When Was the Last Time You Spent a Day at the Library?

At the Library

Some of the best times in my life have been spent at a library. It was the one place I could find silence, the freedom to take out umpteen books, and leave them on the table after skimming through a few pages, forget about the world outside and the state of my life in it.

I still run to libraries when I need my space—and yesterday I did just that. After a work-related meeting I decided to spend the entire afternoon and evening at the Singapore National library, at its big central division, which is home to one of the most diverse collections I’ve seen in a library so far.

I felt a little guilty, sitting at the reference section (I needed to look through one book, but nothing serious), working on my fiction while intermittently browsing through random books—maybe I was taking up the space that someone doing genuine research needed. I sat there long enough–till the time I realized all other seats were taken up, and then vacated mine—hoping an eager research scholar would take it up!

I walked out for a meal, came back, and headed to the lending section…deciding that some of the blocks in the story I was writing came from a lack of research. I needed to know a few facts before I could get on with my narration. I love the that this library lets you search its catalog on your phone—the catalog is on a free library wi-fi network. Having picked up the books I needed I went in search of a chair and found one at the far end, surrounded by about 20 other chairs in different clusters.

To say that the first book I picked up was an absorbing read would be to insult it–it talks about a hugely successful individual coping with multiple personality disorder–each of the 13 individual personalities inside him has a chapter in his/her voice. I finished it in the 8 hours I sat at the library, without much movement, and only the occasional glance around me.

It is this morning, when I look back on the evening that I remember what I saw in those glances, but did not register at the time: an old man sleeping, open-mouthed, behind a newspaper, a middle-aged-gap-toothed woman in a cheong-sam sitting with a book on feng-shui while fitting her small body cross-legged on a chair—apparently meditating,  a young man in office attire with a laptop bag and headphones, dozing behind a book titled Sex after Fifty, a pair of schoolkids snogging behind one of the bookshelves (I thought the library had cameras and frowned on such activity, but apparently not), a woman of indeterminate age in heavy make-up sitting with a shoe magazine, periodically receiving low-beeping calls and repeating/ writing down dates and times in a breathy falsetto, while a hearing impaired young couple to my right kept up a sprightly conversation full of excited gesturing.

With all those images returning to me, I feel less guilty about hogging a seat I didn’t really need. Not because other people did it too, with lot less serious preoccupations than mine—but because watching this pantomime of unabashed humanity in a country known for its lifestyle governed by rules, that too at a strait-laced place like a library, was not only a treat for a writer like me, but could also be safely termed ‘research’.

When was the last time you spent a day at the library? How much of that time did you spend people-watching?

 

 

Writing About my Love Affair: Looking Back Three Years

E-books and Book Nostalgia

Three years ago, when I first started this blog, the post below was one of the many I wrote about reading. (Here’s the original post and the comments it received.)

Reading is such a big part of any writer’s life…today, from my Kindle-d  and Kindle-published self, I look back on the reader who knew nothing about e-books and wrote poems about the nostalgia of used books and the stories they tell us not just through the printed word.

——–

I’ve been writing about books every now and then, books I am reading, books I wish to read.

Back when I was a student, and sometimes did not know where the next meal would come from, I would still buy books. Books sold by weight on Indian pavements, because in those days in India they wasted nothing, and I could not afford shiny new books.

But now, when I can afford to buy any book I might possibly want, used books still call to me.

I tried to write about this love affair (in prose, mind you!) but I can’t help it, I think each books speaks to me in verse, in words which are garbled prayer and temptation,  so here goes (sigh, again, “a poem”!!!! Rick, you are laughing, aren’t you?)

Thumbed, dog-eared,
cover torn in places
names written, forgotten
crossed out, passed on.

I come with a tang
of lazy afternoons,
of mildewed bookshelves
falling apart,
of cheap colognes
on a young man
looking for a start,
of pungent desires
shakily denied,
salted airs in a
pickle factory where
I almost died,
of this dusty pavement
where I am to be sold
made into packets, bags,
my story untold.

Come pick me up
take me with you
and you shall know
of whispered confessions,
innuendos, half-written
poems, and shattered
dreams, as I talk
to you and you listen
with your eyes closed and
an open heart.

For my best secrets
were not printed
on my body
but written
into my soul
by all these years
I spent waiting,
waiting for you,
my love.

In which I navel-gaze and read, then repeat

Books, books!

The last few days, I’ve been reading. A lot. Which means, besides writing, which I consider my only daily intellectual activity that can’t be skipped, I don’t have time for much else.

So, I haven’t been blogging much. Here’s a list of stuff I’m doing —not that I expect you to be interested, but I like to navel-gaze sometimes, and this is,  after all, My blog –

1. I’m reading “Sun After Dark” by Pico Iyer. It is the single most spellbinding travel book I’ve read this year, and it is making me restless. I want to go places, and I don’t mean figuratively.

2. I’m reading 7 other books too, and I have to return them to the library by 31st July.

3. Just as if I wasn’t doing enough reading, I’ve begun The Girl with the Pearl Ear ring in Italian.

4. I’m not cooking, happy instead to heat up stuff I cooked last week. (Don’t worry–it is all healthy and unspoilt–so far.)

5. I’m ignoring my pets, and forgot to feed my angelfish and Lalwant Singh yesterday.

6. I’m trying to draft a story and revise several, as well as finish the edits of A to Z stories of Life and Death, all without much success, because I keep going back to reading.

7. I’ve tried to go blog browsing, but for once find myself getting distracted From the internet. You guessed it. Books, again.

8. A friend asked me if I’ve been getting enough sleep. She’s right, I’m not. Yup, reading.

So, apologies all around if I haven’t visiting you guys often enough. It is so rare that I get this kind of focus (and time on my hands) to read, that I’m going all out. Every dictionary should have my pic under the word “crazy”, I know that, but folks, this is so much FUN!

See you on the other side (of my books), and in the meanwhile, Happy Blogging!

And for those who commented on my Angelfish post, here’s a slideshow of the parents with the babies. Unfortunately, none survived, but their short life kept my nose glued to the aquarium.

Angelfish Family!

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Just read this in Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, and couldn’t help sharing it:

“He bent over his son and kissed the air above his forehead and then walked in tiptoe in that slightly exaggerated and silly way that men like Theophilus, normally gruff and bustling about their business adopt as a sort of dance to celebrate their most tender feelings.”

This kind of brief, but intensely effective characterisation belongs in a short story,  but I’m not complaining Peter Carey put it in a novel. I love Peter Carey, and can see why he won the Booker.

On with the reading. But first, dinner.

See you on the other side, world, once I’ve finished with Oscar and Lucinda!

Reading less, writing more, living less, dreaming more

Going crazy writing

The last few days, I’ve been feeling a little out of it all. I remember the feeling from before, something I describe at the end of this post: Writing about Reading: Fishing in the Rivers of Light

Only, this time, it is not about reading. I’m still reading, yes, three books at a time, again: Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, The Little Stranger by Sarah Walters, and They Whisper, by Robert Olen Butler.

I’m living more in my head than in my life, and as a result, I’m trying to tread carefully: I double check the lock when leaving home, double check the alarm while baking bread, constantly pat my handbag for my phone, make sure I’ve switched off the treadmill before I jump down, or the gas after I’ve finished with the stove, and so on and so forth, in order to avoid anything from a minor disaster to a major catastrophe. I’m simply not paying my normal attention to life.

One of my characters just drowned, another is failing at suicide, a third is asking a lot of difficult questions for which I have no answer. Yet another has decided to learn the salsa at 81, and broken her hip. Like demanding friends (or enemies, if you prefer) they’re whining away in my head, and I often find myself listening to them rather than the person speaking to my face. Dreaming more than living can’t be good for me. Or anyone.

I have begun the new year going nuts, it seems. Blogging is an attempt at regaining sanity.

The only good news I have to offer is that another of my short stories found a home, and since this is a story based in India, I’m entirely happy it found publication in an Indian literary journal. Last year was not too bad for my publishing credits, but it could have gone a lot better.

My first week into work— I feel a few stories bubbling within me, a river of them, actually, and a long work or two. Some revisions. No, make that a lot of revisions.

Bring it on,  2011!

Writing about Decisions, Craziness

The House of Spirits

Life has gone quite crazy lately, what with one thing or the other. While I try to return a semblance of order to things, books keep me company.

I talked about “The Constant Princess” by Philippa Gregory yesterday, and today I’ve decided to pick up Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits and give it a go whenever I have a break.

I’ve watched the movie, so I know the basic story, but I can’t resist the idea of Allende’s writing.

It is still dark out side as I write and is beginning to clear up little by little. A walk may just be what the doctor ordered.

What about you? How is/was your day? Week?

Reading writing reading

Oziare con Old Friend From Far Away

One of those days, yesterday, when I found myself reading, writing, reading all day. All day spent alone, with almost no talking, unless you count a phone call or two.

Best time I’ve had in weeks, months. Am really loving Old Friend From Far Away, and will soon fill a notebook with the exercises I’ve done from it, and move on to another notebook! I never thought writing exercises could be such a relief or fun or both, but they are.

And I recommend this book for everyone, writers, and non. Great way to pass away ten minutes, an hour, a day, a week, lazing and writing. I learned a new Italian verb, Oziare: to laze around, and I think “oziare” with this book is the best thing I could do for myself.

Reading, books, longing

Sometimes the only thing I want to do is curl up and read a book. I have dragged myself out of bed today. Twice.

Reading, reading, reading

Wish life were all about staying under the covers, book in hand, while someone whipped up healthy delicacies. A bite, a page, a little reading over again, listening to music, the hum of rain outside the window.

Instead, must work, clean, be nice. Arrrrrgh. Blog even. No, I did that because I had to drag myself out of reading, or I would be an irritated grump when I go out for the evening.

Writing about doing things and running out of time

I finished reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved yesterday. Read it in two days flat, because I could not stop myself, despite the long passages of dense text, an unfamiliar setting.

I’ve read Sula before, and it was as if she had set the page son fire, what words, what phrases, what sentences, what a book!

Beloved is a longer book. It is also a very emotional book, and for someone like me who has read about slavery in history lessons, this book brought it all home. The pain, the degradation, the de-humanization, the abomination of the human spirit, and its triumph.

It also makes me realize how many good books I have not read…..and how little time there is in life to waste. So as I do my laundry, cook my lunch or water my plants, I mull over how much I have to read and write, and am restless.

Real life is not bad, but when you’re suffering from literary addiction, it begins to take over, and you feel you are doing too many things, and simply running out of time.

Writing about learning from a bad book

I read a terribly written book yesterday, all evening. It was so atrocious that I had to keep reading, to see how bad it could get. Pretty bad, as I found out before I went to bed in a huff.

I’ll not mention the title, as reviewing the book, or ranting about it, is not what this post is about.

Instead it is all about learning what not to do when writing a story: mounds of flat description, stilted dialog, adverbs and passivities strewn all over the place, zero conflict, almost no story.

I wondered for a moment how it got published at all. It looked like the very first draft of the very first story I’d ever written. Some agents and editors, I thought. They’ll publish anything.

And then came the sobering reminder: I’m not into writing solely to get published, never mind the quality. I don’t think I’d be able to stand the shame of putting my name to something so utterly without any redeeming qualities, lols.

Better learn from others’ mistakes and move on. That way, while my own stories may not be faultless, at least they’ll be much improved. So, back with my nose to the writing grindstone, and hopefully, to some good reading later.

But I do recommend reading a dreadful book now and then, reminds you very clearly of all the things you ought not to do while writing.