of his sight as a result of acute retinal necrosis in his late 80s. But according to his daughter, Anne, also a writer, he continued to vet manuscripts for the Book-of-the-Month Club, as he had since 1944, by listening to unabridged tapes of the volumes in question especially recorded for him by his son Kim. He dictated his assessments to a secretary. He continued to participate, by way of conference calls, in the club's editorial board meetings until March.

While blind he brought out a new edition of The Lifetime Reading Plan, a guide done with John S. Major that was intended to introduce Americans to the classics of civilization, and he was the general editor of World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time.

Late in his life the book world honoured him for his love of the printed word by awarding him the 1993 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

• MICHAEL DIRDA, author of Classics for Pleasure, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World. For more details, visit his home page on the Washington Post website. And here you can access the Goodreads synopsis of Classics for Pleasure.

• Coincidentally, a book written by Clifton Fadiman's daughter, Anne, At Large and At Small, is another cherished possession in my library. 

• ALSO READ: "Lusting after books? Let this librarian help".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Why you must read".

25 books that will give you a better perspective on life and also help prepare you for the workplace

1. How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen, with James Allworth and Karen Dillon

2. How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: The Secrets of Good Communication
by Larry King, with Bill Gilbert

3. The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction

by P.M. Forni 

4. This Is All I Have to Say

by Swapan Seth

5. Howard's Gift : Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work

by Eric C. Sinoway, with Merrill Meadow

6. The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude

by P.M. Forni

7. The Last Lecture: Lessons in Living

by Randy Pausch, with Jeffrey Zaslow

8. Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

9. Kiran: The Power of One

by Umesh Aggarwal, Sabiha Farhat, and Venkatesh Rajanga

10. A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted

by Will Bowen

11. Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times

by David Viscott

12. The Professional

by Subroto Bagchi

13. Unusual People Do Things Differently

by T.G.C. Prasad

14. Working with Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman

15. Letters to Sam: A Grandfather's Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gift of Life

by Daniel Gottlieb

16. Jack: Straight from the Gut (What I've Learned Leading a Great Company and Great People)

by Jack Welch

17. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who's Been There
by Cheryl Strayed

18. A Fistful of Rice

by Vikram Akula

29. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

by Richard Bach

20. The Secret
by Rhonda Byrne

• ALL 20 BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE IN THE COMMITS LIBRARY

***

THESE BOOKS ARE NOT (YET) AVAILABLE IN THE COMMITS LIBRARY

1. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

by Shreyl Sandberg

2. Tuesdays with Morrie

by Mitch Albom

3. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: Practical Guide for Improving Communication

by John Gray

4.  Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers

by Lois P. Frankel

5. Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives
by Laura C. Schlessinger

• UPDATE (June 15, 2013): All five books have now been ordered from Amazon.in; two have arrived already and the rest should be delivered in the next few days. All five will then be placed in the Commits library.

Pearls of wisdom from a gem of a book

Is there a better book for today's information-rich but time-poor age?

Here are some thought-provoking excerpts from P.M. Forni's bestseller, The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction:

"Shallow readers are at risk of becoming shallow thinkers."

"We seek to spare ourselves the trouble of thinking as much as we can. We have literally made an art of it. The multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry of our time is essentially built upon humanity's addiction to thought avoidance."

" 'I have no time,' we say, but we do, we always do. What we lack is the will or wisdom to commit our time to goals that would be smart of us to pursue. If you are really motivated to do something, you will make time for it. I am not arguing that you are not busy. Most of us are. I am simply urging you to consider that you are only as busy as you let yourself be."

"An information-rich world is a time-poor world, and a time-poor world is an attention-poor world."

P.M. FORNI

"When working on a project, imagine yourself protected by a bubble that protects you from distraction."

"According to what seems like a million websites, the great problem of our times is work/life balance. But to seek a balance between two things implies that they are different and separate. The more urgent problem is not how to balance work and life, but rather how to erase in our minds the line of demarcation that sets up the work/life dichotomy in the first place. Work is part of life, and it is precisely when we do not treat it as such that tension, disaffection, and alienation arise. As long as we neglect to claim work as part of life, as long as we regard it as a burden, it is going to feel like one. Every day, millions go to work predisposed to endure and leery to commit, which is just about the worst possible attitude to face work with."

• ALSO READ: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?"

In one year she succeeded in reading one book from every country in the world

Londoner Ann Morgan made it her mission to spend 2012 "reading the world".

Morgan, a freelance writer and sub-editor, writes on her blog:

In 2012, the world came to London for the Olympics and I went out to meet it. I read my way around all the globe’s 196 independent countries — plus one extra territory chosen by blog visitors — sampling one book from every nation.

I read a story from Swaziland, a novel from Nicaragua, a book from Brunei, a… well, you get the picture.

About four months into what every book-lover would consider a dream project, Morgan (pictured above) took stock in a piece she wrote for the Guardian, where she used to work:

With no idea how to go about [the mission] beyond a suspicion that I was unlikely to find a novel, short story collection or memoir from each of the 196 states in my local [bookshop], I decided to ask book-lovers around the world to tell me what I should be reading. The responses flooded in and soon the A Year of Reading the World list boasted hundreds of recommendations. Many people went further than simply suggesting titles, and volunteered to do research for the project, share contacts and go to bookshops in far-flung corners of the globe. One blog visitor even picked out and posted me two volumes from a bookshop in Kuala Lumpur.

In a recent interview with the Hindu (which is where I first read about this determined young woman), Morgan said her target was to read a book in 1.85 days, and blog about it, while she went about her normal routine. She also revealed that she is now working on a book about her project, Reading the World: Postcards from My Bookshelf, which will be published early next year.

Read Ann Morgan's fascinating blog posts to learn more about her "year in reading". Check out the list of books recommended to her from around the world. Read her Guardian article here. The Hindu interview can be accessed here.

Finally, stop by Ann Morgan's Facebook page for a quick scan of the books she read through the year. What an exhilarating journey this must have been!

• ALSO READ: Meet ad executive Swapan Seth, the man who buys a book every day

What a fantastic book cover (and 18 more that are just as special)!

This is one of 19 book covers chosen by graphic design experts from around the world who were asked by the New York Times to name one of their favourite book covers from 2012 and briefly describe its appeal. Book lovers, and those who have an interest in design, are sure to get a special thrill from viewing this slide show: "Favourite Book Cover Designs of 2012".

Each cover is accompanied by the expert's comments. For instance, Nicholas Blechman, art director of The New York Times Book Review, has this to say about the cover of Watergate (above):

This design zeroes in on the single most iconic event of Watergate: eavesdropping. The cover is appropriately deceptive: the jacket shows an elegantly minimal phone, made with die-cut holes. Underneath, printed on the case, is the inside of the phone wired for tapping. I love the playful before/after effect of this cover, the way it conjures up an analog era of clunky phones, and the visual tension that comes from perforating the word “novel.” It is conceptually flawless, and very cool.

My other favourites from this list? No. 2, No. 8, No. 13, No. 14, No. 17.... oh, what the heck! They're all wonderful!

Yes, a novel set in Estonia can be riveting

I knew next to nothing about the Baltic states — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia — when I began reading Purge on Saturday night.

By the time I finished the book — this morning over breakfast — I had developed, through the eyes of Aliide Truu, the protagonist, a sound understanding of the sufferings of Estonia and Estonians before World War II, during World War II, and after World War II, until the country became free again during the post-Gorbachev era.

SOFI OKSANEN

Of course, that's as far as history goes. Purge, though, offers much more than a history lesson — it gives readers a unique insight into human behaviour with a cast of characters ranging from an apparently sweet old "grandmother" to a young woman on the run from men who have forced her into sexual slavery.

Sofi Oksanen, the Finnish-Estonian author, won the European Book Prize for Purge, which she wrote in Finnish, in 2010. I am not surprised. It's time now for the English-speaking world to discover her.

• Read Sofi Oksanen's prize acceptance speech here.

• Read Maya Jaggi's review of Purge in the Guardian here.

• Author photo courtesy: Toni Härkönen/sofioksanen.com.

181 stories of how books got their titles

Ten minutes ago I received an e-mail from Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014), a co-editor of the college newspaper. She wrote that she happened to read my post on Ray Bradbury today, and after clicking on the links I had provided she realised that Bradbury is the author of Fahrenheit 451, the novel set in a dark future in which reading is illegal and firemen burn any house that contains books.

"I watched this movie a week ago," Natasha added, "and I was going to tell you about it sometime this week. I thought you would find it interesting to know that Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns (I think)."

A quick Google search led to a serendipitous discovery: There's an entire blog, published by journalist and writer Gary Dexter, that is devoted to the origins of book titles. How cool is that!

Looking up the appropriate post on "How Books Got Their Titles" led to another discovery: Bradbury might have got Celsius and Fahrenheit mixed up. I didn't know that. Check it out here: "Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury". (By the way, Slate magazine has also taken a stab at answering the question: "Does Paper Really Burn at 451 Degrees Fahrenheit?")

True, the post may not be conclusive as far as the temperature at which paper burns is concerned. But it's such fun for book-lovers to learn how some of the best-known books got their titles. Here's Dexter on the origins of Winnie-the-Pooh, for example. Want to know who Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse's immortal creation, was named after? Take a peek here.

In all, there are 181 stories of how books got their titles. The full list can be accessed here.

• Gary Dexter's book, Why Not Catch-21?: The Stories Behind the Titles, based on his long-running column in London's Sunday Telegraph, was published four years ago by the U.K.-based Frances Lincoln.

One of my all-time favourite books...

...reviewed by my all-time favourite blogger (who is a self-described interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large): "How to Read Like a Writer".

• A copy of Reading Like a Writer has been placed in the Commits library. As youngsters like to say, Enjoy.

• Also read: "Who can say no to a weekly interestingness digest?" 

• And you must read "If you don't read, you can't write".

From industry newbie to full-fledged TV news correspondent: Follow the travails of the intrepid "Satyabhama Menon"

SHWETA GANESH KUMAR WITH FANS AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH OF HER NEW BOOK.

It was a privilege — and a great pleasure — to be invited to say a few words about a dynamic young author and her new book at the launch event in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Shweta Ganesh Kumar, who has been the Bangalore correspondent for CNN-IBN (she later joined Greenpeace India as a communications officer and is today a full-time writer and travel columnist), has two books to her credit already. Coming up on the Show... The Travails of a News Trainee, which was published last year, featured aspiring TV news reporter Satyabhama Menon and her life as a newbie in the industry. In Between the Headlines: The Travails of a News Reporter, the book that was released on Wednesday, we get to read about Satyabhama's experiences as a full-fledged news correspondent.

Both books are easy reads. And both books, since they are based loosely on the author's own career as a television journalist, have important insights to offer youngsters who are aspiring to join one of India's many TV news channels.

I would also recommend Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines for three reasons: Language, Content, and Message.

Language: Good writers use simple language to express powerful ideas. Take Khushwant Singh. Or M.J. Akbar. Or even the current favourite of young adults, Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games trilogy. Shweta, too, keeps it simple: When you read her books, you won't need to keep a dictionary by your side.

Content: Reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines will acquaint media students (as well as anyone with an interest in the news-gathering process) with the challenges faced by television journalists. Sure, both books are works of fiction but there are kernels of truth in the descriptions of the obstacles in Satyabhama's path as she struggles to present her news stories on her channel.

Message: There are many things you can learn from reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines, and they are not all about journalism alone. The underlying message in the books is that it is important to take the initiative. And to stand up for what you believe is right. The books also seem to prove my favourite adage: If you love what you do, you get to do what you love.

SHWETA IN AN INTERACTION WITH THE AUDIENCE AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH.

Two days after Between the Headlines was released in Bangalore, Shweta headed to Pune for the launch event in that city. And this week she is off to Kochi to release the book there. But hectic schedule notwithstanding, like the good professional she is, she made time to answer in detail via e-mail five questions I had for her on subjects ranging from the audience she kept in mind while writing her books to the note of cynicism some readers may have picked up on in both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines:

1. What is the audience you had in mind when writing Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines?

One of my favourite sayings about writing and reading is “Write the book you want to read.” And this is primarily what I had in mind when writing both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines.

As a fresh journalism graduate and newly recruited news trainee in 2006, I had always wondered whether there were others who had shared my experiences. I searched my favourite bookstores for books with fictional characters I could empathise with, but found none. All the fiction books that I found on Indian journalism were written by senior journalists who had written about major news events and campaigns. I did not find anything on the shelves that told the story of bright-eyed news trainees and rookie reporters and talked about what it is like to be on the bottom-most level of the news pyramid. These were the people I wanted to write about and write for.

Also, as a working TV news reporter, I had come across a lot of people who wanted to know just how the news was produced and what life behind the camera was like for a TV news reporter. These were the readers I had in mind when I started writing the books.

2. There is a notion that writing a book is not that difficult. But I would suggest that a lot of hard work is involved. Your thoughts? Can you also give us an idea of your writing schedule?

The biggest challenge about being a full-time writer is sticking with it to the end, in the absence of an external editor, boss, or deadline. Especially in the beginning — when you have no idea that your manuscript might be picked up for publication at all — it is easy to sit down and put your hands up.

Every writer has their own, personal approach to the writing process. My own style is built around discipline and being methodical. The hard part is to make sure that you buckle down every day and type out a certain amount of words to reach that ultimate goal of a completed manuscript.

It is also very easy to procrastinate or give up. In my case, it was that intense need to see my published book in my hand that kept me going as well as the full-fledged support from my family.

Whenever I start a book I decide on a certain number of words for the final manuscript. I then work backwards to decide on the number of words I have to write per day to finish the first draft of the manuscript by a certain date. I try to stick to my schedule no matter where I am. I also put down tentative chapter outlines and then fill them up as I go. After I finish the first draft of a novel, I let it lie for at least two months till I look at it again with fresh eyes.

3. How did you find a publisher? That couldn't have been easy, either. And how did you deal with rejections? I think aspiring writers will be looking to you for inspiration in this regard.

Rejection is a very hard obstacle to get past. But I’d say that it also depends on the way you use those rejection letters that you are most certainly going to get. (Well, most certainly if you decide to mail manuscripts off to publishers without the backing of an agent or a recommendation like I did.)

The first rejection was heart-breaking. I am quite sure that I went through the five stages of grief when I received that stinging little note. But I bounced back, thanks to my parents and my husband. I started filing away my rejection letters in a folder named “Motivation” and as soon as I got one, I would mail the manuscript to yet another publisher. I believe that, as a young, unknown writer, this is the only way you can handle rejection, without letting it defeat you.

My first publisher Srishti was the 22nd publisher I had sent my manuscript to, having found e-mail addresses and mailing addresses on the web. Good Times Books, the publisher of my second book, approached me for my manuscript after they saw how well the first book had done.

4. “If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader.” This is what I tell all my students at Commits. Can you elaborate on the importance of reading in your life and the role of reading in your writing?

I’ve had the good fortune to grow up surrounded by books. My parents started reading to me at an age that I cannot even remember and that is what motivated me to start putting down my thoughts, no matter how silly or random they were.

My reading helped me stand in good stead in my career as a journalist. And today while I am a writer, I am a reader first. I don’t think it is possible for any writer to ignore reading if she or he wants to connect with others and to learn the many ways of expressing their thoughts in the best possible way.

5. And, finally, some readers may have concerns over what they feel is a note of cynicism in your books when it comes to the electronic media. How would you address those concerns? And what would you like to say to young people whose ambition is to be good television journalists?

To my readers who feel there is a note of cynicism in my books, I’d like to say that it surely wasn’t meant to be that way. Both the books were written with a very subjective and personal point of view. It does not necessarily reflect the current status of the Indian broadcast news industry.

Also, I am a very emotional person and as a working TV news journalist I used to get attached to the people whose stories I reported. I would want to make sure that I could take these issues to their logical conclusion. However, I soon found out that as a reporter it is not always possible to do so. I know many of my colleagues have faced this dilemma as well and it is this that I have tried to convey through my book’s protagonist, Satyabhama Menon.

To the young people who aspire to be TV news journalists, I’d like to say that you need to remember that you are a reporter first and your duty is to report stories and make sure that you in your limited way are able to amplify the voice of the people. However, you are a reporter and you need to understand that being objective is key and that to go far in your chosen profession, you need to find that fine balance between being an activist and an unbiased newsperson.

• You can also read an interview with Shweta that was published in The Hindu here: Behind the Scenes.

The Hunger Games: A "young adult" series that even adults will love

I gave up on Harry Potter halfway through the first book — a great series for children, I thought to myself, but not for grown-ups. (I was wrong about that, though — many of my students, who were in their twenties when the fifth book came out, were Potter fans. Years ago, I remember, one of them snapped at me in exasperation when I mentioned casually to her that Dumbledore dies in the sixth book. I had no idea at the time that she was mad about Harry & Co.)

As for Twilight, I couldn't get into it at all, probably because I don't get what people see in vampires. (Not since Bram Stoker's Dracula has anyone written a decent vampire novel, not even Anne Rice.)

I came to the conclusion that young adult novels are not for me.

Boy, has Suzanne Collins proved me wrong!

I have just finished reading Mockingjay, the third and final (sigh!) book in Collins's Hunger Games trilogy.

It was only some three weeks ago that I began the first book, The Hunger Games. As I got deeper into it, I couldn't wait to finish it and start on the second one, Catching Fire. And, then, go on to Mockingjay. The plotting throughout the series is superb and the dystopian future is evoked brilliantly. You also rush through the pages because in none of the books is there a single word that you will have to look up in a dictionary. Surely that is the hallmark of a great writer.

There were times when I was reading the books on my Kindle Fire on the bus back from work that I would forget where I was. Once I almost missed my stop. And when I discussed this with my young friend Nastassia Michael, who lives in Toronto, she said that the same thing once happened to her, too, on the subway!

The three books have been billed as young adult novels, but, really, they are for anyone who is passionate about reading, age no bar. You are sure to love, as I did, the old-fashioned story-telling skills on display in all three books.

Suzanne Collins has made her characters so believable — especially the three main protagonists: Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, and Gale Hawthorne — and she has told a tale so riveting that, after having completed the series, I am now eagerly looking forward to watching the movie based on the first book next week.

BATTLER: JENNIFER LAWRENCE PLAYS KATNISS EVERDEEN IN THE HUNGER GAMES.

UPDATE (March 28, 2012): The executive editor of Mint, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, writes in his column today that several important economic lessons can be gleaned from the Suzanne Collins trilogy. Read the column here: "The hunger games".

UPDATE (March 29, 2012): Hunger Games, the movie, is well-made and it deserved its blockbuster opening weekend — $150 m. at the U.S. box-office in three days— but the book does a much better job of describing the horrors of the savage games in which 24 young men and women are forced to fight to the death in a televised spectacle.