The Golden 80s

From this year, I have decided to post weekly updates about things that I have noticed more than others.  Joe Satriani's New Single Virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani is back with a new single and new album. I and my friend watched the song, Sahara's, premiere on YouTube. The new single was an OK one similar to the songs in the Strange Beautiful Music album with the typical Satch flourishes, but it fell short of some strange expectations. The new album is titled  The Elephants of Mars . Covid-19: Kerala Imposes Sunday Lockdown My home state of Kerala went to a complete lockdown on two Sundays starting today after the Covid-19 positive infections spiked dramatically in many districts. The state capital and Ernakulam fared the worst, as there were reports and group messages of entire families getting infected. Meanwhile, Karnataka lifted the weekend curfew from Jan 22, but decided to continue with the night curfew.  Jacinda Postpones Marriage  New Zealand Prime Ministe...

There were two lifts in that building. In front of one of the lifts, there was a blue chair, that cheap plastic variety I would have bought if I were a slum dog. The chair was facing the lift as if they were engaged in an infinite conversation. The other lift seemed to be working and a yellow flash of light showed that it was coming down. The lift opened, I said second floor to the lift operator, went to where I wanted to go, and climbed the stairs down as the lift had no buttons. The only sure destinations were the top floor and the ground floor. As I made my exit, I saw a man lying on a tree branch. The tree did not have much leaves and the trunk was dark. I thought of cutting one of the branches, or simply pushing the man down. Then I decided to walk towards the left from where a strong smell of fried fish was wafting in.

Hilary Mantel wins the Booker prize for her "fly-on-the-wall account of the life of Henry VIII's fixer, Thomas Cromwell." To read the report, click here .

Buoyed by Keith Solty's posts on science fiction, I was reading a bit of SF today. I started by reading a few stories and then downloaded Karl Schroeder's Crisis in Zefra. While SF has not been my favourite genre, I still remember a lecture I listened to a few years back. It was delivered by a well-known scientist as part of a science journalism workshop. The one-hour lecture was well presented and as a listener I was busy scribbling names of the authors I have not read. The list I prepared is still with me and my job is still unfinished. Reading Solty's tag on SF led me to Ted Chiang 's wikipedia page. Ted is a technical writer who has written 'speculatiev fiction'. Well, that sounded interesting. This discovery on a dull, cloudy Saturday has forced me to look for Ted's free SF stuff on the net. Looks good! PS: Read a few poems by Robert Penn Warren. I tried using Google images to really understand the 'depth' of the imagery in poems. That experienc...

Slate picks up the best of 2008. New York Time's 10 Best Books of 2008. Salon's best books of 2008. Time magazine selects Roberto Bolano's novel as the best in 2008. Lastly, the best from the bible of literary criticism, TLS .

I read the The Art of Fiction by David Lodge in the early 90s. I was very much impressed by the book, which gave an insight into the world of literature. I did keep notes while reading the book and today I decided to put a list of books recommended by the author in various chapters. The books include the following: Defamiliarisation -Villete-Charlotte Bronte. For more on defamiliarisation, click here . Interior Monologue -Ulysses-James Joyce Intrusive Author -Adame Bede (George Orwell), Howard's End (E M Forster), As Good as Gold (Joseph Heller) Suspense -A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy) Skaz -The Catcher in the Rye-J D Salinger. Skaz Epistolary Novels -Pamela and Clarissa (Samuel Richardson), Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen), The Trick of It (Michael Frayn) Mystery Novels -Wilkie Collin's novels, Heart of Darkness(Joseph Conrad), The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) and Mrs. Bathurst (Rudyard Kipling). Names -The author says that names are never neutral in fic...

Like the greatest practitioner of the art, Thomas Mann, Daniel Kehlmann is a master of irony, deftly subverting the expectations of the reader, writes Daniel Johnson about Kehlman's novel Measuring the World. Read the article in The Telegraph .

As 2007 draws to a close, lists of the best books, both fiction and non-fiction, have started appearing. (This list will be updated in due course.) The 10 Best Books of 2007 by New York Times