For last couple of years, I have been reading Galpa Samagra, a collection of short stories by Sunil Gangopadhyay. Let me start by mentioning that Sunil always described himself as a poet first, and considered rest of his skills or occupations as secondary. But honestly speaking, I do not understand poetry — neither by Sunil nor by anybody else. My foray is short stories, and I am happy with them. Continue reading
Image source: Amazon.
This was a very hectic week, in which I had to travel a lot, both by bus and train, taking long breaks in between. It was an official trip and exhausted me completely. Today all affairs have completed, and tomorrow would be my last day in Ahmedabad. All along this one week duration, my constant companion was a recently published novel ‘I Owed You One’ by Madhu Vajpayee. I had received this book from BlogAdda for review. Before I start making my comments on the literary aspect of this work, I would like to stress that books like this one are the reason why printed books will never go extinct. The publishing work of this book is outstanding, and being an artist, I could immediately appreciate and admire the piece of art that the publisher has come up with. Continue reading
Book cover image source: Amazon.
Along with rapid growth and development, the IT revolution has also brought in several problems which were previously not known. The young generation is still inexperienced in its dealings with the outside world and does not have any possibility of support from the older generation. How does it fight its battles continues to enjoy the focus of contemporary literature. The recent changes in society in general, and in the workplace in particular, present a lot of scope for experiment in literature. Still, the numerous books that have been set on this background ended up being similar to each other, just like the uniforms of the professionals whose lives they narrate. Continue reading
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A well known publisher once expressed his concern about the declining reading habit these days. He seemed to be extremely worried and started a discussion on Facebook asking how to encourage reading habit. Some people gave very good input. The discussion was over in a few days — the usual lifetime of any Facebook post. However, couple of months later, the publisher posted the same query once again! This time nobody replied to him. Continue reading
Celebrating World Book Day on 23 April.
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photo credit: practicalowl I need bookshelves. via photopin (license)
In the fast paced life of these days, it is getting more and more difficult to devote time for literature. Under such circumstances, short stories come to our rescue, and by their peculiar format, provide us means to stay in touch with literature, and satiate our aesthetic and intellectual needs. The advantages brought by short stories are two fold. First, there is a sense of achievement as we can complete reading each piece in whatever time is available to us. Secondly, just in case the work is not up to our expectations, the time and effort lost would be less as compared to that in the case of novels. These are some of the reasons why I am attracted towards short stories in different languages, and from different cultures. Continue reading
Pradyot 