Salivating on my summer reading list

Exams are going to be over within a week, and I’ve already started dreaming up my summer reading list. There are books lying at home for ages that I’ve been trying to finish. Anyways so here it goes -

The Koran
Shame Salman Rushdie
The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus
Collected Short Stories Anton Chekhov
Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
On Liberty John Stuart Mill
Gilead Marilynne Robinson
White Mughals William Dalrymple
The Last Mughal William Dalrymple
City of Djinns William Dalrymple

And then there are some books I absolutely need to go back to this summer, to establish acquaintance again.

A House for Mr Biswas V S Naipaul
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ian McEwan’s early work – The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and two short story collections – First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
And of course, as always, Albert Camus’ The Outsider

Really looking forward to reading and lazing around on hot summer afternoons.

The Sacramento Bee

The Sacramento Bee is a collection of photographs of the last days of Derek Madsen. Afflicted by neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer, the images tell the story of Derek and his mother Cyndie. Poignant and moving, it subtly portrays the frustrations and the futility, as they fight against the inevitability of their predicament. It nearly drove me to tears.

(The Sacramento Bee recently won the Pulitzer for Feature Photography.)

Man United

Last night reminded us once again why we all love being Man Utd fans.

Last week, Man United lost 2-1 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals. It was a fighting 10-man display after Scholes was sent off.

If that wasn’t enough, Portsmouth sprung up a surprise at a visibly tired and depleted side at the weekend in a highly charged fixture at Fratton Park, reducing Chelsea’s deficit to just three points.

After that defeat, I was attacked by premonitions of disaster. Could this be a false dawn? On the threshold of another treble, could we end up winning nothing at all? Mourinho’s words could no longer be carelessly dismissed.

Football fans are a unique breed. Yesterday arguing with a friend (a Liverpool fan), I was again talking up the case of the Treble. I was didactic in my predictions about how United would demolish anyone and everyone this season. Talking about the second-leg against Roma, I was vehement in my declaration that United will rip apart the Italian giants at Old Trafford. I felt less certain about it when I was thinking about the game later. Yet the pride of a football fan is a prized thing – it must be defended at all costs, at all times.

And last night, as carnage happened at Old Trafford, I was a little close to understanding just why I am a Man Utd fan.

Modern Times

The themes of love and art as the only refuges in a world doomed to despair have been central in Bob Dylan’s mammoth body of work. Modern Times, in that sense, is no different. The songs are mesmerising and haunting in turns, right from the lustful Thunder From The Mountain to the rugged Ain’t Talkin’. Have just started listening to the album, though am getting the feeling Nettie Moore might become one of its overlooked gems. There are no false notes, instead there is a surety of touch.

It is equally dismissive of time. In fact, Dylan has become one of those rare masters whose work exists in its own sphere and independent of time. Modern Times is the masterwork of a legend at the pinnacle of artistic power, supremely confident of his own craft.

(By the way, Rolling Stone rated it as the top album of 2006. Though ratings cannot be taken too seriously, loved this conclusion in the magazine’s synopsis of the album. They wrote – Where can he go from Modern Times? Anywhere he goddam wants. )

Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan said it -

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

The nights have been long. Filled with the chaos and enormity of music. Some nights I’ve been calm. Others have been premonitory with turbulence, and so they’ve been – trance-like, absurd and nihilist – and there’s only been the music.

And a fantastic journey its turning out to be. Fellow journeymen have been R.E.M. , Prince, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Nirvana, Elvis. And Janis Joplin – am not sure have experienced this rawness and honesty of emotion before. The Beatles have been there of course, intermittent, taking the centrestage as ever, omnipresent. Revolver, Rubber Soul, The White Album – no one can match them really.

Aldous Huxley famously said, “After silence, the thing that comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Well I’ve chosen music for now.