Articles (in English)

Articles in English 

ARTICLES AND OPINIONS RELATED TO BOOKS

Barsha Hamal

The Himalayan Times                                                                     August 27, 2003

Befriending Books

Whenever I count my list of good friends, I count my books too. Reading is my passion and it has helped me in so many ways. Earlier I was not much of a reader but while I was in grade 11 I befriended voracious readers and I learned that books offer a great scope for imagination. At first I found it difficult to stay glued to a single story for long but gradually instilled in me the patience for reading novels. I can now read a book for hours at a go.

People have a habit of collecting items of fondness. Those going for fancy shoes collect different designs. Some love music and they have their room flooded with CDs. People who adore painting their nails have varieties of polish to match their wardrobe contents. Since I love books, I love collecting them. The latest addition to my small library was Stephen Raleigh Byler’s Searching for Intruders.

My good friends are great readers too. We often exchange books and it’s so much fun to discuss the story and the characters. There are times when you feel lonely and jaded and times when you feel like drowning yourself in your little world.

Those are the times when books offer a great assistance. You can simply stay indoors and curl up with a best-seller: What do you say? Books widen your knowledge and vision, they soothe your mind, they catalyse your imagination and they increase your vocabulary.

Thee are so many authors and so many books. If it were possible, I would read all of them. But because it’s impossible I have to satisfy with a handful of authors and corresponding books. Counting the number of books I want to read, I only get disappointed because, it dawns on me that life is short and my wish list simply too long. So all I can ever do is red and read till I can.

Every author has his or her own way of forming words and moulding characters. And it’s fun (almost an honour) to immerse ourselves in that process. By now I have read a number of novels and all of them hold a special place in my heart.

Out of all the books I have read. I do have a list of my favourite ones but I don’t compare them to one another. Be it the Meatless Days, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The God of small Things, Life is Elsewhere, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Horse Whisperer, Angela’s Ashes, Gone With the Wind, Never Love A Stranger or Dazzle. I love them all. 

Every time I finish a book, I am haunted by a particular character and I feel like I have lived his or her life. For example, I am now haunted by Jaromil, the character of life is Elsewhere. I feel like I am that great, sensitive poet and that I’m living in the lyric age, like Jaromil.

Reading habit creates a great connection between the real world and the unreal one. So if you are a novel reader you certainly get to live in both the worlds. I feel like the words and worlds that an author creates in his books are successful in intriguing us, uplifting us and haunting us.

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UDAY LAMA

Sep 16, 2003 THT

Book Browsing

One of the new pleasures still remaining with me is browsing through a book. Whenever I get an opportunity I enter one of the bookshops and head for the shelves. I tae a look at the lined books, select one at random and read the title and the author’s name before glancing at the outer and inner contents of the cover. Then I flip through the pages and read a few paragraphs before moving on.

Although I browse through books for sheer joy, I buy it whenever it meets my specifications so as to read it in leisure back in my room.

Of course there is the ten percent discount which weights in my favour and helps me decide to buy it. I try to be selective in buying – self help books and those on writing figure high on the list.

But back to browsing which I can never have enough of. The sheer beauty of it is that is can all be done within the coll dim interiors of a bookshop and there is no charge for doing so. Books are stacked up subject wise, such as books on religion, fiction, biographies and others. I amble along the stacks and find one to my liking.

A book is a companion of all times and feeds one with food for though and stirs imagination. I do not have to go to great lengths to find time to read a book as I have plenty of spare time.

Giving the book its due – reading it – is an occupation in itself. It is here where I come into my own and I tend to visualise a setting that lulls my senses even as I immerse in a quiet reading session.

Browsing through a book is a pastime and an activity that can be nurtured and encouraged in one and all. There is no age limit here and the some criteria to qualify to read is a passion for words and their meanings. One can also develop the habit of reading at odd moments of the day just by reaching for a book. It does not require a Herculean effort. A bent of mind to read a book will suffice.

The trick to induce one to read is to browse which sets the stage for further forays. Even though fat tomes may appear more as deterrence than increasing one’s appetite for it, taking the plunge helps solve the matter and there is no looking back. I take the book and let it cast its magic spell on me.

I seldom read an entire book in a single sitting as I deliberately take time to savour and lengthen the delight. It may have some kind of information to pass on, some passages may deal with erotica and there could be a personal note which the author has divulged at the end. I treat the book as a personal friend of mine.

However, there is a ditty which says, “Do not judge a book by its cover” and it holds true. But then it is only by going through the cover that one gets to know about the book.

Browsing through the cover is part of the larger exercise- reading its contents. Covers are a window to the book’s contents and that is why browsing is inevitable.

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May 29, 2003

Book that changed my life

SANTOSH POKHREL

Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It recalls things for you, or hides form you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but if has you.”

These unforgettable lines are from the glorious book, “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” For me, it’s more than just a book: It’s a reflection or reality, depicted so well by a master writer – John Irving. A book that has everything, and yet leaves the reader craving for more. A book about life, its meaning and a meaningful life.

Somewhere along the course of life, we meet people who leave indelible impressions in our life. We relate our life, and in many ways, our own existence, to those people. In my case, it has been a completely different scenario: That book changed my life. Though it’s hard to relate the exact meaning of change here, but after reading “ A Prayer for Owen Meany,” I realized that there’s more to life than just mere existence. Existence beyond the realms of trivial boundaries, which appears daunting in the beginning, but in reality is just a transition from self to a society.

There’s a character called Owen Meany. There is nothing special about him. A dwarfed body. Thin glowing skin. And a nasal voice. But the way the novelist has portrayed his character, it’s so thought-provoking that it gets preoccupied in the mind.

I read the book two years ago. But Owen Meany is as vivid in my psyche as ever.

Everything about Owen is weird, and the portrayal obviously preposterous. The allusion that he gets born without his mother ever conceiving, a child from a virgin mother, draws an analogy to Virgin Mary and Jesus. Is he a reincarnation of Jesus? How did he know that he will die, and in the exact circumstances? These and many questions have haunted me ever since I read the book.

Two years down the line, when I replicate the book as a whole, Owen Meany stapms an air of authority. I do get overawed time and again when I think about relationship between natural and supernatural, and the existence of God.

The main theme of “ A Prayer for Owne Meany” is religious faith, especially the relationship between faith and doubt in a world in which there is no obvious evidence of God’s existence. Doubt is faith’s and our greatest asset. On one hand, Owen happens to be the boy-next-door, while on the other, the strange precocity in him raises the question: Is he an instrument of God? The way Owen conducts himself and his ability to judge various circumstances are remarkable.

It’s a mesmerizing book; However, besides just being a good read, it has more things to offer. The book made me cry, and laugh too; it made me think about who I really am, of my existence, and the meaning of life.

I have mellowed after reading the book. I live each day at a time; longevity of life doesn’t matter anymore. What does indeed matter is my life beyond Time.

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Feb 25, 2004

AJIT BARAL

Book Bite

What’s in books that many people want to flaunt them, don’t like to return them after borrowing from friends and libraries, or steal them?

The other day an aged man was caught sealing a book from the Nepal-India Cultural Centre Library under his jacket, but was caught while being frisked. He was then swiftly taken to the chief librarian. Out of curiosity, I followed the man to the room and stayed at the door, listening to the librarian’s admonishing. Looking at the man blushing in shame. I felt a chill run through my spine. I could have been in a similar position some eight years back, if I had also been caught while stealing a book from a library. I had gone to the library to read, and was browsing through a bevy of books for a good pick. Suddenly my eyes fell on a book by an authour I had wanted to read for long. The book was unstamped and that was perhaps what induced me into stealing it: I could have claimed it as my own if I were caught.

After my stealing the book, the morality bug began to bite me. And I thought of exonerating myself by giving two of my books to the library. But I so jealously guard my books that I haven’t until now been able to gather myself to give to the library two books that I had promised to give as an act of redemption. With time the bug stopped gnawing at me. And now I am actually happy that I stole the book. An Area of Darkness, for two reasons. First, it introduced me to V S Naipaul, the finest exponent of English prose. I have 18 of V S Naipaul’s books. Still, I don’t seem to have enough of him. And, I am sure, few more books will add up in my list of Naipaul’s books. Second, it fuelled my passion for reading, and my readings have turned me into more of a moralist. Yet, the lure of books is such that I can never make a claim to not have given thought to purloining books ever since.

The thought of stealing books, in fact, has crossed my mind many times. To cite an example, when I was in the Sahitya Kala Academy Library, New Delhi last year, I had an urge to steal Post-modern Debates. Edited by Simone Malpas, it contained articles on postmodernism by such intellectual giants Lyotard, Jameson, Baudrillard, and Bhaba. If anybody had wanted to steal a book, this was it. No surprise that instead of reading it, I kept thinking of ways to sneak it out of the library. Fortunately, the moralist in me didn’t give in to the temptation. Thanks books for that.

One of my friends says book stealing is a pardonable sin. I would like to add a caveat: Yes, as long as it is the first time.

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Nov 9, 2006

SAJAN KOIRALA

There is a big dilemma I am yet to resolve: Do I read course books or litereature? How much time should I devote to each? Is reading out-of-course material, as my friends contend, a total waste of time?

          As far as my memory serves me right, the first book I picked up was Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield when I was in fifth grade. Since, I read virtually anything I can lay my hands on. But due to this habit of scouring books of every hue and genre, I lose a considerable amount of time that I could otherwise have developed to reading my course books.

          Though I am still not able to come to an informed judgement, I readily accept that love reading anything out of course. Moliere and Joyce are a big part of my life, as are the likes of Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and John Grisham. The benefit of wide reading is that one never feels out of place. No matter what the discussion, he can always chip in with his bit of knowledge. In other words, these folks love being the jack of all trades. But masters of none, they should not try to push the envelop with the experts.

          On the down side, trying to learn about too many things can have an adverse effect on one’s studies. It surely doesn’t help one’s cause if one can’t unhook oneself from a Grisham with an exam at hand. Hence, though a good student, I could never feature among the toppers in our class. My mind wanted to explore so many things that it was well-nigh impossible to keep up with my studies as much as I wanted to.

          I cannot recall a single ‘bad’ book I’ve read. Either they were good, or very good. Each one of them has something important to teach. I like to compare reading with travelling to places one has never been, where I have so many things to explore and learn from.

          I still don’t know which is a better option: selective or eclectic reading? Nevertheless, as the world gets more complex by the day, so do our ways of thinking. I believe books bridge that gap between ignorance and enlightenment. As happiness and sorrow are art and parcel of our lives, so should the books be. Books give one the perspective to look at the world anew. As our friends and family enrich our lives, books do the same. After all, as friends, books never fail you.

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