As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read today ‘The Night Drive‘ by Will F.Jenkins. Will F. Jenkins is more popular as a leading writer of Sci-fi through his pseudonym Murray Leinster.
Night Drive is a classic murder mystery story of avenging through disguise written in a way that is very satisfying and pleasant to read.
Kids loved this story.
Story reading is also a place/platform where one can pass on the richness of various facets of English Language to the listeners. Two nice expressions that we encountered today in our session are:
1. Stand on ceremony
2. Silver bullet
Enjoyed the session and also introducing in depth the meaning and usage of these two expressions.
This is the 175th story we have done as part of our reading club activity and we are inching towards our original objective of covering 200 stories….
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following two stories today:
1. Eleven – Sandra Cisneros
2. Brothers Beyond The Void – Paul W. Fairman
‘Eleven‘ is a short read describing the pains of coming of age of 11 year old Rachel struggling to find her voice but also arguing against the expectations around ‘behaving ones age” – the crux being that a person has all the preceeding years hidden in the present age and there is nothing wrong in allowing some room for the emotions which are generally expected to be associated with those years.
Sandra Cisneros writes with a simple elegance that is truly impressive.
Paul W. Fairman‘s “Brothers Beyond The Void” is a popular science fiction story which makes an impossible but almost a convincing case that while physical forms of entities across the universe may vary their emotional and spiritual instincts will remain the same. In this case it is about the ‘mean’ emotional instincts of Martians towards a visiting earthling. Fairman brings the twist in the plot towards the end when we come to know that the two kind behaving Martians trap an Earthling in a home (Earth dwelling) they construct for him to use it as a cage to display him to other Martians. The whole story has smooth narrative flow and the ending is unexpected.
Children loved both stories but it was a equally divided house on a specific preference. Felt good reading both these stories for them.
I solve Wordle everyday without fail. It is now a part of my daily chores – chores that are monotonously essential. I have attempted it more than 300+ times till date and failed to get it only once, reflecting its inherent ease of being amenable even to a person of average intelligence.
However, there is one aspect of this word game that is unique and fascinating and it is that IT MIMICS HUMAN LIFE. Here are some thoughts on its similarity to LIFE:
1. How and what you start with makes a huge difference on where you end.
2. On the surface it appears as if there are no set best practices to crack it but like in life there are some broad and loose rules. And like in life these are rules one discovers as one goes along. There is nothing formulaic about them.
3. Chance does play a role.
4. You have to be at it to become progressively better. But however great you become it is not possible to crack it in the first two attempts unless you are supremely lucky.
5. Even the best and brightest make mistakes that at times appear dumb for people who watch from outside. Only the person who makes those mistakes can rationalize them.
6. It is to a large extent egalitarian to all who play it.
7. Intuition is as important as knowledge to be successful.
8. The day you feel good about your performance you will find someone who has done better than you on that day.
9. You can resort to clever cheating but it leaves you dissatified.
10. Last but probably the most important resemblance: Beyond a stage, the whole game appears pointless.
(Completed reading Thomas Hardy‘s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” – a moving, magnificent novel. In Tess, Hardy has created one of the most memorable, inspirational and supremely tragic heroines of English/World literature.)
“Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us to notice…….. This tutoring is dialectical. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on……. “
James Wood in his book ‘How Fiction Works“
This small but brilliant book by James Wood has had a great influence on me as a reader and the way I read stories and novels in general. Two facets of writing that I very alertly look for whenever I read any work of fiction of any genre are: 1) An author’s sense of ‘detail’ 2) His/Her sense of the ‘landscape’. For me both add enormously to the richness of my overall reading experience.
In “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,’ Thomas Hardy serves a feast to the mind of the reader on both these fronts. It is a deeply impressive and masterly presentation which simply arrests the pace of reading. Here are a few examples that I really enjoyed:
“Then they all rode home in one of the largest wagons, in the company of a broad tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf halo of some worm-eaten Tuscan saint.”
“….. Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm. Although the early September weather was sultry, her arm, from her dabbling in the curds, was as cold and damp to his mouth as a new gathered mushroom, and tasted of the whey”
(damp soft arm of a woman compared to that of dampness of a newly gathered mushroom)
or
“She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake’s.”
or
” that the roof had turned itself into a gymnasium of all the winds.”
or
“After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of dry frost, when strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures with tragical eyes—eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered. These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no account. The traveller’s ambition to tell was not theirs, and, with dumb impassivity, they dismissed experiences which they did not value for the immediate incidents of this homely upland— the trivial movements of the two girls in disturbing the clods with their hackers so as to uncover something or other that these visitants relished as food.”
The book is littered with passages rich in detailing and imbued with a great sense of landscape….
I bought this book for 95 rupees two decades back, maintained it carefully this whole duration and read it recently. It was a complete and satisfying reading experience. Gave me enormous happiness by taking me to a world I have never been before, by introducing me to wonderful human beings, by giving me an opportunity to see their lives from close quarters and share their joys and sorrows. No amount of money could have given me this equivalent and priceless experience. Feeling simply grateful……
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read “The Storm” by McKnight Malmar.
I do not have a recollection of how I came to this story but when I read it I was totally captivated by three aspects of this story viz. the atmospherics, the unexpected twist in the tale and the irony inherent in the twist. It is also a story, I learnt later, that Alfred Hitchcock presented in one of his collections.
Surprisingly not much is available on the internet about the writer.
A woman enters her lonely house while a storm is raging out. She is married for under 2 years and is still getting to know her husband. Alone and scared of the storm and trying to make herself comfortable in her home she slowly stitches traces of evidence together to build a hypothesis that her husband is probably being blackmailed by a woman with whom he has had a relationship in the past. And to her horror she finds the dead body of a woman in the cellar which begin to confirm her suspicions that her husband could have been the murderer. In the meanwhile, the husband returns but she is not comfortable with him anymore given his strange, cold sinister behaviour she rushes out to seek comfort and safety from her husband in the darknes and the storm raging outside. She starts out hating the storm but returns to the same storm for escape and safety.
A thing I have noticed while reading this story to the children was the way they gradually got involved in it. All the fidgeting vanished and in its place was an absorbed silence.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following two stories today:
1. Hey You Down There – Harold Rolseth
2. The Hitchhiker – Lucille Fletcher
Both belong to the Fantasy/Horror genre with unexpected twists at the end.
In ‘Hey You Down There,‘ an uncouth farmer and his kind wife are forced to dig a well for water to meet the needs of their farm. While digging the well, the bottom of the well gives way to reach a great depth where reside aliens who are nocturnal beings, highly intelligent and scientifically more advanced than humans. Driven by initial curiosity to ascertain the depth of the well, the farmer lowers a flashlight into the well and the aliens return a gold bar as mark of their acceptance of the gift along with a note in alien language. The farmer interprets this event as their ask for more flashlights and goes to the town to get them. In the meanwhile the equally curious farmer’s wife lowers into the well some bread, ham, a note with questions about them and a dictionary to let the aliens below know that it is English speaking people who stay on the ground. To her surprise she receives more gold and a note in English mentioning that the dictionary was useful, the flashlight (the aliens call it deathray) sent earlier useless and also that they need more ham. The farmer’s wife now sends them a few hens from her farm which have been killed by a passing truck only to get a note from the aliens mentioning that they absolutely loved the chicken meat and that the dictionary points to a more tastier meat of an animal called turkey and demanding the same for their immediate consumption. In the meanwhile the farmer returns with a truckload of flash lights and lowers them into the well with the help of a heavy duty winch only to get a note from the aliens calling the farmer couple stupid and returning the entire lot of flashlights with their glasses broken. The irate farmer wants to teach the aliens a lesson and lowers himself into the well with a shotgun. The aliens interpret this as the arrival of turkey meat, end up consuming the farmer and sending a request for more turkey meat and bigger payment in gold to the farmer’s wife.
A well written story full of suspense with a climax at which we do not know if we should feel amused or horrified.
Lucille Fletcher‘s ‘The Hitchhiker‘ is a popular radio drama (and frequently included story in the curricula of various schools in the US) in which a young man undertakes a journey from East Coast of US to the West Coast in a car only to encounter the same hitchhiker again and again across various locations in this long multi-day journey. This rattles him to no end and to derive some comfort and allay his fears, the young man calls up his home to speak to his mother only to be informed by a stranger that his mother has been hospitalised due to a nervous breakdown on account of the young man’s death five day’s back in a car accident on Brooklyn Bridge. It is only towards the end the readers realize that all the while the story was being narrated by the ghost of the young man not knowing that he has turned into a ghost. A very well written story the twist of which becomes clear only towards the end.
Members of our group enjoyed both the stories in terms of preference, ‘The Hitchhiker’ managed to get a slight edge. My preference was for Harold Rolseth‘s “Hey You Down There“
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following two stories today:
1. The Colomber – Dino Buzzati (Translated from Italian)
2. Cool Air – H.P. Lovecraft
Both the stories belong to the fantasy/horror genres.
Colomber is a shark like creature which is designated to devour seafaring individuals chosen by it and is visible only to its victims. Stefano, the son of a successful sea captain and a successful sea captain in his own right is the chosen seafarer. Stefano dodges his colomber for more than five decades across oceans of the world. However, the sheer mental & physical fatigue and realization of the futility of constant running away decides to confront his colomber face to face. During the confrontation and much to Stefano’s surprise his colomber reveals its desire to gift him with a magical pearl which would bestow the possessor all that he desires for in life. Stefano accepts the pearl but along witit also comes the realization that it is too late in life to do anything meaningful with the gift that he is blessed with.
There is a fable like quality to this story with rich symbolism embedded.
Lovecraft‘s ‘Cool Air‘ is the story behind the sense of deep fear that a draught of cool air engenders in the narrator whenever he encounters one and the cause behind it lies in the narrators miraculous saving from a heart attack by a very peculiar doctor who lives in controlled and cold temperatures maintained by circulating ammonia through pumps installed in the doctor’s apartment. It so happens that once the pumps in the doctor’s house fail and the narrator tries to rescue the doctor only to realize that the doctor had died long ago but is keeping himself alive with the help of this peculiar pumping mechanism installed in his house.
A fairly short story written in dense but alluring prose with some wonderful atmospherics that is trademark Lovecraftian.
It was a divided house but the majority of the members of our group veered towards Lovecraft’s “Cool Air.” Personally, I enjoyed Dino Buzzati‘s story more.
I am now absolutely convinced that all children should be exposed to about 500 – 700 best of best stories from across genres between the ages 8-14. Is this a difficult ask? I do not think it is if one looks at the ask closely. Years 8-14 means 6 full years which means 312 weeks. What this ask then translates into is 1.6 to 2.2 stories a week. Any society that does not allow this free and quality time for a child to explore is not worth living in. It is simply good enough to take the most powerful flamethrower to it. So time I think is not an issue. It is something else that stalls and stunts the courses of many high potential readers. My suspicion is that it to a large extent boils down to two things: Awareness and Access. Even here I can argue that access is less of a problem given the technology and content that is so freely available to us today. So broadly it boils down to awareness. But what kind of awareness? Awareness that reading is the most sustainable, life-long fun activity which when inculcated makes the least demands for us from our children and that reading has subtle but powerful material and non-material benefits and is an essential underpinning for meaningful progress in our world. When it comes to reading habits in children, the only people who can make it happen are parents and if the child is lucky then grandparents…Teachers too can play an important role but their role is and will be always be limited given the nature of setups across the world.
Another very personal observation I have (both of myself and of others) in matters of reading is that it takes about 3-5 good writers to tilt your reading habits permanently, to make you realize the fun and aha ! aspects of reading. It is their writings that act as springboards of curiosity for further exploration (In my case it is Ray Bradbury and Jack London). The 500 – 700 stories that I mentioned earlier on is for a child to find those 3-5 tilters. Yes… it does take a young reader so many stories and writers to discover her tastes.
Another question about reading I used to ponder quite a lot: Does reading mould character? At some point in my reading life it was an important question for me but not any more. I used to ask silly questions of myself like: Will a reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina help me understand women and their feelings better? Will it prevent me from behaving like a Vronsky at any point in my life? Will it give me the poise of Alexei Karenin? Similarly, will reading John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” help me understand better the plight of farmers as human beings? Will reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha give me the equanimity of a Govinda and make me a Buddha like person? Now I am not sure about the impact of reading on character. But what I am certain is that it leaves individuals with sharpened and alert consciences… and indivduals with alert consciences are the best prophylactics for the spread of ills in a society. In that sense reading generates a social good which is essential for a functional society.
And how should we measure ourselves as citizens if we do not contribute to the accretion of this social good?
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read the first three chapters of Mahabharata by Kamala Subramaniam covering the advent of Bheeshma in one of the foremost and popular mythological epics of India.
I had to start by explaining the difference between mythology and history and caution the members of the group to excercise their personal judgment in preventing the conflation of these two. I also had to explain that all over the world various civilizations have their own myth making and how they could have probably helped people in explaining to themselves some of the complex natural phenomenon they encountered while giving them an opportunity to express themselves creatively. Lastly, I had to explain to our group the vast and rich vocabulary that literature freely borrows from mythology and how themes from various mythologies have been employed to produce works of lasting literary value. In general I urged the children to spend time on exploring mythologies of various countries and the general fun they can have while at it.
Kamala Subramaniam writes with a lucidity which is remarkable and there are brief flashes of narrative brilliance which elevate the overall storytelling. Despite this, it was a mixed bag of reactions from children from finding the topic covered being boring to being fascinating.
There is that much I could do in making a start of introducing various world mythologies to members of our reading group. Hope to see more progress as we go along…..
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following two stories yesterday:
1. The Flying Machine – Ray Bradbury
2. Names/Nombres – Julia Alvarez
There is always a ethical question around the consequences of new innovations on a society and what should the rulers/Govts do about it. That paradox forms the crux of this seemingly simple but well written story. ‘The Flying Machine‘ is set in 400 AD China where the Great Wall (that splendid snake of stones which writhed with majesty across the entire land) is built and there is relative peace and prosperity in the country. In a setting like this the emperor’s attention is brought to a new innovation of a dragon like flying machine (he was soaring all about like the largest bird in a universe of brids, like a new dragon in a land of ancient dragons) successfully built and tested by a citizen. The emperor knows that it is a great leap forward and the new perspectives of looking at things down below while flying that the innovation facilitates. Yet there are also worries around what enemies could do to the Great Wall using this innovation. The emperor weighs a lot and takes the decision of eliminating the innovation and the innovator and root out the traces of its existence silently. It isn’t that the emperor is a ignoramus – he himself is a innovator of fine, complex and delicate machinery of great beauty.
We had a good discussion around this and children had an opportunity to ponder over the paradox and a majority of them aligned with the emperor’s decision…. a scary perspective I thought. I also took this opportunity to tell the kids that between black and white there are many shades of gray.
Names/Nombres by Julia Alvarez is a heartwarming reminiscence of a Caribbean immigrant into the US and the challenges she faces with her name and its acceptance into the society as she grows up. A short but well written story which highlights cross cultural differences, familial structures and above all the need for adjustment and accommodation. Julia Alvarez highlights the situation quite well when she writes:
“These relatives had such complicated names and there were so many of them, and their relationships to myself were so convoluted. There was my Tía Josefina, who was not really an aunt but a much older cousin. And her daughter, Aida Margarita, who was adopted, una hija de crianza. My uncle of affection, Tío José, brought my madrina Tia Amelia and her comadre Tía Pilar. My friends rarely had more than a “Mom and Dad” to introduce.“
Overall, a quick, good session which was received well, I felt.
Excursions Of A Bibliophile 