Category: Reads

How and Where: Acquiring books in NYC

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

As an eager reader who moved from Chennai, India to New York City, the exposure here to more readers in every direction I see has been incredibly beautiful. There’s a strong urge to go chat with a reader studying Yuval Noah Harari’s Lessons from the 21st Century in a crowded subway compartment when your recent favorite read has been Sapiens by the same author. Seeing Kindles out on the bus rides, people poring over books at Columbia, sitting leisurely with one at Central Park and cafes is a wonderful sight to see, especially if its a book whose title I recognize!

There are also the cons, though. Books are expensive here. Shelling out 20 dollars for a book here when one switch to amazon.in (India’s marketplace) displays on retail priced at Rs 499 (~8 dollars) gives one the unease of splurging. As a student at a not-so inexpensive graduate school, I have felt this twinge of unease innumerable times as I try to pick a book from bookstores here.

How else does one acquire books? I was thoroughly shocked, and immensely surprised by the scale at which the incredible New York Public Library functions here! My reading life has been so fortunate thanks to this resource, and so here’s how you can get yourself started with an NYPL membership (it’s ridiculously easy!). I’ve come to realize not everyone has this powerful resource on our side and we attempt to get our hands on the next book we want to travel with, so here is a quick why and how-to of getting an NYPL membership.

Why should you get an NYPL Membership?

There are over 90 libraries across New York, and the entire catalog is available online which includes e-books, CDs, DVDs, printed books & magazines that can be delivered to the library nearest to you for your convenience. You can request holds for books that aren’t currently available and be notified when they are, download books straight to your Kindle or other e-readers, and even get your hands on some academic books! All of this is COMPLETELY FREE! 

How-to: 

What you need: Just one piece of document showing your residence in NYC/NY State (this could be a mail you received or a copy of your lease etc)

nyc-library-card-museums

  • Get a copy of mail/lease document stating your full name and New York City/New York State residential address
  • Any Photo ID proof (University ID, work permit, DL, State ID…)
  • Visit your nearest NYPL
  • Inform the librarian that you’d like to start a new membership
  • Fill in a short, one paged form (~5 minutes) [You can also pre-fill this online]
  • Submit the form and show proof of address (from first point) to the librarian
  • And that’s it! Your incredible librarian will hand you one of these, and you’ve successfully unlocked the NYPL membership!

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If you’re near Columbia University, the Morningside Heights Library (115, Broadway) is the closest!

I hope this helps! If you have another resource that you would recommend for readers, do leave a comment below. I’d love to find new avenues to get books too!

Resources:

Locations: https://www.nypl.org/locations/map

More Information: https://www.nypl.org/library-card

You can connect with me here on Goodreads to discuss more about books and recommend some.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

A Wonderful Read: A Little History of Religion by Richard Holloway

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

Through my childhood, I’ve had the pleasure and discomfort of sitting through innumerable rituals at home, religiously uttering words that made no sense to me, partaking in every festivity until they became routine to me. The way my legs would cramp up after a few hours of sitting cross legged on the floor, the pangs of hunger we’d feel as we waited for the rituals to get over so we can eat, and what now I think of as the most curious ritual I’ve performed – placing carefully cooked and colored balls of rice on our terrace for our unfriendly neighborhood crows while praying that all the best things happen to the men in the family. We also had rituals where as a ten year old, I was expected to pray and hope for the best husband. Things rarely made sense then.

I’m sure you have some stories of your own. I’m not saying that this book explains why that particular notion started, why I would be woken up at 6 to feed the cawing crows that I was terrified of, but it definitely to me lent a different way of looking at religion. A way of putting things into perspective for the bad and the good. Everything my parents said, and my grandparents spoke about is there in that one chapter of Hinduism but it made so much more sense reading it now and being able to think about the chronology (the supposed one, in some cases).

The author’s writing style is straight-forward, seasoned with some lines of wry humor every now and then. His utter devotion to rationality in arguments is what won me over, and his presentation of multiple sides of the delicate topic for me came through wonderfully (but to begin with, I was and am atheist, perhaps that affected my capacity to tolerate his commentary). The one thing I’d wish for was that more was said about eastern religions, although what was said already held a high potency and helped me understand religion a little better.

Here are two beautiful quotes from the book I’ll leave you with:

Religion’s preoccupation with life after death so often made it an enemy of life before death.

Religion can be a drug that soothes the pain of existence. Only an ungenerous mind would fail to sympathise with those whose misery is eased in this way.

I hope you see the beauty in these words the way I did. If you do, you should reach out and grab a copy of A Little History of Religion as soon as you can. Happy reading!

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

If you want to see more such reviews, connect with me here on Goodreads!

Critique: Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

Until I read over 50 pages of the book, I didn’t realize what was so uncomfortable about the read. There was something off-putting about the book I couldn’t get my finger on and forced me to read more and research more about the book. Maya Angelou was 81 years old when this book was published. That’s 81 years of wisdom she is trying to impart to her readers, which is a good idea. Unfortunately, the book reads like 150 pages of preaching, of someone lecturing me on the rights and the wrongs with an insufferable tone of; having gone through it all’ and knowing it all. I’m certain these stories could still be looked at for inspiration from someone who has seen more of the world than I have but the tone and communication of it leave much to be desired. I also noticed the innumerable ‘humble brags’ littered around the book in completely unnecessary places, and perhaps that added to the fire. Here are the opening lines of three such opening lines in chapters:

“Many years have passed since the American Film Institute gave a tribute to William Wyler, one of Hollywood’s most prolific and prestigious directors. I, as a member of the Board of Trustees, was asked to participate in the ceremony… Of course I was flattered by the invitation and I accepted.”

“Recently I had an appointment with four television producers who wanted my permission to produce a short story I had written.”

“In the early seventies I was invited to speak at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem…”

I’m not sure about you, but for me this read was quite intolerable and I was glad for the short text.

Ever since I read Hornyby’s Polysyllabic Spree I’ve tried to stay away from reads I didn’t enjoy, but this one was short and I had to figure out everything I despised about it and rationalize my hatred. I would strongly encourage you to stay away from this read if you have anything else on your read list. This one might be worth the least of them all.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Find me here on Goodreads.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

A book from all the way back in 1954 that struck my heart red hot today as I trembled and shook, turning the pages in absolute fear, completing this read.

This book brought me to tears and it took me a while to bring myself back to reality. What starts out by being a rather playful narrative of kids lost on an island awaiting rescue takes a number of dark turns, and one of them struck awfully. The incidents escalated to their tremendously dark end, and the I felt myself breathe in panic alongside the characters as I ran, wept, hurt and hid in my fears. I wish the characters had been made more relatable through a scale of grayness instead of making them the very extremes of their traits, but that was a creative decision that still did work and hurt me enough to bring me to my knees internally as I begged for mercy from the pain that haunts the book through eerie events and troubling reality. I do agree with a number of other reviewers that some of the author’s decisions made it easier for me to extract myself from the pages, and it wasn’t as troubling or real as it could have been – but what it was by itself is quite a potent shock and I felt myself walking the world of Ralph and Jack as I turned the pages and finished the book in one sitting.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Lover of books and on the look out for books that made you linger on the pages, thoughts or troubles of worlds far away, unreal or terrifying. Find me here on Goodreads and let’s talk more books!

The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

I put off writing this review since nothing I write would comprehensively describe how awestruck I was at every sentence stitched and perfected by Rowan Phillips. Calling this just another tennis book is an insult to the epic work of poetry that it is, but that was all I’d known about the book when I picked it up. There are some words, lines and entire pages I will forever carry with me for the melody of the words with the tennis ball bouncing in a corner to give us the rhythm. If you’re a lover of tennis, and a lover of good writing (or one of the two), pick this book up. This has been the single most memorable work of art in the world of tennis, a position I had previously wholeheartedly awarded DFW’s String Theory. The two books are incredibly different and yet strike similar notes, with the authors using their prowess in writing and exploiting their readers’ love for the sport to definitively capture their places as possibly the best tennis writers ever.

Thank you Rowan Phillips for this magnificent work and for making me love the sport even more.

Here’s one example of the verses from The Circuit. I have over a dozen pages saved and wish I could share them all but am choosing to restrain myself so you have the opportunity that I did to dive into the book and listen to the song yourself.

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Source: The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey by Rowan Phillips, preview from Google ebooks

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Here’s me on Goodreads!

Bridge of Clay, a masterpiece delivered once again

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

How someone can write a book to follow The Book Thief is by itself a shock to me. Marcus Zusak, however, didn’t settle with simply publishing another work. He created Bridge of Clay- a phenomenal work of art that takes the reader on infinite journeys as he stitches together his majestic tapestry of an ode to Clay Dunbar.

When he wrote The Book Thief, what struck every single reader as a stunner was the personality of the Grim Reaper. No amount of its description is going to do justice to his way of personifying Death as not only witty, but coupling that with a humorous, curious creature that you’d end up admiring over every word in the massive work. What does he do with Bridge of Clay, now? He demonstrates that he can make any regular mortal as fantastic as he made Grim Reaper in (what was once believed to be) his one masterpiece. He makes Clay Dunbar immortal through his words, through his movements, his thoughts and his silence.

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I’ve never read an author who uses silence as much as he battles with words. Bridge of Clay firstly is a quiet book. Even in the anecdotes of five feral young boys fighting fist and heels over a game of monopoly, Zusak so beautifully establishes immense maturity and a depth of wisdom painting it in the background of a dying woman in the fore.

Bridge of Clay isn’t a thriller, yet it creates cliffhangers at the end of every single chapter. Not with stupid acts of bravery that leave the protagonist hanging off his nails in incredulously idiotic situations, the creator of Leisel and Max does what he does best to leave readers haunted until they flip the pages- building immensely potent emotional cliffhangers and breaks the narration with a second timeline; much like the tool employed in his first masterpiece.

To me, Bridge of Clay was every bit a masterpiece as The Book Thief, in its own vein, in its own individual regard. To me, it was the humor from Achilles, Telemachus, Hector and Rosy, the emotion constructed carefully around distinctly unique brothers, the awkwardness in the murderer’s talks, the thought behind naming of every single chapter in the book, the poetic depiction of emotions and the world of the Dunbars and the bridges made of 100% Clay.

To me, this was an epic of a novel and I personally hope I don’t have to wait another decade for Zusak’s next marvel.

With this fantastic start to the new year, I’m hoping to finding more incredible reads in 2019.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Here’s me on Goodreads!

How to Be Happy- Eleanor Davis

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

‘How to Be Happy’ is a collection of graphic short stories that speaks about the disillusioned beliefs of happiness we glorify today with just the right amount of abstractness to take away the author’s obviously cynical stance. The book hence ironically talks about how not to be happy instead, spewing sarcasm while speaking through the voice of the society’s happy and blessed.

Aim: Being Happy
Societal Procedure: 

20181025_133228.jpgEleanor Davis in How to Be Happy. 

I put off writing this short piece long enough to let it simmer in the back of my head, because of the sheer difficulty I had in comprehending a number of these panels and pieces in the book. It is an abstract piece of graphic novel, and the first one of its genre for me. I thoroughly enjoyed a few panels, and with some I felt myself sink into depths of cynicism as to what it could possibly represent.

20181025_133235.jpg                                                        On grief in How To Be Happy.

In all, a book I would recommend for exactly three distinctive, deep pieces that I felt resonate with me and if you read this book and find yourself connecting to something else I’ll understand that the book is as abstract and captivating as intended to be by the author.

An extremely short read I’d propose best suited for a lazy reader’s bedtime story or a quick break between work. A few of these panels have the capacity to strike iron red-hot, or go completely unnoticed depending on your moodiness. Perhaps that’s what makes the book as complicatedly abstract as I found it!

If you’re intrigued, here’s a short interview with the author Eleanor Davis on the book. This is a book I’d suggest if you’re interested in venturing into an unfound genre and decrypting the possibly profound messages, but if that’s not what you’re looking for- maybe it’s best you stay wary of How to Be Happy.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Book lover with constrained hours for reading on the lookout for recommendations- feel free to find me here on Goodreads and share your thoughts!

 

Restart Reading- Of Books That Make You Fall in Love

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t know I would fall in love that night.

Had I, I certainly wouldn’t have stumbled into bed in tattered old shorts and a disgruntled demeanor. He was shocking – he caught me off guard and he never stopped charming his way through the two hundred odd pages of P. G Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City. The wittiness of Wodehouse explodes out of every word he utters, and there’s something about the disarming intelligence and defiant charisma he struts around with that caught my attention.

“A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was leaning against the mantelpiece. As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and fixed it in his right eye. With the help of this aid to vision he inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke. “Hello,” he said.”

And thereby hangs the tale.

I recently read Mike and Psmith, my last first read of the Psmith series and recognized the bitter-sweetness of having completed the book and having completed the last time I’d pick a Psmith book anew. It struck me strange how close connected I’d become to this character, and how the poster industry has zero resources to placate me here (if there are any good graphic designers reading this, perhaps I could interest you in a great little product for the readers like me!)

Some books give you exactly what you’re looking for – a character to fall in love with, a plot thick as blood, a world you instantly want to move to (Whose doors are open as long as you stay loyal to it), a dystopia you struggle with and later vehemently respect or live in horror of – whatever you are looking for! And the largest challenge we face here is getting your hands on such a book, or worse – picking up a book if you dropped the last one weeks, months or years ago.

Psmith, to me, was a recommendation made by a friend who I suspect had no idea of the colossal effect it would have on me. There are a few books that made me throw aside months, weeks (and on one occasion – even years) of non-reading that I struggled through, and perhaps this might help you jump out of your reading slack and find yourself a great read to kick start your reading again:

Pick up a comic book. Treat yourself this time- BUY one:

  1. V for Vendetta: Perhaps not the most conventional approach- jumping in with a comic book. I might even have invited a few arguments about the nature of reading I was talking about but if you look closely, read intently and see between the panels, this book is all you need to throw you into an avalanche of spirited reading.
  2.  Watchmen – If you’ve already seen the movie and not read the book – I am sorry for you. The book surpasses the movie in technique, vibrancy of colors and uniqueness in panels- things that the movie makes us forget even exist. If you haven’t read the book, do pick it up. It’s worth the cost and will make for the best smiley face you have in your book shelf.
    Image result for watchmen
  3. Maus: This is on the more serious side, and perhaps I should think again before throwing this into the same mix, but if there’s one book that I can count on would make you read more books, it’s Maus. Designed by Art Spiegelman with the narration of his father and Holocaust survivor, this book devoured everything I knew of comic books and threw open a whole new world of books and graphic novels.

Pick up a thriller:

  1. Devotion of Suspect X: This one is easy, you’d get through it in a few hours and you’d come out of a fiction stronger and a book ahead of where you were yesterday. Isn’t that the kind of motivation you’re looking for?

Pick up a strange new world of fiction:

  1. If you’ve read Harry Potter, pick up The Song of Ice and Fire (and maybe the next book will be out before you complete the 6!). If you’ve read both, pick up Foundation Series by Asimov. If you’ve read that as well, give me a few months and I will read a new series of books and revamp this bit for you.

Or maybe the classic everyone else keeps rambling about:
 1. Animal Farm: You’re going to love this. It’s less than a hundred pages long and you can flaunt your knowledge of Communism as Orwell saw it for the rest of your life. It’s that simple. And you’d have read a great book whose ideology will stay with you for your lifetime and that’s always a plus.

2. 1984: I know it isn’t conventional to name two books by the same author but they’re both so good! And they’d both as likely stick with you and make you read more books so…

Read something depressing? 

I don’t judge, and I love my great share of depressing books and dystopian worlds. Here are some that shook me off my core and made me slag in my walk and hunch my shoulders in an attempt to curl up inwards for days.

1. Bell Jar: Sylvia Plath was always a mad poet who killed herself sticking her head in the oven to me. After this read though, I started to see reason in her stances to the extent that they drove me mental. To date I have the Fig Tree up on my wall, and it’s an immense source of inspiration if you’re looking for someone to tell you you’re not alone- that we’re all mad in our own statistically insignificant ways.

2. When Breath Becomes Air: Of course you’ve heard about it before. A recent release, New York Times Best Seller and an instant worldwide phenomenon in books, this is one you’ve seen on Goodreads and Facebook reading groups dozens of times. Here it is again to perhaps give you that last push for you to go order it on Amazon.

And finally – oh well – here go all my cents:

Pick up Nick Hornby’s Polysyllabic Spree.

Nick Hornby is an obsessive reader with an eccentric number of favorite genres and this book is literally his ‘Stuff I’ve been Reading’, where, quite rationally, he’s dropped all the books he’d never recommend us to read and stuck to the great great recommendations. This book churned me out of my reading slack and gave me a long list of books that went straight to my ‘To Reads’ on Goodreads to guilt me into reading. If you’ve stuck with me and read till this part of my article, you definitely will love that book.

Image result for polysyllabic spree

Beware though- it could get you depressed about the number of books you’ve read so far.

If you’ve liked my recommendations so far, and want to discuss some of them or even better- some new books with me, here’s my profile on Goodreads.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

 

Thoughts: Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

There are countless reasons why we love books- some of my favourite times, people, worlds and words are (quite unfortunately, if you think about it) from the fictional pages from books written eons and miles away from me. The most poignant of thoughts, concise of arguments and blatant of truths through my life have been aggregated through books. While that paints a picture of a bibliophile, I should add here that I am a very very regular, sparing reader who’s had a history of bad recommendations being handed over. That’s not the reason I am writing this now, though.

I found love when I read Wodehouse’s character Psmith and felt despair, shock and disbelief as I read through the creative masterpiece that The Book Thief was to me. When I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, I found myself.

The protagonist Jean Louise Finch (Scout) is a 26 year old who had stayed blinded to the realities of the world until the course of the book takes over. She had failed to recognize the disparities the color of skin paints upon one, and stayed ignorant of even her close family’s stances and nature. I found myself echoing every emotion she felt- from the tom-boyishness that kicks in harder when she hits ‘womanhood’, to the way she staggers under the weight of the newfound knowledge of living in a world so broken.  I could go on and on about this book, and I am sure I would do exactly that in the coming weeks but for now, I’m going to let Harper Lee’s masterful words take over- in the hope it will get you to pick up the book or start a conversation about it.

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

““A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

“You said, in effect, ‘I don’t like the way these people do, so I have no time for them.’ You’d better take time for ’em, honey, otherwise you’ll never grow.”

“I thought we were just people. I have no idea”- Scout on race, color and identification.

On accepting a harshly thrown invective, Atticus calmly stands his ground and reasons, “I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true.”

“I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour. I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.

I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is.”

The title, the plot, the character arcs and their personality trait all boils down to one question I have been asking myself since Persepolis. How much of what we are is based on where we come from? And what do you do when where you come from and how you were raised has made you blind?

Go set a Watchman, says Harper Lee.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Always on the lookout for book recommendations. If you have some to make or have books to discuss, do let’s connect on Goodreads. Here’s me!

 

Thoughts: Palestine – Joe Sacco

~ Swathi Chandrasekaran ~ Leave a comment

The last time I cried while reading a book was a decade ago when the final Harry Potter book was released and the words, ‘Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf’ were carved on stone atop a child sized burial mound. Ten years later, I found a work that moved me to tears through a non-fiction that only aims to narrate the staggeringly grim world we live in.

Joe Sacco brings out every little detail in one epic of his work, Palestine: every face, every word and every emotion detailed in the book is so well expressed and so well disguised as a passer by, a passing remark and a motion to be forgotten about. Yet they stay on- haunting the readers, ringing in our ears and singing their despair for us to hear over and over again.

I’d picked up this book a couple of months earlier, intending to finish it. But my lack of knowledge about the Palestine-Israel conflict screamed out to me at every page, every tile. It made me so uncomfortable that I dropped it altogether, deciding that I’d read an Introduction to Palestine- Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms to educate myself first. That… never happened. I read a few pages, skimmed through a few chapters and read up on Wikipedia to satisfy the mood-swings of my curiosity and calm my ignorance induced panic.

I picked this book up again this week and found it to be a work of art that stands easily alongside the titanic shadows of Maus and Persepolis- both books I had thoroughly enjoyed earlier. You don’t need a lot of prior knowledge to venture into this one, the author clearly knows the ignorance of his readers and has handled it here kindly, politely.

The story- if we could call it that- is a loose narration of the events and scenes as experienced by the author in Palestine and they paint a dramatic picture. We notice ourselves (alongside the author) first struggling to accept the pain Palestinians suffer through everyday. Later, just as the author does- we settle to accept it. It still aches, it still pains when an old orphaned mother talks about her son jailed and her daughter-in-law deported, but we’re too broken to feel the crushing blow again. That’s what I felt, exactly mimicking Sacco’s crude character.

By drawing himself to be a story-thirsty, fame-craving journalist, Joe Sacco does us a favour of allowing us to feel like the better human being every now and then. It allows us the cruel, tiny satisfaction of not being as bad, as being the bigger person. This realization hit me only towards the end of the book, and once again I gaped at the intricacy and planning this book would have taken to complete.

There are a few pages and a few panels that I know I will carry with me forever, ones that left an impact I haven’t yet entirely dealt with and I couldn’t help but share just a few here.

A panel that left me as bewildered as the author himself is made, right here:

A page that made me panic more about being unaware, and resolve to never relate to the apathy the speaker here boasts from with her all her gloried privilege and unmentioned ignorance.

One of the many many pages that took me to the brink of tears.

I would share a lot more but I’d end up stealing from your experience of reading the book if you haven’t already. It is a magnificent, devastating read, and one that I know I’d carry with me forever.

– Swathi Chandrasekaran

Here’s the book on Goodreads

Also- I’m always on the look-out for readers on Goodreads so if you’re on the site and you update regularly please do add me so we can mutually follow each other’s reads. Here’s my profile.