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Book Tags

Jun 3rd, 2005
by gargi.

I have been infected with, what the blogger who infected Yazad calls, the

….. intellectual version of venereal disease.

And Charu has passed it on to me:)

So here goes.

Total number of books I own: Never really counted. But 6 tall book shelfs are groaning under the weight of the books! Every month i add a few more. My mother threatens to revolt every so often and we sell pulp that all of us have purchased. But, I usually see it as clearing up of shelf space to put new books.

Last book I bought: Ek nahin 4 books! Patrick French – Liberty or Death. I gave my last copy to KD.Bimal Jalan on the Future of India, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Adi Deo Arya Devta – a panoramic view of Tribal Hindu cultural interface by Sandhya Jain.

Last Book Read:
Blink – I really didn’t enjoy this offering from Malcolm Gladwell as much as I enoyed Tipping Point. Though i enjoyed the bit about how decision making becomes more imprecise and more likely to fail with more data. In most cases less is more.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me

Difficult to say. it keeps changing with time. My current favourites are:

The Complete Calvin & Hobbes. A little boy and his pet tiger and their view of an extremely crazy universe.

Mahabharat - various authors. The ones that i have read most frequently are by Kamala Subramaniam and C.Rajagopalachari. The human drama, the slow spiral down to violence, a war in which less than a dozen warriors survive, the story of Draupadi the nemesis of the Kauravas.

Gospel according to Jesus Christ – the review is here.

The The God Particle – if the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question by Leon Lederman- the first science book that i read – and I was hooked. There is this incredible three way imaginary – imaginary because Democretes has been dead for just over 2000 years:) – conversation between Lederman, Demorcretes and God on the nature of the universe. Lederman is a Noble Prize winner for physics and he explains the search for the ultimate particle.

Knightfall series of Batman Graphic Novels. Dark, moody, pshychotic,violent and on the edge – and this is just Batman. Brilliantly drawn, this set of graphic novels that includes Knightfall, Knightsend and Knightsquest.
My five Heraldblog, Kamesh, pH, akshay, and jayadev.

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Posted in: Books.

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12 Comments on “Book Tags”

  1. #1 Bernardo
    on Jun 4th, 2005 at 11:26 am

    When I moved to this place that I live in now, I donated tons of books to the Chicago Public Library system and wonder how many shelves I would still have. I now have one big bookcase and several tubs of books (that somehow magically survived the purging).

    As I sign of your blog tonight, you’ve given me more food for thought.

    [Reply]

  2. #2 Bernardo
    on Jun 4th, 2005 at 8:49 pm

    I am proud to say that I am also the first person to vote for your web site in Blogarama. I gave you a 10! Your blogs have always been well-rounded, wonderfully written and just a treasure to read.

    [Reply]

  3. #3 Patrix
    on Jun 4th, 2005 at 11:23 pm

    Cool! I see two books in your list that also featured in my “5 books that matter to me”

    [Reply]

  4. #4 Charu
    on Jun 5th, 2005 at 3:36 pm

    what is this moms and book hatings? guess it is more exasperation than hate :)

    [Reply]

  5. #5 gargi
    on Jun 5th, 2005 at 4:29 pm

    i guess moms look at books as dust attractors:) atleast mine does !

    [Reply]

  6. #6 gargi
    on Jun 5th, 2005 at 4:47 pm

    bernardo, :) thank you, kind sir!

    [Reply]

  7. #7 gargi
    on Jun 5th, 2005 at 8:56 pm

    Patrix
    great minds think alike – i adore calvin and hobbes and the Mahabharat is my favourite novel

    h

    [Reply]

  8. #8 kamesh
    on Jun 8th, 2005 at 5:34 pm

    Sorry, I was quite busy with some deadlines. I will come up with my book tags in a couple of days.

    P.S: By the way my name is Kamesh and not Kamlesh ;-)

    [Reply]

  9. #9 gargi
    on Jun 8th, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    sorry kamesh for the error:)

    [Reply]

  10. #10 Trivial Matters: Blog Pandemic
    on Jan 12th, 2006 at 4:41 am

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Wednesday, June 08, 2005 Blog PandemicRemember chain mails, yeah those vile polluters of your inbox that vowed dark consequences if you didn’t spreading their evil seeds. I would rate them just below the Nigerian email scams in most disliked things in your inbox.The blogoshere in recents months is sufferring from the slightly more refined variant of chain mails in the form of book and music memes.It’s a bloody pandemic everywhere you turn you find list and lists of them.It just shows now connected the blogesphere is.No I’m not complaining. I just bracing for more of these.I was book-tagged by Anand of Locana, Harini of POV and Vulturo.I was music-tagged by Satish of Appliblog and Rahul of Livinghigh.”Yeah, I’m combining both the memes it’s make it simpler AND Books and Music”On to question one.Volume of Books(owned) and Music(stolen)?Books are great they are easy inherited and Music easily stollen.My collection is an amalgamation of my dad’s and my grandmothers collections both huge readers.I add my 5 cents here and there.I would put them at 800 books in Pune and about the same in Bombay.Music are so easily stolen, I should be on the RIAA most wanted list. I would put it at about 30 Gb.Well I use bit-torrent to pimp stuff.”P2P is dead, Long live P2P”I also ocassionally buy music but think the process to be archaic.Last book/Cd I bought ?The book I bought was Julius by Daphne Du Maurier.The book till now chronicles the sometimes autistically cold Julius, always on the look out for the “something for nothing”. It’s fast entering my list of favourites.I also bought The World is Flat by Thomas Friedmen when I was in dehli. I reviewed it here.The last CD is bought was Bruce Springsteen’s Devils and Dust. It was fiercely acoustic countryish album. Not bad is my verdict. I looking out for the new Oasis and Coldplay albums.Books/Songs That Mean a Lot to Me.- Books -God Speaks by Meher BabaGod Speaks incorporates all of life into a spiritual saga. The only protagonist is God, and his story encompasses all individual biographies. It is God himself who becomes the three basic processes for the growth and transformation of consciousness: evolution, reincarnation and involution (the spiritual path of return to Himself).I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz by Hafiz, Daniel LadinskyFabulous of collections of Poems ever written I would think. Some of the feeling must have been lost in the translation but oh boy! they are powerful.”Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Characterby Richard P. FeynmanFeynman surely the coolest physicists ever. The book at most can be described as intelligent,unusual and funny.The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas AdamsNot worthy of my description.- Music -Stairway to Heaven – Led ZeppellenWonderwall – OasisParanoid Robot – RadioheadLast Kiss – Pearl Jam Message in a Bottle – The Police- Nominations -I hereby nominate Anna , Nick (I doubt you’ll comply), Phal & Rahul(livinghigh)& Geetanjalli [do the books meme],Kathak and Rahul.If I’ve missed someone I’m sorry I’ll nominate you when the movie meme comes out. [...]

  11. #11 Heraldblog: Book meme
    on Jan 12th, 2006 at 6:42 am

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] From the lovely and talented Harini, a book meme:Number of books in my collection: Maybe a hundred or so. I tend to give them away when I’m finished.Last book bought: Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. Last read: Just finishing up Where the Right Went Wrong by Pat Buchanan. Buchanan holds liberal views on foreign and trade policy, and makes mincemeat of the neo-con taste for Democratizing the Arab world. But he’s a mouth-breathing wingnut on social issues. A challenging book for anyone who still thinks in terms of “right” and “left”, which makes the title somewhat ironic, don’t ya think?Five books that mean a lot to me:A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Howard Miller. Probably because I don’t read that much science fiction anymore, and this is such a classic of the genre. More that just a post-apocalyptic tale of human politics, greed, and corruption, Miller’s story is planted firmly at the intersection of science and morality, with enough Catholic doctrine to suspend disbelief. A great read.All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque. One of our family rituals growing up was to walk to the bookmobile, which appeared magically in the parking lot at the Cork Lane Shopping Center every Monday night. When I was 11 or so, I checked out Remarque’s novel, my first “adult” book. The Vietnam was was raging then, and I was just old enough to be hip to the undercurrent of youthful rage against Nixon, the war, and American society in general. This book fueled the rage then, and does the job now.Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I could go on and on about this little gem. In fact I did, nearly 100 pages worth in my master’s thesis at Marquette University. Carson’s seminal work signalled a sea change on how the press, and then the public, viewed corporate America’s chemical war on nature. But this is far from a tree-hugger’s manifesto. There’s nothing shrill or unreasonable about this book, and Carson relies more on science, rather than just emotion to make her point.Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or anything else by Mark Twain. If you want to understand America, read Twain. I don’t mean the gauzy, evangelical George W. Bush America. I mean the America of common sense, and courage, and folk wisdom that pours out of every little town and big city in America. If I was George W. Bush, I’d burn Twain’s books.Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl. Frankl spent five years in one of Hitler’s death camps, and he uses that experience, plus a first rate intellect, to fashion a philosophy of living that optimistic and realistic at the same time. No small feat in the modern world.And now I pass to torch to Blogenlust, Doc Saaron; Folkbum, Dave’s Blog, and 201K. [...]

  12. #12 India Uncut
    on Jan 12th, 2006 at 9:21 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Jal, so here’s his Book Tag. I’ll keep updating this list, so if you Book Tag, please mail me the permalink. amit varma, 3:38 PM| write to me | email this to a friend | permalink | homepage India UncutHOMEPAGE [...]

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