Ash Talks Books

I bought on Kindle 'A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners' by Dr. A.V.Koshy. I've written poems without having done literature or studying poetry. I just love words and how they flow. So I have no idea how to write poems, but that doesn't stop me from reading, writing, and appreciating poems. The title of the book indicates it is for beginners, and I consider myself one, so here I'm the right target audience. This slim volume reproduced a series of Facebook posts by the author on poetry, complete with timestamps. I learned that those who have a sound grasp of punctuation, spelling, and grammar, also known as the nuts and bolts, or the mechanics of writing in any language, are better equipped to write poetry. There's hope for me, yet! Rhyme is an ornament of poetry. Types of rhyme include internal rhyme, slant rhyme, eye rhyme, and ear rhyme. Rhyme Schemes cover ab ab, etc. Parallelism is a technique used in poetry. Incidentally( this is my 2 cent...

In class nine, when I was in West Bengal, I discovered the work of P.G Wodehouse. Loved stories of Jeeves and Wooster, Blandings Castle, and some of his standalone books. As I mentioned in another post , a friend from Sahaganj gave me 'Indiscretions of Archie', one of Wodehouse's less popular works. I also read a few classics like 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott, 'Little Men', and 'Jo's Boys', and 'The Old Fashioned Girl' by the same author. I was a pre-teen then. My teen years were filled primarily with bestsellers by Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follet, Erich Segal, Robin Cook, and Michael Crichton. Of course, as I mentioned in another post , Gone with the Wind at 14 dominated my life, as did Thornbirds later. My friend in class 11 gave me a copy of 'The Firm' by John Grisham on my birthday and that led me to read most of his other books, too, like 'The client', 'The Runaway Jury' , 'A T...

I read Unladylike by the stand-up comedian Radhika Vaz sometime in 2016 and remember posting about it on my Facebook wall then. I went back to retrieve the post and saw that this is what I'd written: "Finished reading 'Unladylike' by Radhika Vaz. I think it's a must-read for wannabe Green Card holders coz she talks about the whole process right from writing her GRE to her teaching assistantship to studying in the US/ life in the US...I just felt like I was re-living my friends' lives all over again. In fact, she even took advertising like some of my friends did. So! I didn't get much out of the book coz it was almost like a how-to manual albeit her memoir, and not that funny! I follow her Facebook page and listen to her live chat occasionally. Today, she was addressing the 'sex addict' Harvey Weinstein. She said it was disgusting how sex addicts could be accepted in society while people with mental illnesses were treated like outcasts. ( Para...

I just came across  this  BRILLIANT website, in which writers have rewritten the first two passages of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone  ( one of my favorite novels) by J.K.Rowling in the writing style of other famous authors over time. So, in essence, this passage has been rewritten to mimic the writing styles of Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner, and Dr. Seuss. My favorite versions were the Raymond Chandler version and the original J.K.Rowling one. I have never liked Jane Austen's works. There I said it! Found the books too stuffy, boring and tedious. I have not read anything by Raymond Chandler, but I think I now will. I actually watched the movie version of Pride and Prejudice( I think it starred Keira Knightley) and the Hinglish Bride and Prejudice but found the book pedantic. Okay, Okay, calm down. Don't throw rotten eggs at me yet. I've read Sound and the Fury by Faulkner and hated it. I know. I know. It's a literary masterpiec...