Ash Talks Books

This is the 12th in the series of The Wimpy Kid Books by Jeff Kinney. In this book, Greg, Rodrick, Manny, and his parents go on a holiday during Christmas to a tropical island called Isla de Corales.  Everything that can possibly go wrong, does! Delayed flight, bad seats, lost luggage..the works. But it's something all of us can relate to, especially adults! And once they get to the island, they find it full of geckos, salamanders, spiders, sand fleas, mosquitoes, and other creepy crawlies! This leads Greg to exclaim that whoever thought of calling this place paradise must have had a good sense of humor! Rodrick finds himself a girlfriend on the island and is missing most of the time since he is K.I.S.S.I.N.G. The part where the resort has a 'wild side' for adults and a 'mild side' for families reminded me of the movie, 'Couple's Retreat' starring Vince Vaughn where couples go to a tropical island only to find out that the 'singles...

CARTHICK'S UNFAIRY TALES BY Carthick Blurb A damsel in distress. An evil dragon. A concerned father seeking a savior to rescue his daughter. A hero galloping off to the rescue – a knight in shining armor. Now THAT is stuff of fairy tales. But what if the father’s real concern is for the dragon’s hoard; What if the damsel’s reason of distress is the marriage proposal by her pompous and vicious savior; and what if the story is told by the horse who bears not only the overweight knight but also his heavy, shining armor all the way to the dragon’s lair and back, facing certain death in the process? What if there was more – much more – to all your favourite fairy tales than met the eye? This book chronicles not one but seven such unfairy tales – tales told by undead horsemen and living cities. Tales of mistreated hobgoblins and misunderstood magicians. Tales of disagreeable frogs and distressed rats and bears baring their souls. Once you read these ...

Chapter 3 is Reading for form II - French Structuralism (1950-1975) "Structuralism has its origin in the thinking of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure(1857-1913) who in the early 20th century revolutionized the study of language". Saussure felt that language should be seen as a system of signs.  By 'signs', he meant words that we use like 'way', 'yard', 'yarn' etc.  'Way' is 'weg' in Dutch and German. In 1950, Dr. Seuss introduced a new word, nerd, in 'If I Ran the Zoo.'. Now, it has become commonplace, but at that time, his illustrations that came along with the story alone helped people understand its meaning. Linguistic Determinism "The position which claims that our reality is determined by language is called linguistic determinism.' Levi-Strauss felt the structure of primitive thinking was binary.  He said our ancestors defined the word in opposites - light/darkness, human-made/natural, a...

Today, I picked up ‘A Grammar of the English Language’ by William Cobbett, which I’d bought in the early 2000s. This is part of the Oxford Language Classics Set. It was first published in 1819 and re-issued as a paperback in 2002. William Cobbett lived between 1763 and 1835. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, he was ‘the noblest English example of the noble calling of the agitator’. The text of this book is that of the 1823 edition, which includes grammar lessons “to lay the solid foundation of literary knowledge amongst the Labouring classes of the community, to give practical effect to the natural genius found in the Soldier, the Apprentice, and the Plough-boy…” It is written in an epistolary fashion and is by the author to his 14-year-old son, James, in the form of letters, each letter outlining a lesson in English Grammar. The book is dedicated to Queen Caroline. Many of the rules are as relevant today as they were in 1820. “Letter XVIII offers exactly the adv...

"Your document must be easy to read and understand", says Mr. Vasudev Murthy in his book, 'Effective Proposal Writing'  in one of the appendices. He lists the Gunning-Fog Index, "a test designed to measure the readability of a sample of English text." A high score indicates that your reader has to be highly educated to understand your text. A low score indicates that it is understood by all. The internet says a Fog index of 12 requires the reading level of a U.S high school senior( 18-year old) You can find The Gunning-Fog index here. The Flesch/Flesch-Kincaid Readability test "is designed to indicate how difficult a passage is to understand." says Mr. Murthy. Here I quote the internet" The lower the score, the more difficult the text is. The Flesch readability score uses the sentence length (number of words per sentence) and the number of syllables per word in an equation to calculate the reading ease. Texts with a very high Fle...

Today, I read a few of the pieces from 'Fierce Pajamas' - An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker- Edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder. The New York Times calls it 'A complete delight from beginning to end' and it's a national bestseller. I'd bought this anthology in 2010. Today, I re-read some of the pieces. The book has the following sections: Spoofs The Frenzy of Renown The War Between Men and Women The Writing Life A Funny Thing Happened Words of Advice Recollections and Reflections Verse I re-read the section on 'The Writing Life' and my favorite pieces in it included: 'The cliche expert takes the stand' by Frank Sullivan 'The cliche expert tells all' by Frank Sullivan 'How to achieve success as a writer' by Ruth Sukow 'Writing is Easy!' by Steve Martin 'Drivel' by Steve Martin and 'Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst' by Andy Borowitz I also read some verse. ...

Yesterday, it was Milad-un-Nabi or Prophet Muhammed's birthday. Today, I picked up 'Rumi - The Book of Love' - 'Poems of Ecstacy and Longing' with Translations and Commentary by Coleman Barks from a forgotten corner of my bookshelf and started reading it. I bought this from a Chennai bookstore in 2014 when I was actually looking for the poet Rilke's work. Jelaluddin Rumi is a Sufi mystic and poet who belonged to the time 1207-1273. Sufis call Rumi the 'Qutb' of love or the 'pole' of love, the other two 'poles' being Gilani, the pole of power, and Ibn Arabi, the pole of knowledge. Rumi's poems talk of surrender. Coleman Barks goes on to say that his poems appeal as much to 12-year olds as to older people. He says a creative writing teacher on the prime-time show Judging Amy, suggests that his students read 'The Great Gatsby' and 'The Essential Rumi' to learn how to write. Donna Karan reads Rumi on a fashion...

Judith Butcher's book on copy-editing, 'The Cambridge Handbook for editors, authors and publishers'  is considered an authority on the subject by most people in the line. According to Judith Butcher, 'copy-editing is largely a matter of common sense in deciding what to do and of thoroughness in doing it.' The kinds of editing include the following: 1. Substantive Editing: This aims to improve a piece of writing by improving its content, scope, length, level, and organization. The editor needs to look into issues such as libel and plagiarism. 2. Detailed editing for sense: This involves looking at each sentence, word choice of the author, punctuation, use of abbreviations, data in tables, checking illustrations and captions, etc. The editor needs to look into permission from the copyright owner and other legal problems. 3. Checking for consistency: This involves a spell check, use of quotation marks - whether single or double, checking against a house ...

Chapter 2 is ‘Reading for Form -1 -Formalism and Early Structuralism, 1914- 1960’ The Russians developed the so-called formal method, so they were called formalists. The Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) moved to New York City before the Second World War, and in the late 1950s and 1960s, his works began to be translated into English. Formalists were concerned with the form of literature. Jakobson in 1921 coined the term ‘literariness’ – or that which makes a literary text different from other texts. The secret of ‘literariness’, they concluded, was ‘defamiliarization’. Defamiliarization in poetry A number of literary devices are used. For example, forms of repetition, rhyme, a regular meter, stanzas, metaphors, symbols. The last two may be used in non-poetic language, too. Defamiliarization in novels An example: Russel Hoban’s Riddley Walker of 1980 “On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld p...

Chapter 1 is 'Reading for meaning' - Practical Criticism and New Criticism The author starts off by saying that to understand English and American thought about literature in the 20th century, we must go back to the poet, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).  Arnold felt that Darwin's theory of evolution made people question the Church and religion, so he placed a religious responsibility on poetry. He wrote an important book called 'Culture and Anarchy' in 1869 where he outlined his views. Arnold was familiar with Greek classical history and literature or 'Hellenism'. T.S Eliot in the early 1920s set out to define 'the best that had been thought and said in the world'. Eliot felt that poets must keep their emotion in check with 'wit'. The poet's private life should play no role in the presentation of the poem. Emotion must be conveyed indirectly. Eliot's own poems were complex and intellectual. He had been trained as a philosopher....