The cell phone beeped exactly at 4:00 in the morning. I had set an alarm to be woken up early. I was alone at home, and today was the 21st of July, 2007. The big day for book lovers – the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was merely a few hours away. I lay there in bed for a long time, wondering whether it was an extravagance to rise early and drive all the way. I had pre-ordered my copy, and hence could always go and collect it later. At 4:30, I finally got up with the firm intention of collecting my copy at the earliest.
The book was scheduled to be released at 5:30 in the morning. The drive to Landmark was extremely pleasant, due to the fact that they were hardly any vehicles on the Outer Ring Road. At 5:00 in the morning, The Forum Mall looked quiet and eerie, lit up in dim fluorescent lights. A few cars were already lining up outside. On the second floor, a queue of 100-odd had already formed. To my surprise, there were not many kids around. The crowd seemed to be made up, mostly of crazy potter enthusiasts like me. Some of them were seated there from 9:00 pm the previous day.
Coffee was being served to those in the line – though it never reached me – and ‘Sweet World’, the candy shop opposite to Landmark, showed great enterprise, as they immediately opened up to lure the kids who had turned up. The middle-aged lady standing beside me in the queue seemed quite surprised to see so many people, and confessed that she had expected to just walk in and collect the books. She had come there with her little niece, who called up her mother to boast that she was actually standing in a queue to pick up her book. The little girl, Shreya, was soon in the limelight, as a few reporters who had turned up there came running to interview her about the usual stuff: “Are you a big fan of Harry Potter? Since how long have you been reading the books? Who’s your favorite character? Blah blah blah” The kid seemed to be quite excited at all the attention. “You’ve been interviewed by ‘The Hindu’! Now that’s not something that happens in you hometown. Does it? Let’s tell your mother about this!” exclaimed her aunt.
At 5:40 a.m. – ten minutes after the “scheduled launch” – a girl came out of the store, microphone in hand, and started blabbering something. For a moment I wondered whether it was parseltongue since I couldn’t decipher anything she was saying, but a minute she stopped, realizing finally that the microphone was switching. She again started off in a drooling fashion: “Goood Mooorneeeng everyone!” Thankfully, the guys sitting in the front of the queue decided not to show off their frustration, and responded with a gentle ‘good morning’. The shock came soon though: “the book will be released exactly at 6:30”: she drooled on. The news was greeted by a collective groan. What followed was a barrage of questions as to why there is a 1 hour delay, when the book was to be released at 5:30. Quite confident with her, the girl continued: “Well, the launch of the book has been put off by 1 hour worldwide!” Very unwise thing to do…Within minutes, cell phones were out, and all of them had proved her wrong. “JK Rowling has finished her public reading of the book!” retorted one of the guys, dressed up as if he were on a camping trip. Thankfully, one of the store assistants had the common sense to come out and pull the girl in. Soon enough, a chant started out among the assembled: “530! 530! 530!”
The girl was not content yet. She came out soon enough and announced: “Penguin has released the book at 5:30 itself, and you have to wait till the stock reaches our outlet from the warehouse, and as soon as it reaches here, we’ll open up”. Somebody questioned back about whether they had considered the traffic jams in Bangalore. Before the girl could answer, the shop assistant had reappeared and pulled her back in. The crowd decided to amuse themselves, and started an airplane race. Soon the place was filled with paper airplanes whizzing past your nose. Amused at the scene, Headlines Today decided to make the most out of it, and set up their equipment to record the whole thing. The anchor started screeching and shrieking as to how, she had never seen “such an atmosphere” so early in the morning. There was some stupid contest going on. We were given sheets of paper to fill up some puzzles and submit for a lucky draw. Some of the guys were eagerly filling up the forms. I took one glance at the sheet and threw it into the wastepaper bin.
Finally at 6:15 the doors opened. There was no mad rush to go inside. It took almost five minutes for me to get inside and pick up my copy. There were some excited shrieks – not from any of the kids, mind you – from some of the ladies: “I can’t believe it! It’s finally in my hand!" As Obelix might have said, "These Muggles are crazy!" “Breakfast” (as they said) had been arranged for everyone – it consisted of one pastry, and a small triangular piece of sandwich. I sat there reading my copy, until I finished the whole of the first chapter. The book was 600-odd pages long – a relief when compared to “The Order of the Phoenix”. It was going to be a long day…and perhaps long nights, for there were miles to read before I sleep.
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time, by Mark Haddon – the latest book in the “Best Sellers” list – is tells the story of 15 year old Christopher John Francis Boone. Christopher knows all the countries of the world and their capitals, and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals, but cannot understand human emotions. He lives on patterns, rules and timetables. Then one day, his neighbour’s dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructed universe is threatened.
“The Curious….” is not yet another Catcher-in-the-Rye. Christopher is not a rebel against the establishment. He is a (rather eccentric) genius and loves mathematics. He lives with his father, but is always in an autistic world of his own. His only confidant is his teacher, Siobhan, and his only friend is his pet rat, Toby. He dislikes a lot of things - people touching him, crowds, France, the colours yellow and brown (he refuses to touch anything that is yellow or brown), …and telling lies. Wellington’s death changes his world, and Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective Sherlock Holmes – a decision which leads him on an adventure to London, and learn the truth about his mother. All’s well that ends well, as Christopher gets what he wants.
Haddon’s narrative takes us through the mind of the 15-year old genius, as if one were reading the child’s diary. It has a remarkable freshness. He holds the reader to the book, with his expert weaving of the thoughts of the boy into paper. Christopher is too logical to understand about love and emotion. He looks at the physical world as it is. He cannot comprehend the complexity of the relationships around him. To an extent, Christopher’s selfishness – he just wants to sit for his A Level Maths exam - is impervious to the explosive emotional situations around him – and it is this selfishness that saves him and his family, in the end.
The narrative is interspersed with Christopher’s random thoughts – the universe, the prime numbers, why “The Hound of Baskervilles” is such a great book, The Monty Hall Problem, why the number of frogs in a pond keep varying year by year, and so on. The readers lose themselves in Christopher’s magical world of numbers.
Maybe there have been better works on children, such as “The Catcher in the Rye” or “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. But “The Curious…” is not far behind – it’s definitely a must read.
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time – the title of the book is taken from the Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze. Holmes is investigating the disappearance of the race horse, Silver Blaze.
He brings to the notice of Dr. Watson,”The curious incident of the dog in the night-time”.
Watson says: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarks Sherlock Holmes.
“The Curious….” is not yet another Catcher-in-the-Rye. Christopher is not a rebel against the establishment. He is a (rather eccentric) genius and loves mathematics. He lives with his father, but is always in an autistic world of his own. His only confidant is his teacher, Siobhan, and his only friend is his pet rat, Toby. He dislikes a lot of things - people touching him, crowds, France, the colours yellow and brown (he refuses to touch anything that is yellow or brown), …and telling lies. Wellington’s death changes his world, and Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective Sherlock Holmes – a decision which leads him on an adventure to London, and learn the truth about his mother. All’s well that ends well, as Christopher gets what he wants.
Haddon’s narrative takes us through the mind of the 15-year old genius, as if one were reading the child’s diary. It has a remarkable freshness. He holds the reader to the book, with his expert weaving of the thoughts of the boy into paper. Christopher is too logical to understand about love and emotion. He looks at the physical world as it is. He cannot comprehend the complexity of the relationships around him. To an extent, Christopher’s selfishness – he just wants to sit for his A Level Maths exam - is impervious to the explosive emotional situations around him – and it is this selfishness that saves him and his family, in the end.
The narrative is interspersed with Christopher’s random thoughts – the universe, the prime numbers, why “The Hound of Baskervilles” is such a great book, The Monty Hall Problem, why the number of frogs in a pond keep varying year by year, and so on. The readers lose themselves in Christopher’s magical world of numbers.
Maybe there have been better works on children, such as “The Catcher in the Rye” or “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. But “The Curious…” is not far behind – it’s definitely a must read.
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time – the title of the book is taken from the Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze. Holmes is investigating the disappearance of the race horse, Silver Blaze.
He brings to the notice of Dr. Watson,”The curious incident of the dog in the night-time”.
Watson says: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarks Sherlock Holmes.
Saturday, July 12, 2003
From a Buick 8
Arnie Cunningham, a bookish and bullied high school senior; Dennis Guilder, his friend and sometimes protector; Leigh Cabot, the new girl in school, won by Arnie...but wanted by Dennis as well.
Just another lovers' triangle, you say? Not quite. There's a fourth here, the second lady, the dark lady. "Cars are girls," Leigh Cabot says, and the dark force here is a 1958 Plymouth named Christine.
She is no ordinary car, this white-over-red two-toned survivor of a time when high-test gasoline was priced at a quarter a gallon and speedometers were calibrated all the way up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour...a time when rock and roll in all its first crude power ruled America...a time when speed was king.
Arnie Cunningham is determined to have Christine at any price, and little by little, Dennis and Leigh begin to suspect that the price of his growing obsession may be terrifyingly high, its result blackly evil. as Arnie sets feverishly to work on the seemingly hopeless job of resorting Christine, Christine begins to develop a terrible life of her own. Or is that only imagination? Dennis continues to hope so...and then people begin to die on Libertyville's dark suburban streets and roads...and the time comes when Dennis can no longer deny the horrifying truth: Christine is alive
Just Wait! I read that more than 10 years ago. But then, that’s the first thing which goes through your mind as you skip through the synopsis of “From a Buick 8”. Christine was real scary. A true Stephen King classic. Sadly the same cannot be said of Buick 8. Well, there’s nothing in it.
The story is about a Buick, which comes into the possession of “Troop D” - a police outfit in a tiny Pennsylvanian town – rather strange that King has got his story outside of Maine. The book is around 480 odd pages and starts off as a narrative by Sandy – one of the troopers. Ned Wilcox, son of Curtis Wilcox, a trooper who’s killed in a hit and run accident on the highway(If you read what happened to Stephen King a few years ago, you’ll find the details of the accident pretty familiar), comes into Troop D and starts taking interest in their activities. Sandy’s narration takes you through the initial moments and gives you an insight into the life of troopers – Shirley Pasternak, Huddie Royer, Eddie Jacobius and Arkie Arkanian. One fine day, Ned happens to peep into Shed B, which houses the Buick. Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back. And so starts the story of a car – and the ordeal of the reader.
From then on, it’s a confusion out there. Why the hell does King keep changing the narrator every now and then? Each chapter starts with a different speaker. Makes you wonder - what the heck’s happening?
OK! OK! I’ll return to the story(The what? There ain’t no such thing as a story here). The Buick arrived in town sometime in the late seventies(79 I think) – at the Jenny station run by Bradley Roach. The owner disappears - we never know where. Roach takes an instant dislike to the thing, and calls on Troop D. Troop D is also suspicious about the thing (Buick never made such a model, according to some one). They call in one of their chums from somewhere(the hell I’ll remember that! I wanna forget everything about this book!), who inspect the car, find everything wrong with it, and declare that they don’t want anything to do with it in the future. Troop D takes charge, and tows it away to the barracks – to Shed B. And then, the Buick puts its act together.
First of all, Trooper Ennis Rafferty disappears. No one knows where. But everyone is sure the Buick’s involved. Then the Buick starts its pyrotechnics. It puts up spectacular light shows once in a while – the whole of the shed is overflowing with bring purple light emanating from inside the Buick - and gives birth(yup!!) to things – strange bats, strange birds, strange beetles, and even a humanoid, who’s beaten to death by the troop.
And then what happens?
Nothing.
The paragraph written above is stretched to 400 pages in the book. And then the climax, or what King might claim to be a climax starts(Someone should tell him that instead of having to read through 450-odd pages to reach here, people might actually prefer to quit reading the book). Nothing much here also. Ned tries to destroy the Buick, and doesn’t succeed. The Buick meanwhile puts up one of its light shows just for the occasion and tries to pull Sandy and Ned into its world – Sandy manages to get a glimpse of it – again, without success. At the end of the book, the Buick’s still there. But, there is a crack in the windscreen.
King seems to be going from bad to worse. Well, Dreamcatcher may be an exception, and it gave me a lot of hope. But what compared to books like It, Salem’s Lot and Pet Semetary, the other books he has written in the recent past (Bag of Bones, The girl who loved Tom Gordon etc.) definitely let the reader down.
From a Buick 8 is definitely skippable.
Just another lovers' triangle, you say? Not quite. There's a fourth here, the second lady, the dark lady. "Cars are girls," Leigh Cabot says, and the dark force here is a 1958 Plymouth named Christine.
She is no ordinary car, this white-over-red two-toned survivor of a time when high-test gasoline was priced at a quarter a gallon and speedometers were calibrated all the way up to a hundred and twenty miles an hour...a time when rock and roll in all its first crude power ruled America...a time when speed was king.
Arnie Cunningham is determined to have Christine at any price, and little by little, Dennis and Leigh begin to suspect that the price of his growing obsession may be terrifyingly high, its result blackly evil. as Arnie sets feverishly to work on the seemingly hopeless job of resorting Christine, Christine begins to develop a terrible life of her own. Or is that only imagination? Dennis continues to hope so...and then people begin to die on Libertyville's dark suburban streets and roads...and the time comes when Dennis can no longer deny the horrifying truth: Christine is alive
Just Wait! I read that more than 10 years ago. But then, that’s the first thing which goes through your mind as you skip through the synopsis of “From a Buick 8”. Christine was real scary. A true Stephen King classic. Sadly the same cannot be said of Buick 8. Well, there’s nothing in it.
The story is about a Buick, which comes into the possession of “Troop D” - a police outfit in a tiny Pennsylvanian town – rather strange that King has got his story outside of Maine. The book is around 480 odd pages and starts off as a narrative by Sandy – one of the troopers. Ned Wilcox, son of Curtis Wilcox, a trooper who’s killed in a hit and run accident on the highway(If you read what happened to Stephen King a few years ago, you’ll find the details of the accident pretty familiar), comes into Troop D and starts taking interest in their activities. Sandy’s narration takes you through the initial moments and gives you an insight into the life of troopers – Shirley Pasternak, Huddie Royer, Eddie Jacobius and Arkie Arkanian. One fine day, Ned happens to peep into Shed B, which houses the Buick. Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back. And so starts the story of a car – and the ordeal of the reader.
From then on, it’s a confusion out there. Why the hell does King keep changing the narrator every now and then? Each chapter starts with a different speaker. Makes you wonder - what the heck’s happening?
OK! OK! I’ll return to the story(The what? There ain’t no such thing as a story here). The Buick arrived in town sometime in the late seventies(79 I think) – at the Jenny station run by Bradley Roach. The owner disappears - we never know where. Roach takes an instant dislike to the thing, and calls on Troop D. Troop D is also suspicious about the thing (Buick never made such a model, according to some one). They call in one of their chums from somewhere(the hell I’ll remember that! I wanna forget everything about this book!), who inspect the car, find everything wrong with it, and declare that they don’t want anything to do with it in the future. Troop D takes charge, and tows it away to the barracks – to Shed B. And then, the Buick puts its act together.
First of all, Trooper Ennis Rafferty disappears. No one knows where. But everyone is sure the Buick’s involved. Then the Buick starts its pyrotechnics. It puts up spectacular light shows once in a while – the whole of the shed is overflowing with bring purple light emanating from inside the Buick - and gives birth(yup!!) to things – strange bats, strange birds, strange beetles, and even a humanoid, who’s beaten to death by the troop.
And then what happens?
Nothing.
The paragraph written above is stretched to 400 pages in the book. And then the climax, or what King might claim to be a climax starts(Someone should tell him that instead of having to read through 450-odd pages to reach here, people might actually prefer to quit reading the book). Nothing much here also. Ned tries to destroy the Buick, and doesn’t succeed. The Buick meanwhile puts up one of its light shows just for the occasion and tries to pull Sandy and Ned into its world – Sandy manages to get a glimpse of it – again, without success. At the end of the book, the Buick’s still there. But, there is a crack in the windscreen.
King seems to be going from bad to worse. Well, Dreamcatcher may be an exception, and it gave me a lot of hope. But what compared to books like It, Salem’s Lot and Pet Semetary, the other books he has written in the recent past (Bag of Bones, The girl who loved Tom Gordon etc.) definitely let the reader down.
From a Buick 8 is definitely skippable.
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