7 Days 7 Books - Book 7 - Caesar

The last book took a lot of time to decide - since there were so many. I decided to keep it light and racy fiction for the last but so many of my other favorite genres get left out. But Historical fiction is what I like most, it would seem by the choice of this book.

The the 'Masters of Rome' series by Colleen McCullough would be rated a great series of novels about an explosive period of history - well written, researched and fantastic to read about. It is impossible not to finish the book once you start it.

As with every other book in the series, I picked the first of this series 'First Man in Rome' at the airport book stall at Omaha in April 1999. I've no idea why I did that. I am more or less a snob when it comes to literature vs the novels written for consumption. The higher levels of reading pleasure associated with literature cannot be obtained by the common novels intent on giving one a high for the moment. So, it must've been some secret pleasure of doing the forbidden that would've made me pick up the first book.

And I am glad that I did. The books chronicle the most intersting period in Rome's history - the decline of the republic and the rise of the monarchy. While the initial series was planned to be 5 books, she wrote 2 more at the end to complete the story.

The story starts from the rise of Gaius Marius in Rome's hierarchy of equals and ends with the rise of Octavian as Caesar - the ending of the republic and the start of the reign of Augustus as emperor. The history of this period, read as is, makes for fascinating read. The fictional narrative - with not much of fiction in it - is made interesting by the discussions that go on between the characters.

The strength of the series is the characters that walk around the story. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Servilia, Cicero, Cato, The Gracchi brothers, Aurelia, Octavian, Antony - and countless others who all lived and left a lot of literature for us to understand their thinking and philosophies. McCullough makes sure to peruse all of that and use their own quotes as much as possible and whizzes through the story like a whirlwind.

While it is interesting to read, the amount of confusion and wars that happened during this period of about 100 years - not to mention the civil strife, the scandals and in between all this, the lives of all the ordinary people and the egos of their leaders, makes one think of the nominally peaceful times that we are in. It is only with the advent of Octavian as Augustus that peace comes to the Roman empire. But only because Octavian ensures that there is no enemy left to breach the peace.

But the hero of the story is the other Caesar - Julius Caesar. Starting his life as a nephew of Marius, he raises slowly through the complicated Roman system of magistracy and elections and reaches his goal of becoming the First man in Rome - in the likes of Marius and Sulla. The first 5 books traverse this journey - from his life with his mother Aurelia to his death at the Senate. His various exploits, travels and the many loves of his life (mostly wives of other senators, earning his their enmity!).

The books are well-written, racy and if there is a slightest interest in history, it is hard not to love this series.

Although I just wrote about the 7 books - but choosing them means I have to drops other books that I considered and had to reluctantly decide against. I may write about them , may be, some day in the future. So the honorary mention goes to the following.

7 Days 7 Books - Book 6 - Cosmos

One of the things that has happened while doing this 7 days thing is that, I've started looking into my book shelf for books that I know were there and just don't know exactly where I put them in. And I come across other books and start reading them. 

The Landmark book shop, when it was operating out of the Spencer Plaza, was a great place to lose myself over weekends. There a many a happy weekends I've spent - walking to the British council library in the morning and from there to Landmark in the afternoon and spend the entire evening there . This was right after my college days were over and when I was discovering Chennai. 

So it was a personal loss when they close down this store a few years back and the one in Ampa mall feels more like a gift shop than a book store. Finding a book store close to heart is very important for every bibliophile and these days my favorite haunts were the Starmark in Phoenix Market City and the Odyssey. 

It was in the erstwhile Landmark store that I got hold of 'Cosmos'. I have read about Carl Sagan earlier in Sujatha's books and that was more of an introduction.  Strange as it may seem, my introduction to this world of popular science books started with Alvin Toffler and his fantastic 'Future Shock'. 

I've read 'A brief history of Time' during college and though I couldn't understand half of it, I was hooked to this genre. 

'Cosmos' is interesting because there is nothing there that is difficult to understand. It is sort of a philosophical musings over Astronomy and other branches of Physical science. There is some science, some history and a lot of musings. That's what makes it a great book.

Carl Sagan speaks directly us and in his own voice, like a gentle professor teaching his students - explaining in simple terms the complex science behind the stars, searching for Aliens etc. It is impossible to put the book down once you started on it. 

It is important to understand the basic of Carl Sagan's teachings from the book - which to me, essentially boils down to - question everything. Scientific approach makes one skeptical of everything and be at awe at Nature.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” 

The perspective of who we are is very important if we do not self-destruct in a few years (or a few hundred years). But to the universe itself, we are not that important. We are just a small blink in the Cosmic timeline and it is kind of terrifying to think that no one cares whether this planet exists or now.

The television series which was made out of the book - or is it the other way around - hosted by Carl Sagan is surely to be watched, in case books seem terrifying.  

When I was thinking of these the other two books that I wanted to write about were 'A brief history of Time' by Stephen Hawking and 'Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman' by Richard Feynman.

'A brief history of Time' was read much earlier than Cosmos and while I did not understand all the science in that book at that time, it had a profound impact on the way I look at everything around me. Hawking remained a favorite and while I tried to read further books by him, they were - to me - way above my head.

Richard Feynman worked and lived in Los Angeles and he worked out of Caltech. I remember seeing the life-size portrait of Feynman at the Caltech book store - while wandering the streets of Pasadena when I lived there. I think I picked up the book there because he was looking cool in the portrait. It tells something that I started writing about the man when trying to write about the book. 

Feynman's book is more of an autobiography and not exactly a science book. Nevertheless it is an interesting book to understand how a scientific mind works and what curiosity can do to your life. Many years later, I condensed the chapters of the book to be told as bed time stories to the kids and it was easy to see why Feynman is such a captivating writer - the kids loved the stories (Read more about it here -> Bedtime Stories). A few years later, Vanathy read the book on her own and hope took the same learning I've had from it.   

7 Days 7 Books - Book 4 - My experiments with Truth

I think this is more of a category of my inspirations. I read 'My experiments with Truth' for an exam during school days, conducted by the Gandhi Museum in Madurai. I read it in Tamil and book was distributed free for the exam and I must've been in 5th or 6th standard at that time.

The book had a profound impact on me - it is what it says in its title. Gandhi's relentless experiments with his own self, his beliefs and his life. And it takes a lot of courage to write a book like that - baring the inner workings of the mind which was philosophizing all the time and also working continuously towards the Independence - slowly but steadily. 

What is Truth and what to do with it? It is a difficult question - to me, who always play the truant with it - to answer. Gandhi talks about cleansing the soul of oneself and being answerable to none but one's own self. And he asks everyone to do it. There is no preaching or formulae here - just an instruction to look into yourself and criticize. 

And I've found that to be the most difficult part to do as you go further into life. The amount of self-importance and hubris felt inside raises and it is difficult to find the will to look critically at one's self. But keeping at it is the only way to go about life, I believe.

And that probably is the reason why the effort to bring him down from that pedestal - it is difficult for most people to look at themselves for what they are and live with what they see. The lack of empathy and the madness of mind can only be satisfied by making sure that everyone around you is the same. This is what we have to resist.

The experiments not only have him treat everyone equally - but also his struggle to ensure that he does that with his adversaries as well. This - the need to look beyond one's religion, caste or any other matter of difference and look at the value of person is what is being eroded in today's India.

I disagree with Gandhi on a few things - his belief in the Varnashrama is something I cannot reconcile with his overall outlook at life. While he took the stand to treat everyone equal, I do not think he did not work towards the elimination of the same.

The other book that need to be written about in the same vein is Mandela's 'Long Walk to Freedom'. Like most of the books I have bought in the last 20 years, this one was also picked up in one of the airports and I spend the long flight to finish reading it in one sitting - it was that good a book.

Mandela's approach to the ANCs struggle for Independence is based on the same principle as Gandhi - in that he did not sought to eliminate his opposition but rather worked towards a world where the space can be shared with his adversary as well ("Democracy meant all men to be heard, and decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be clashed by." - NM).
 The book refers to Gandhi's struggle in SA and how that influenced Mandela's work in the 1960's and afterwards. It is inspiring to read that.

Now, the third person in this trinity whom I've read a little - but has a lot of respect for is, Martin Luther King Jr. Living in US for a few years of life has shown all the difficulties of being in the minority population for once and anyone who tells otherwise, I've seen that, is lying. 

In a way, MLK's story and speeches are more awe-inspiring than Mandela. Because that he was part of the minority population terrorized by a majority population for a few hundred years. The moral courage displayed by him at Selma and Montgomery are something that is not  to be taken lightly. 

I often think what happens when a leader of such stature arise from the minorities and the oppressed of this country? Do we have a civilized response for such a leader? Do we - as a people - have the moral courage to look into us as a society and rid us of those evils? Sadly, I often feel, the answer is no.

7 Days 7 Books - Book 3 - Love in the Time of Cholera

Reading books is an intensely personal exercise. One of the reason why many don’t like it. When you read the book the world outside stops and you are immersed in the world the book creates. A good book actually obliterates the line which separate the real world and the world it creates.

I don’t remember how I started on the Latin American literature. By habit, I read a book and find all the books I can around it’s central theme or author, and read more books around it. This has worked well in terms of exploring what I like in an much easier way. And there was a period where I took stock of the writers in all major languages in the world and came up with a list of authors to read. However, this list does not have Marquez at that time.

And the first book I read is 'One hundred years of solitude' and the world it introduced was just spectacular. The use the city of Macando as a character in the story was something I was mesmerized with. There was nothing like that I've read earlier. And my love affair with Gabriel Garcia Marquez started.

So it was that I ended up reading 'Love in the Time of Cholera'. It was such an unusual book. Just as the city becomes a character, here it is Love and Time which becomes a character of such intricacy and neatness. The love story starts - or continues - when the protagonists are actually in a very old age and goes towards an end through a series of flashbacks into the story of their lives.

The seductive nature of the story lies in its treatment of Love and the narration which itself feels like walking in and out of multiple dreams. The absurdity of a pure love, Ariza hears about the death of Urbino when he was lying naked with a prostitute and rushes of to profess his love to Fermina while she is preparing for the funeral of Urbino, her husband. What is pure here? The physical love or the more complicated spiritual love? The whole absurdity of this first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the book. 

Reductio ad absurdum is what explains love. When reduced to the basic logicality of expression, Love feels like absurdity. And this is what the book brings out brilliantly. As a love story, it cannot be more absurder than that - Ariza waiting in the wings for wooing Fermina again, while she completes a full life with her husband. And Ariza is not chaste in his waiting either, though he professes innocence to Fermina all along, he goes through a series of women like there is no tomorrow and there is no guarantee that he will stop that behavior when Fermina accepts him.

If all that, then what good is the book? The book works precisely because it brings out all that. There is no perfect love - as there are no perfect human beings - what we have only a broken life, where it is impossible to give anyone a perfect love, we make mistakes, fall mightily and try to rise, say or do the wrong thing again and again and yet the only thing that makes all that tolerable to live through is the love we have for the other. Without that tolerable entity to overlook the faults of one, it would be an impossible proposition to live a life of any magnitude. To me, that is the whole point of this book.

Ariza's faults are many - but he survives all that through the love he has for Fermina. Though it sounds cheesy to read that, the book works through the magical writing of Marquez and the witty humor that is spread all through the book. 

The movie version of the book - for those of you not patient enough to read - remains true to the book and is probably one of the best adaptions of film, I've seen. 

The book works for anyone who is a romantic at heart and still have a childish belief in Love being a cure for all the ills of life. There is nothing that can cure that kind of romanticism, of course and for those of us who are such, Marquez is a demi-god.

7 Days 7 Books - Book 2 - Crime and Punishment

My tryst with the Russian literature starts in my school days. 'NCBH - New Century book house' is a famous book shop (still is!) in Town hall road in Madurai, which also happened to be the distributor of the erstwhile Soviet publications of Raduka, Progress, Mir and many more. Many of which books are usually very cheap and used to be of very high quality. I still have most of the books I got from these days. So, it was through this that I got my introduction to Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Sholokov, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekov and of course, Tolstoy.

Except for Pushkin and Chekov, it was mostly reading way above my reading level. But I persisted. Names like Anoska, Natalya, Aksinia, Sofya,Masha use to mesmerize the mind. And a lot of my thinking evolved with these masters.

I must've read 'Crime and punishment' around this time. The date on the book says 1992 (I mark the books with the date I purchased them). And it must've been a drudging read as well. 

I picked up Dostoevsky - after the initial days - again during my first years in US. 'The brothers Karamazov', 'Demons', 'The Idiot' and 'White nights' were all read in quick succession and Dostoevsky , the prober of human souls became an all-time favorite.

The image that always comes to mind the moment I think of 'Crime and Punishment' is that of Raskolnikov, rushing off after murdering the old pawn broker, Alyona. I, somehow, formed an image of this scene and it always retains itself in mind.

It is probably the most vital moment of the story. Raskolnikov falls further in life from here and the moral quandary he finds himself in - becomes messier day by day. His love with Sofya, the prostitute, who teaches him the Christian virtues is another strange affair. Though fallen in the eyes of the society, Sonya is a much better human being than everyone around her and the conflict of values - personal vs the society - cannot be more in contrast.

Raskolnikov keeps dreaming of sequences - his soul is in torment of the murder and thievery he has committed - though the right way forward seems obvious, he has to struggle with himself to get to do the right thing. The terrible cost of doing the right thing is always in front of him, stopping him from doing it.

Dunya, his sister, who was ready to marry the wrong person for the sake of her family, comes in contrast with the values of Raskolnikov and at times, disgust him. His nihilistic view of the world is shaken by the values of the women around him - Dunya and Sofya.

Sofya tries to make him do the right thing - confess the crime but it is difficult for him to do. This personal struggle of being himself is the crux of the story.

'Crime and Punishment' still evokes a strong reaction when read. I found the morally flawed Raskolnikov to be a reflection of self and the torments he puts himself into was very familiar.  The hero is me. The book raises a lot of questions about the definition of the morality and the struggle to conform. 

Dunya was ready to marry for gain and considers herself to be making a sacrifice for the family. Raskolnikov feels disgusted at this and stop her from that madness. What is the moral stance for one here? what is the part of society that put Dunya in that position? - questions, questions and more questions - there are no simple answers here. 

This is the first book that had a deep psychological impact on me. It made me think, question and put to test all the beliefs, I've had. It made me look at the society's morality in disgust and norms as rotten. A lot of the conditions of the 19th century Russian society are still in force here and a lot worse still pervades the society. How do you figure the right from the wrong? Is it even binary?

7 Days 7 Books - Book 1 - Pride and Prejudice

I got tagged to share 7 book covers by a friend. I was not sure what is the point of just sharing book covers - so thought I would rather write about 7 books that made a difference for me in the next 7 days (and that depends a lot on the work schedule!!)

First, I am going to restrict myself to 7 English books and may be later, I might write about 7 Tamil books as well. And I have no set criteria or choice in choosing these books but these are the books that come to mind the moment I am asked to chose. So to the first book.

I read 'Pride and Prejudice' just when I finished college - in fact, most of these books are going to be from that period - when I was flush with money and had nothing else to do in life other than shopping in Amazon (yes, customer since 1998!) and Barnes and Noble, all the time.

And it was not the first Jane Austen book I read - that was 'Sense and Sensibility'. After watching that excellent movie version by Emma Thompson, I picked up the book and was hooked. When I found that Jane Austen has written only 6 or 7 novels in total, I went ahead and got all of them. 

What I loved in 'Pride and Prejudice' is that unending optimism of the story. While her other stories have strong heroines - there is a sense of disappointment and melancholy that pervades at places. You know that those girls are not entirely happy. But Lizzie is different. 

She is full of bonhomie and positive energy. There is nothing that will disappoint her or make her feel bad about herself. She always puts a positive spin on life and lived it. 

I used to wonder what would've happened if she did not end up marrying Darcy. The answer , to me, is that she would've married someone else and be that same girl she always was. Love is nothing but a part of life for her and would not have taken away her spirits.

That sets the tone for the entire story as well. There are no bad endings - even the wicked Wickham marries off (although whining!) and behaves in the end. Everyone ends up living, if not happily, at least rich, which is something. 

But why is it the top book in my list? because it is a romance and all romances are personal. The Lizzie - Darcy love story is not unique or the greatest in the world, but what makes it lovable is that the story is told as a product of their personalities and the events just happens around their personality. That is absolutely what is different from every other story out there. Lizzie does not change or lose her perspective anywhere in the story. Darcy - changes for the better - but is still the proud man we see at the Netherfield ball. And what they despised at the start becomes the one element that they fall in love with at the end. And that is wonderful to read about.

Probably, this is the book I've written more about than any other. And will write more but for now, that is the first book in the series.