Ash Talks Books

Sarada Chiruvolu, the author of ‘Home at Last,’ left a pharmaceutical career to pursue a spiritual calling. She dedicates her book to her primary guru, Sri Sri Amma Karunamayi. ‘Home at Last’ is part-memoir, part-guide to spiritual enlightenment. She makes the point that spirituality is not something that can be achieved only “by those who leave their homes to reside in ashrams, monasteries, or caves. It is very much within everyone’s reach.” She says, “the purpose of the book is to delineate the Truth pertaining to the spiritual dimension of life as I have experienced it.” She goes on, “Ultimately, this book describes how the enlightened consciousness navigates one’s given life and integrates that life with higher consciousness after attaining realization. This is not a “how to” book in the conventional sense, mainly because the path to enlightenment can’t be laid out like the directions in a cookbook, step by step with exact measurements….however, the book does pro...

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. ...