Topic suggested by Gokul on Fri Aug 14 17:21:48 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
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Reviews of contemporary fiction, contemporary being anytime after WWII. :-). |
Responses:
- Old responses
- From: Ravi (@ envy)
on: Thu Aug 27 18:29:52
Gokul: One more wodehouse fan here. Coincedently, I just finished reading a Wodehouse short story (in a collection of stories by diff. authors) and was thinking how much I miss his writing here. :-). This happenned to be the first PGW story I had read in two years. He is app. not a very popular fellow in the U.S. :-).
- From: raja m (@ spider-wa073.proxy.aol.com)
on: Thu Aug 27 21:56:04
Gokul:
I too used to read Wodehouse a lot in India, great humour. I have read a few books by Steinbeck.
- From: Kanchana (@ spider-tk032.proxy.aol.com)
on: Fri Aug 28 18:45:02
One more Wodehouse fan here from high school days :-) Still chuckle when I think about that story with a pig in it [is it Summer Lightning or some such thing?] Ravi, our local public library here is stocked well with PGW.
- From: Gokul (@ ad33-220.arl.compuserve.com)
on: Fri Aug 28 23:48:17
Rajaraman/NOV
This is What Rediff says about Sheldon's Best Laid
Plans:
"One governor-turned-US-president who can't keep his fly zipped. One wronged maiden -- cut in the classic, strength and brains meets beauty mould that is a Sheldon trademark. One king-maker with outsizeambitions. And a liberal dose of aphrodisiac drugs and shapely corpses.
All stirred into a page-turning tale of corruption, and retribution, in high places".
- From: Rajaraman (@ 192.122.140.76)
on: Sat Aug 29 00:13:58
Gokul,
This seems to be right off the backside blurb on the novel. I'm interested in a more sincere review :)
- From: Ramamurthy (@ pppsl852.chicagonet.net)
on: Sat Aug 29 23:20:47
I have been an ardent Wodehouse fan for the past 30years.It is nice to see much younger guys than me taking interest in Wodehouse.When I came to this country more than 20 years ago,I could hardly find any Wodehouse books in Chicago.Slowly I brought my collection from India and I have almost all his popular books numbering more than 60 including allthe familiar characters like Jeeves,Lord Elmsworh,Mr.Mulliner,Psmith and Ukridge.Please keep this thread going. It reminds me of my medical college days.I am an interventional radiologist based in Chicago
Ramamurthy
- From: S.Krishnan (@ m52.chn.vsnl.net.in)
on: Wed Sep 2 03:01:37
Hey folks, Wodehouse's books are very very popular in India. Who can forget his immortal characters Jeeves and of course Bertie Wooster ?
I have read some of his books. Hoping to read his entire works.
"The Catcher in the Rye" is just brilliant work. Author Salinger is a very reclusive person and not much is known about him. He recently came out with another novel. I just can't forget the character Holden Caulfield .
Has anyone tried "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon ? It is another brillaint cult novel.
For sheer adventure yarns, I will recommend Desmond Bagley and Jack Higgins. They have written great novels.
How about technofiction ? Tom Clancy is tops.
I will continue after some time.
- From: bull (@ horus.erlm.siemens.de)
on: Fri Sep 4 05:52:11
Psmith is my favourite of all Wodehouse characters! And of all the Psmith stories I think "Leave it to Psmith " is probably the best! Has anyone read WOdehouse's last novel? Written when he was 93 years old but as vibrant and as hilarious as ever is "Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin". I LOVE that one!!
- From: bull (@ horus.erlm.siemens.de)
on: Fri Sep 4 06:03:51
Here is some Controversy!
Anyone read any of Salman Rushdie's novels? The Satanic Verses is of course banned. But there are a few others. I have read (or nearly read) one of them. Midnight's children. I dont know whats the big deal. Its not much of very wonderful writing or whatever! The allegory is good and interesting and thats what pulls on the story for about half the book. After that it really becomes extremely boring. I tried really hard but I just couldnt get myself to finish the book. I must've left about an eighth of the book unread. Maybe others have other opinions, Id like to hear those.
One more author of Indian Origin is Vikram Seth. I read the book of Sonnets Golden Gate. That is the whole novel written in Sonnets, though the sonnets dont necessarily conform to either Petrarchan, Spencerian or Shakespeareian variety. But to carry on a whole story in sonnets is probably very difficult indeed. I admired the pains he's taken about the sonnets but the story itself was pretty ordinary. Not very bad, but not anything extremely good either.
- From: S.Krishnan (@ m48.chn.vsnl.net.in)
on: Fri Sep 4 07:26:23
bull : I have read Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories". It is good. Rushdie's writing style is categorised as Magic Realism. He is one of its greatest practioners. Gabriel Garcia Marquez of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" fame is master craftsman of magic realism. BTW, most of the Indian writers in English were influenced by Rushdie.
I've read almost all of Shoba De's novels.
I have read Vikram Seth's "The Golden Gate" . It was quite interesting. I read somewhere that the great Russian poet Pushkin has practiced the verse style of writing.
I could not forget the impact Upamanyu Chatterjee's "English,August" had on me. Try it.
And Shashi Tharoor. His "The Great Indian Novel" is an engrossing novel.
Has anyone read Amitav Ghosh ?
- From: bull (@ horus.erlm.siemens.de)
on: Fri Sep 4 07:46:48
Oh Yes! I did read English August and also I saw the movie and both were good. I mean, forget the language and stuff like that, the content was really good.
I havent read Pushkin, so I dont know whether Seth is a modern form of Pushkin, but doesnt Pushkin come under the Byron category of mushy-mushy romance writing? I certainly wont put Seth in Byron's category.
But even though there is some kind of what you call "magic realism" (is it surrealism?) in Rushdie's writing I cant draw much of a parallel between Marquez and him! Marquez is too good!! He's got a kind of mystique around his stories!
- From: raja m (@ spider-wj012.proxy.aol.com)
on: Fri Sep 4 22:28:58
I recently read a book compiled from indian writers, some of the stories were excerpts from their novels. There was one by U Chatterjee, about how a sikh family is affected by the delhi riots, another from A Ghosh about his visit to Egypt, one from RKNarayan about a guys experience in a train, one thing good was one could finish a story in one sitting. Indian writers do bring a good change to english fiction/non-fiction.
- From: Gokul (@ hd11-147.hil.compuserve.com)
on: Fri Sep 4 22:31:37
Raja : Try out Arundhati Roy's "God of Small Things". It is an experience.
- From: S.Krishnan (@ 202.54.43.171)
on: Sat Sep 5 06:16:43
Gokul : Yes I will completely agree with you. "God of Small Things" is really fascinating experience. A mustread !
- From: badri raghavan (@ 206.103.12.125)
on: Thu Sep 10 05:39:02
krishnan!
i had a very memorable experience with j d salingers's The Catcher in the Rye. i never thought it is possible to write so much about a kid's mind frame on his way back home after being expelled from his school. a masterpiece.
i just read "eleventh commandment" by Jeffrey Archer and i must say i was deeply disappointed. having been used to the quality of kane and abel or not a penny more ...., i find it difficult to believe that ja wrote this. it is about a cia operative who is a pawn on the board constructed by the ambitious and ruthless director of CIA, helen dexter. strangely i did not find even sections of the book asking for a second reading. i was glad i finished it!
- From: Thomas (@ pollock-180.cac-labs.psu.edu)
on: Sun Sep 20 18:38:37
Guys, I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things.' Right after I got done, I turned back to the first page to begin rereading it. WOW!!! What a book? What amazing use of the English language intertwined within our Indian culture? Roy is just brilliant! The story is very subtle, as the vividness of imagery, symbolism, and humor dominate the work. READ THIS BOOK!!!!!
- From: Ramji (@ 205.177.170.52)
on: Fri Nov 20 10:24:01
The thread is getting rusty from nonuse.
Neville Schutte, anyone?
My favorite:
"Checkerboard"
"Ruined City"
- From: Raj (@ master.hyd.deshaw.com)
on: Tue Dec 29 07:47:12
PG WODEHOUSE!!
Nice to see PGW's name cropping up.. I make it a point to buy one PGW per month. What a humorist! Look at what he says when people accused him of repeating the same characters under different names in his novels :
"A certain critic--for such men, I regret to say, do exist--made the
nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old
Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now
been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet
Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar
charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I
have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old
Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make
him feel, I rather fancy. "
Mind you. I am quoting verbatim... This is in the preface to the novel "Summer Lightning". I read that 15 times for this preface alone. not to mention the 15 other times I read it for other reasons. Someone had mentioned Summer Lightning here and I immediately remembered these lines. Isnt SL also the novel in which Percy Pilbeam, the blight on the detective community of London, visits Blandings Castle and gives the shock of a lifetime to the puritan Lady Constance?
Oh! It is an idyllic world by itself, PGW's settings....
Somebody mentioned about the novels with Psmith. My favourite character. Does he have an appetite for talking...True, "Leave it to PSmith" is an absolutely rollicking affair..just yesterday, I finished it for the nth time(n=8)..couldnt put it down at all. Look at how he introduces himself 'PSmith, the P silent as in psychic,ptarmigan!". To the connnoiseur of "Leave it..", I would recommend "PSmith,Journalist", easily the best among psmith narratives...this is an out-and-out psmith extravaganza...about 50% of the novel has monologues bypsmith and Iam sure, a true blue fan of PGW wouldnt miss a single word of these!
Rajesh
- From: Ramji (@ 205.177.170.55)
on: Tue Dec 29 09:31:37
Rajesh:
Thanx for giving life to this thread which was getting dormant, and what better way to give it life than with remniscences of Wodehouse! Here is another sample - not an exact quote- " I went in to the room and came out so fast I almost met myself coming out."
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