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Posted on July 11, 2014July 11, 2014

Sheen even in the dark

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Don’t we all occupy stretches of time that are f

Don’t we all occupy stretches of time that are finite yet inerasable and profound? So do we, then, accept the many possibilities of inhabiting a different self in a single lifetime? Isn’t that the true length of a person’s life? Not for how long one has lived but for the many selves one has embraced?
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This question – Who am I? –clocks in every single day when you are as harmonized and unbridled as Orlando in Woolf’s novel. Orlando’s story is like a net flung far off into the sea – and as you draw the net closer in towards you, all you find are a bunch of sea-weed in them – no great Big Fish. Because we are reminded, time and time again, that there is a Big Fish; a pinnacle that crystalizes the sole purpose of your existence. In Orlando, Woolf proves how closely and miserably what determines one’s existence is tied to one’s gender. And the language and conduct of each.
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Every story is written so that a character solidifies in the mind of a reader even after the pages turn blank. The narration grants one the consciousness of a character. This places the character at the mercy of one’s gender and personality. Woolf’s writing discredits one with the other. If you’ve read her A Room of One’s Own, you’ll know how she tackles the interiority and exteriority of gender. She mocks the aloofness of feminine and masculine roles. And in Orlando, she reshapes this narrative on a creative, intellectual, and literary footing.
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Why read Orlando? It is a portrait of a person freer than any literary character I’ve ever read. Orlando’s life is androgynous and the detached tone of writing offers an enlightened perspective on human complexity and sexuality. It is a labyrinth of many selves; as verdant and beautiful as the sound of leaves rustling in a thick forest; as magnificent as a tidal wave; and as resilient and eternal as the wind that stirs one and enrages the other.

“Everything I possess is very deep within me. On

“Everything I possess is very deep within me. One day, after speaking at last, will I still have something to live for? Or will everything I say fall short of or beyond life? I try to push away everything that is a life form. I try to isolate myself in order to find life in itself.”
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Near to the Wild Heart goes beyond fiction. It is vivid, expressive, and passionate. The book cradles more than the contours of a novel. It’s like a fragile ship floating on the sea, we don’t know whether it’s abandoned, forgotten, or lost. But it still floats in a mysterious and quiet sort of way. The tides and wind push it toward the horizon; it’s a sweet and extraordinary voyage.
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On reading the book, there are many things to discover about the visceral nature of the story. The writing caters to that recess of the mind which is perhaps the loneliest. The root of one’s body and soul that feels sadness and joy ruthlessly. That’s where everything is sought, isn’t it? Our reason for laughter and profound seriousness is buried and burrowed there.
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I will reiterate what I said about Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. and that is that some stories aren’t stories at all. They are transient realities of dreams: more perplexing than dreams and more grounded than reality. And what you find within such stories are revealingly imaginative, melancholic, and seductive. This novel won’t cling to you for life. It has a heart and pulse of its own.
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Not an eventful story but it does eternalize the ordinariness of existence. Her stream-of-consciousness narrative is electric as it is a beacon that defines the relationship between self, nature, and the passing of time. This is what makes the novel poetically metaphoric and fierce. While also illuminating the beauty of uncertainty in loving others. And to fathom everything that goes into loving yourself.

Edgar Allan Poe paints a lonely and muted landscap

Edgar Allan Poe paints a lonely and muted landscape of horror. His stories aren’t supposed to thrive in chaos or miserable togetherness. His characters are recluse; eternally chained and chased by their own shadows as at dawn or dusk we feel the inevitability of the cosmos’s gravitas. And yet, like particles of dust, we continue to gaze at the sky change colors. Establishing the acceptance and reality of our existence which, satirically, may just as well snap like a piece of thread.
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The storytelling, by the hands of a deeply withdrawn and skeptical writer, is vividly illustrative. But what’s truly mortifying was Edgar Allan Poe’s death. He was “found in a complete state of delirium - incoherent, disheveled, and wearing stranger’s clothes.” He died, at the age of 40, in a hospital. And it continues, to this day, to be a mysterious death. And no doubt a terrifyingly painful and eerie one.
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The complexity of human nature is explicitly mirrored in his stories; The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado, to name a few. They showcase the emptiness and obscurity of existence. But it’s not something that Poe intellectualizes or romanticizes in his stories. He possesses and narrates them almost instinctively the way space pervades a vacuum.
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The seriousness with which Edgar Allan Poe carried out his role as a writer - did that, for the remainder of his life, haunt his life? Here’s something I read in a New Yorker article about his work: “Nearly everything Poe wrote, including the spooky stories for which he is best remembered, has this virtuosic, showy, lilting, and slightly wilting quality, like a peony just past bloom. Poe didn’t write “The Raven” to answer the exacting demands of a philosophic Art, or not entirely, anyway. He wrote it for the same reason that he wrote tales like “The Gold-Bug”: to stave off starvation.”

“One man runs to his neighbor because he is look

“One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.”
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We all feel the malignant sting of self-realization. Because it’s not always as constructive and rewarding as it’s thought out to be. Anything that involves the Self and its “figuring out” burns like a deep wound. No matter how you treat it, lovingly or frightfully, it does fester and get under your skin.
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Nietzsche calls this chaos ‘Amor Fati’ – to harness the love of oneself, one’s fate, to accept the Self as it suffers because it’s meant to just for that purpose. So that everything that happens to you – happiness or suffering – is part of a larger, albeit nameless and unutterable, force.
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This force is an assimilation of every thought and act that occupies the bowels of your heart. And it is one’s heart that drives a person to overcome itself. It’s a dangerous going-across – walking on a rope fastened between a banal existence of jealousy, hatred, and stubbornness and a virtuous one of self-trust, solitude, and the will to power.
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a blend of nihilistic and moral aphorisms. It contains much wisdom in the way it re-defines the meaning of meaning itself. There is no beauty or necessity in believing that denying the self is synonymous with overcoming the self. The former being a religious blessing while the latter is Neitzsche’s only objective. He writes that there is no soul or spirit in praising the universe. Nor is there any redemption in denying its existence. The universe is “neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble” and it does not possess the “desire to become any of these.” Least of all for the sake of humankind.
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Beyond the “God is Dead” philosophy, he wants you to create your own meaning for life and self-affirmation. His words renounce everything humankind prophesizes to be. The generosity of which is contagiously unburdening. His aphorisms are poetic, timeless, and reflective. Every page echoes the staggering complexity of human nature. It also reiterates his famous philosophical assertion that “for unless life is given a meaning it has none.”

Thoughts while reading Figuring: Where does the bo

Thoughts while reading Figuring:
Where does the book end and the Self begin?
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In one of his lectures on Literature- specifically on being good readers and good writers - Nabokov said that the worst thing a reader can do is identify oneself with a character in the book. A book should, in a reader’s mind which could be either scarce or abundant or a bit of both, demand aloofness and observation of life in its objective and subjective form.
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While it’s unpleasant, and to a certain extent impossible, to remain objective, it is quite necessary to experience the clarity and genius of the author by seeing, hearing, and visualizing mannerisms, temperaments, and the artistic, scientific, spiritual, and corporeal world as it exists.
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Nor is it necessary, I believe, to dissolve oneself completely into a story. To separate the self so much from the flavor of life that fiction emanates its own fragrance and crosses the threshold of reality. It’s inevitable to unexpectedly arrive at both extremes. Let’s assume that one extreme fills you with ennui while the other soothes you. Literature, as an invention, can exist as both art and truth. And you, a reader, exist as the mediator of both spectrums.
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So where does the book end and the Self begin? If I am the bridge that connects two worlds. If I am the reflective surface off of which light and image collide, I am subject to two things: the Self that a book reigns and the Self that I am.
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You’d think that this makes me complete – at least in the image that I draw of myself. But books don’t complete the Self as much as they deprive a human of things that ostracize the Self. I don’t know where to draw the line between both worlds. Maybe the real question I need to start from is how much of myself do I assimilate into what I read and vice versa. And just like this post - whose start I’m terribly aware of – the closer I inch toward the end, the farther away from me it gets.

January arrivals. . . #books #bookstagram #bookshe

January arrivals.
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#books #bookstagram #bookshelf #newbooks #booksofinstagram #booksofig #library #currentlyreading #booklover #bookstagramindia #readersofinstagram #bookcommunity #bookrecommendations #bookstack #classics #fiction #reading #reader #bibliophile #oxfordclassics

When you read a book like A Portrait of the Artist

When you read a book like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, your conscience's worst nightmare is your waking reality. The words wound you. Your skin crawls, your heart jumps, but your mind survives. It survives because that is where literature possesses its own soul, heaven, and hell. And when you, by the light of your consciousness, confess in silence and alienation all your fears - you can finally feel the words you read as being both beautiful and sad like a memory you were never a part of.
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If anyone can make eternal damnation and mortal sin provocatively lyrical, it is James Joyce. And A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is his semi-autobiographical novel, is about a young boy's "holy" exile and penance. The story is a force to be reckoned with - striking, tragic, and haunting. Joyce's writing plunges into the vortex of Catholicism and the sensations it breeds.
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When you crack upon a man's skull, what scatters are all the memories and experiences of his childhood. To "grow up" is merely a moronic extension of existence; a reflex of time encroaching upon our pleasures and miseries.
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The novel is made up of many elements. It's intellectual, moral, spiritual, psychological, and sexual. There's enough in here to make you dizzy. The first half embraces a more chaotic and lopsided narrative which redeems itself in the second half. For a coming-of-age story steeped in modern spiritual awakening, catharsis and consciousness are the central themes.
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Imagine yourself in a mirror maze. Each mirror you stand in front of, at the side of, or away from, is contorted and proportioned in a such way that it deceives the image of yourself. No matter how many times you turn around, wipe the surface, smoothen its creases, you can never truly identify yourself - as you really are. Imagine this, and then imagine a soul in the place of your body. And history, politics, religion, culture, language, family, and nationality in the place of mirrors. Think of the chaos, dread, nausea, and asphyxiation it breeds.
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Here's an excerpt (check the comment ⬇️) that cradles this very sentiment of self-exile and self-negation:

To read this book is to celebrate more consciously

To read this book is to celebrate more consciously the pleasure of reading. Harold Bloom gives all readers an assignment which is to read deeply, attentively, and solitarily. And what’s in this book is an elaborate catalog of books you can buy right away and start reading.
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Anton Chekov, Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Shakespeare, Calvino, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Henry James, Cervantes. There are so many thoughtful and passionate book recommendations in this - you need not go elsewhere.
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In the introduction, Bloom writes that “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you because it is the most healing of pleasures.” And when asked “Why Read?” he answers by saying that “One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change alas is universal.”
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And lastly, he bridges the gap between the assertion of the self to that of reading well with this very thought-provoking sentence:
When “reading falls apart, much of the self scatters with it.”
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This brings you closer to that Reader’s Sublime which is the most and only secular transcendence a reader can ever attain. Bloom urges us to find what truly comes near to us, that can be used for weighing and considering. To read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.
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Think of the book recommendations as multiple literary landing places that you need to arrive at. And Harold Bloom’s writing is the compass that points you and guides you through your journeys.
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Now I haven’t even come close to reading all the books that Harold Bloom writes about. And yet even now, after reading this book through, I keep going back to these essays and re-reading them. Sort of imprinting them in my mind because of the way they’ve been put across. So insightful, vivid, and artistically-powerful. I have never read a book like this.

It’s only when you’re reading about the slow,

It’s only when you’re reading about the slow, humdrum essence of daily living do you realize how much your everyday actions, even though repetitive, matter on a large scale. And the fact that this ‘large scale’ is made up of nothing but small, basic bits of what you do, what you say, and what you think from one day to the next uncovers a whole new universe right before your eyes.
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The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is the epitome of kindness, peace, tranquility, acceptance, and every word that invokes stillness in you.
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Just like the reminder notes the protagonist (i.e. the professor - a mathematical prodigy) sticks to his suit to cope with his only 80-minute short memory, you’re often reminded of how much that is not said and done is neglected, thus demands to be brought to mind. Do we all and always need to be reminded of just how unfortunate life can be by witnessing someone else’s misery, unhappiness, and suffering?
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The story revolves around the efforts of the housekeeper to create a normal living situation for the math professor. And also around mathematics, baseball, and the affectionate bond that develops between the professor and the housekeeper’s son, Root.
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The book, during the initial stages, seems like a story about how a man struggles with his short memory span after a disastrous head injury. Even the character of the housekeeper, at first, strikes one as being a typical tale of how a cook/cleaner deals with a sick, old person. But then, slowly and steadily, Ogawa weaves so much compassion into the narrative that you’re surprised at yourself for being so moved by the simplicity of Japanese culture and living.
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I had read somewhere a while ago about how wisdom has no definite form. And that’s what this book is all about. The story is not filled with epiphany-invoking passages, rather it brings you to the subtle realization that a life well-lived requires the patience and understanding of just living your life.

The most freeing revelation you can make about you

The most freeing revelation you can make about yourself is that you possess more than multiple animating selves. And that each ‘self’ breathes and communicates out of shells that exist in the form of memories, ideas, and experiences. Italo Calvino writes that “the more time we save, the more we’ll be able to lose.” And in the sphere of such acute awareness, literature - which is eternally wedded to self-exploration - dilutes, quickens, multiplies, and becomes more transparent and more exact.
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Calvino explores and weaves together the threads of literature not just for the reader but for the necessities by which a reader is defined. The necessities are innumerable; some read for pleasure, for creativity, ambition, sensibility, and good judgment. The common denominator, Calvino writes, is “an existential function. To search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living.”
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Calvino is simply riding the waves of literature. His words, his thoughts, his memories, the essence of his stories that are so deeply rooted in scientific wonder, mathematics, imagination, and fantasy; all coalesce in this beautifully-moving and vivid book of memos. Under each inscription, you’ll sense deep stillness and gratitude. Something that will be inscribed in my memory as an ode to the essential value of reading and literature.
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Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity - each carry and cradle literature in its palms. And it is from this soil that literature blossoms. Calvino defends the sanctity of the novel and how it equates to the self and the discovery of personal truth.
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He ends by asking a simple but infinite question:
“What if it were possible for a work to be conceived beyond the self, a work that allowed us to escape the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only in order to enter other similar selves but to give voice to that which cannot speak - the bird perched on the gutter, the tree in spring and the tree in autumn, stone, cement, plastic…
Wasn’t this, perhaps, where Ovid was going when he described the continuity of forms, where Lucretius was going when he identified himself with the nature that all things have in common?”

There are people whose past events exist on a line

There are people whose past events exist on a linear trail. Each moment is a stamp upon a smooth and unruffled surface. This makes reminiscing a past self easier, more coherent, perhaps even rectifiable. Then there are people like Pip in Dickens’s Great Expectations whose past is an assortment of terrifying and pleasant moments. Experiences that cannot be redeemed, modified, or upheld. When you look back at such a past, it’s messy, rooted, and anchored into the fabric of one’s being. Time-bound but transcendental and encyclopedic. It serves a serious purpose. Which is to find within its jumbled threads, a glimpse of the person one has become.
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Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is pure and unbridled joy. The story begins on an amusing note but it soon becomes very solemnly thoughtful. A book like this unravels itself in different moods and languages. And since it draws from many wells as the story is anchored in sociological and psychological roots, the narration is what truly underlines the story.
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Charles Dickens lays down the foundation of a complete human being. From childhood, Pip has a shattered and obscure view of money and honor. And mistaking one for the other, he’s often at odds with the characters that Dickens so cleverly poses around him. When you favor appearances as proofs of character and sensibility, you also befriend hurt, disappointment, and grief in the same breath. And that is exactly where this storytelling leads to. You’ll peel back the layers and find that both the formative and fragile years of Pip are perhaps one and the same. And that they never end.
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The same can be said for its readers. The deep concerns of Pip’s life help us identify the loose ends of ours. Great Expectations is messy, amusing, and poignant. It combines the becoming and being of a “gentleman.” And all that presupposes the life of one in the Victorian era. Made even more vividly gratifying because it draws from Charles Dickens’ life.

Starting this gem of a book today. It was an extra

Starting this gem of a book today. It was an extraordinary book recommendation on an ordinary birthday. I suppose this is where great book recommendations trump gifts and birthday wishes.
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“Do you see this glass?” he asked. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”
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#books #bookstagram #bookrecommendations #book #booksofinstagram #bibliophile #booksofig #bibliophile #booklover #bookcommunity #nonfiction #reader #reading #currentlyreading #currentreads #newbooks #ebooks #bookstagrammer #readersofinstagram #readersofig #read

Tapping into self-consciousness means releasing fr

Tapping into self-consciousness means releasing from the steady grip of the immediate, external reality. There is a very specific and concrete truth to this fact. And it is through our anxiety and fear, Kierkegaard writes, that such an undertaking is possible. The rest is misleading because it dims the interiority of life. To fixate on the exteriority breeds dullness and uniformity because our sense of self is acutely tied up with surfaces and appearances. And through the inevitability that surfaces and appearances diminish, our understanding of the self also begins to recede.
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For Kierkegaard, anxiety is an inescapable human condition. And for someone who is unaware of it, it can give rise to emotional, intellectual, and creative barriers. Some of which seep into a person’s day-to-day living causing false and temporal happiness.
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Kierkegaard’s fascination with anxiety is nothing new. In The Sickness Unto Death, he writes that the loss of one’s despair is also the loss of one’s self. And so in The Concept of Anxiety, he reiterates this loss of self as something that is profoundly and philosophically tied together with the loss of anxiety.
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Fear, which is another acute response to reality and our internal presence stationed in that reality, is perpetually tied together with anxiety. Fear of anxiety, the anxiety of fear, and the anxious fear of the infiniteness of human choice. To cope with this dread, Kierkegaard believes, humans desensitize their freedom. They cure existential anxiety by limiting themselves to fewer possibilities. So that ultimately, our choices become our only axis around which we (the hollow shells) continuously revolve.
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Through that lens, nothing of consciousness can enable us to reflect on our experiences. Nothing of “self” can be identified as self because it exists outside of us. Kierkegaard writes about the psychological state of anxiety but he elevates the concept to a profoundly creative and philosophical narrative. A narrative that anyone can apply to their day-to-day living. And that is a strong reason to want to read this book.

I wasn’t sure how to begin writing this “book

I wasn’t sure how to begin writing this “book review.” This is hardly a book review. In many ways, The Makioka Sisters is a tale of how humans grieve the passing of cherry blossoms. How this grief manifests in the way the characters in this story see and understand each other. And as time passes and seasons sway and coalesce, humans, too, inhabit different moods and expressions of their own.
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This book is deeply grounded in nature. The ordinariness of poems, the affectations of domestic life, the subtleties of aging and the loss of youth. This makes beautiful writing vividly final. Tanizaki focuses on drawing parallels between many, divergent worlds. Natural disasters display the angst of growing up; the possession of an age and its prescribed role in society. Then there is the damage caused to traditional values that dictate who is loved and not. This is felt more grotesquely as Tanizaki sketches the influence of an upcoming war and its vicarious tides on the lives of the Makioka sisters.
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There is a consistent theme and structure to Tanizaki’s writing. Under the modern gaze of Westernization, people are forced to let go of rituals and customs that previously held families together; where even love had failed to bloom. Even though his way of narrating the lives of these sisters is elegant and vivid. There is no plot or revealing ending to this book. It’s a series of meanderings; both of transcendence and limitations.
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In this story, there’s always a sense of apprehensive uneasiness that’s lurking in the corner. It’s not a consuming feeling but it is quite intense. And it’s something that I felt right from start to finish. Since this is a story about the portrait of a family, the narration is quite dense and descriptive. Which is what makes The Makioka Sisters a compelling read.
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The story is about the impermanence of life, the melancholy of youth, and above all, the enslavement of prestige and class and pride over individual desire and volition. It is a sincere and brutal book, which cannot but be a satisfying read for every Japanese literature admirer.

Reading can become passive quite unexpectedly. It’s when you’re simply validating what you already know. There isn’t any conscious inner working. To assume the roles of literature; fiction evokes visualization, nonfiction molds perspectives. This is a comfortable place to be. But it’s not the only place in the world.
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Fiction demands to be read but it’s not the same as nonfiction. The bridge between imagination and interpretation is longer and more subjective. Because you experience each character differently. So clearly, there’s a lot of work there. Nonfiction, even though it has nothing to do with stories and imagination, has everything to do with it. And fiction is incomplete without it.
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The common denominator between fiction and nonfiction is the act of reading well. Because all that could possibly happen to you, as a result of reading well, shapes you more intuitively and consciously than you think.
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This, in itself, is important because it allows you to trust your instincts as a reader. Nonfiction and fiction function on different planes of consciousness. There is no better antidote to mediocrity in literature than the constant mapping and correlation of fiction and nonfiction.
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Reverse the understanding of fiction as a visual medium and nonfiction as an introspective one. Let both worlds bleed into each other until you don’t quite know which is which.
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Reading fiction and nonfiction well really gives you an elevated view of life. It’s quite therapeutic. It ties together the relationship between identity and reality. And this extends to everything. How you perceive the world and you in it. To be able to consciously read something and go beyond the words printed on the page.
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We all instruct ourselves differently. And reading literature grants you that window through which you can experiment and analyze different ideas and feelings. Compare and consider what works for you and what doesn’t. The thing about reading literature is not that it makes you intelligent or creative. It’s the simple act of reading that is intellectually and creatively rewarding, in itself. So that everything you do as a result of that, you do well.

“The poetic practice requires solitude.” As fa

“The poetic practice requires solitude.”
As far as writing goes, experience has taught me that there is no objective reality. That imagination, creativity, and poetry flow out of necessity rather than ambition. And it’s only natural that the mind’s eye deceives itself into thinking and acting as if ambition is the truest starting-point. Perhaps, after reading Rilke, one becomes self-aware enough to believe that before one meets the demands of a self - to become a poet or a writer - one must find the courage to become one’s own person.
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In literature, much like in art or poetry, transformations are eternally internal. They are solitary. They manifest as soon as you deepen the gaze into yourself, the nature of solitariness, your purpose of being. Everything else is a form of digression. Rilke’s Letters to Young Poet is both counsel and conversation.
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For the ‘young poet’, his reasons for writing are enough to bring you closer to yours. This is a simple book. It does not promise to explain the unexplainable. And it certainly does not teach you how to write. The lessons in this book are more intrinsic than what can be or ought to be penned on paper or can be or ought to be quantified or qualified as art.
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In matter-of-fact sentences Rilke has produced a whole universe for poets and writers to contemplate and interpret. The measures of which, Rilke believes, are infinitely altered for somebody who becomes solitary. So, when you come down to it, this is the only kind of preparation a writer or a poet needs without fear, without any limitations. In fact, he also goes so far as to enumerate that if, after the descent into yourself, you find that your personal solitariness compels you to give up the idea of ever becoming a poet. Even then, this pause, this realization of self, is poetry enough to live with. The ambition, the germ that truly affects us is the one where we seek out the depths of things because that is where the origin of nature lies.

In one sentence, Crime and Punishment is about psy

In one sentence, Crime and Punishment is about psychological angst, chaos, and anxiety. The restlessness of one’s conscience when starved of family and societal relationships. You have a protagonist who isn’t ugly, whose actions are not self-indulgent, and whose relations seem remote yet complex. And yet his crime serves its own punishment. The consummation of which is more internal than external.
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How does a character like that weigh up to his own guilt and misery? Think of this book as an encyclopedic account of such a criminal’s confession. But it’s not the act of committing a crime, and its aftermath, that makes Crime and Punishment such a satisfying read. It’s the motive that runs deep; the nihilism and the alienation. It stands out for its intellectual and psychological heft.
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Dostoevsky’s obsession with the symbolic christening of good and evil is everywhere in the book. Raskolnikov, Razumikhin, Sonya, Dunya, and Svidrigailov. All these characters are tragic but they are the products of political and cultural unbecoming. The first time I read this book, I perceived the protagonist’s crime as a consequence, a retaliation of a flawed institution. The second time, however, I’m driven to conclude that the crime has nothing to do with justice or imprisonment. The labyrinth of the inner world, the fear and trembling of one’s soul, the eternal consciousness of man. This is what a man judges; driven by virtue of such passions and despairs rather than by religion.
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The book does nothing to evoke sympathy, disgust, or loathing for its characters. Because to feel anything means to pardon a certain kind of existence. It is to raise a thread of human nature higher than the rest. And to tie the noose around the necks of others, convincing them that monsters exist and that we are saints. When this is revealed to us in the things that we love the most, there is no other edge we jump off from but our sanity.
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#bookreview #books #bookstagram #booksofig #bookstagramindia #booksofinstagram #book #bookrecommendation #crimeandpunishment #fictionbooks #classics #fyodordostoyevsky #russianliterature #bookworm #bibliophile #literature #mustread #goodbooks #readersofig

“To live without philosophizing is in truth the

“To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them.”
- René Descartes

Italo Calvino’s stories do not imitate, familiar

Italo Calvino’s stories do not imitate, familiarize, or instruct a reader toward the infinite possibilities of imagination. They transcend, magnify, and remodel the fabric of literature itself. Invisible Cities is an unconventional and intuitive book of descriptions. Descriptions of the inner workings of many cities that are masterfully-crafted to tickle the mind’s eye.
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You come across stories that highlight the lives of its characters; through character development, we, as readers, can familiarize ourselves with the story’s environment. This can be any fictional or real location. Haruki Murakami is one author whose magical realism is more character-driven and idiosyncratic. Books like Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle possess their own lively imagination necessarily brought to life by their vividly-portrayed characters.
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Italo Calvino’s magical realism is broader, more telescopic, offering the most extraordinary descriptions and motifs of places rather than people. This is new and rewarding because you can imagine being a part of all the cities Calvino so beautifully describes. He writes you as a character in his stories. This is the genius of Calvino in the world of literature. This is how he invites his readers to feel more… and participate in his stories.
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Invisible Cities is a spider-web of cities. Some familiar, some strange; some phantasmagorical, some distinctly childlike and sincere. It’s a short read but satisfyingly so. The narration is layered and intimate. This book is a traveler’s delight and a tourist’s serendipity. Writers like Calvino re-define the map of literature and will continue, eternally, to chart new terrain, new passages, and new recesses of imagination and creativity. Much like a film that blends reality with dreams - Federico Fellini’s ‘8 ½’ being one of them - the literary architecture of Invisible Cities is aesthetically-compelling.
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In Literature, the only constant is the solitary a

In Literature, the only constant is the solitary act of reading. But even that, Harold Bloom writes, has been deeply mistranslated. The function of solitary reading - be it short stories, plays, poetry, novels - is grossly misunderstood as an appetite for escapism or to provoke the fancies of idealism. What it is, what it could ever be, is a preparation for change, a profound realization of ‘self’.
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How To Read And Why offers you a combination of literature’s most whimsical, intelligent, and piercing treasures. The start of the book reclaims and reignites a reader’s lost soul. Harold Bloom evokes wisdom and transcendence in a single breath. His understanding of literature affords you both the solitude and the seductions of reading. The kind that restricts no depth, no essence, and no duration. Some familiar, some strange. But all passionate and necessary to nurture the resilience of one’s life and the role of literature in it.
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To read means to elevate the stirrings of a self. To read means to decipher and deconstruct one’s emotional and intellectual solitudes. The absoluteness of the universe that represents the ambiguity of those who are part of it.
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Harold Bloom intimates the genius and generosity of those we rarely mull over in our daily chaos and calm. Shakespeare, Chekov, Turgenev, Flannery O’Connor, Hemingway, Nabokov, Whitman, Proust, Bronte, Dickens, Henry James, and so many others. He shines a penetrating light into the many labyrinths and recesses of literature. The lessons, the epiphanies, the ethos of life and death.
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“There are still solitary readers, young and old, everywhere, even in the universities. If there is a function of criticism at the present time, it must be to address itself to the solitary reader, who reads for herself, and not for the interests that supposedly transcend the self.”
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