Newbie!

Today that guy was sitting at right angles to me but he was some 20 feet away. Every time he looked my way (no he was not looking AT me, just looking in my general direction) my heart did a drum roll. I could actually hear it throbbing in my ears! Wonder what would have happened if that guy DID look at me. I barely heard what the teacher said, my hands kept trembling and I didn’t have a clue of what was going on around me. It was hard reminding myself that there are others sitting behind me and that it wouldn’t have made me look too good if someone caught me staring at one particular guy throughout the class. 

But that guy... Oh he’s so damn cuuuuute! 

Here’s the weird thing though. This new crush thing started like ten days ago and until today I did not see the guy’s face. Properly I mean. I only kept staring at the back of his head all this time (told you it’s a weird thing) or the guy’s jaw or an occasional glimpse of his side profile at the most. And today I finally saw his face! And it was one of the rarest things - reality being better than the thing you build inside your head! BUT... this stupid crush thingy is bittersweet and has a very strong aftertaste. I mean I’m sometimes going to the class just so I could see him! I'm miserable for the rest of the day if I missed a class; he never missed a class - "geek" god ;-)

Phew! 

But this thing is also very frustrating. I mean it’s not like I’m going to pursue it or anything. I’m only waiting for the thing to die down so I could concentrate on the damn lesson! Hmm... Mission stop-staring-at-the-guy commences from tomorrow. 

Oh who am I kidding! He’s so damn cute!!!!! 

Well... Maybe not tomorrow. Soon. Real soon.

Sigh!!

Where was I?

I'm a very forgetful person. Can't remember a thing. Not even my own phone number!

Some time ago, one unkal  (it's 'uncle' but that uncle has been living in north India for so long and he insists that it is 'unkal'; unlike my other uncles who are 'unkuls' heh heh!) So one day this unkal asks me my favourite author/books. Someone told him, it seems, that I "waste" my time reading. I did not have a proper answer. I really couldn't decide what my favourite book or author was! God, it was embarrassing! I mean I cannot tell Harry Potter! It sounded so childish. I did not want to lose face either. So I said I'm more of a bibliophile! I just wanted to say something smart and mature, you see! And it worked too! That unkal quickly changed the topic!! :D:D Guess I'm not the only childish person 'round here!

All the same, I do have to be organised. And I do need to have some good answers ready for some of the routine, crappy questions people ask. 

So here are my most recent reads ––

1. Gathering Lights, Jennifer Donnelly:  This is so so so good. To me at least. One of the inspiring books I have read. I could completely sort of connect with the story. (Does that sound weird??)
   
   
   This is one of those Reader's Digest Four in one books. Second hand copy. As good as new though!
   
   
2. Shopaholic series ( 1 to 4), Sophie Kinsella: Absolutely LOVE these books! They are so funny. Page turners definitely. Awesome chick lits! Embarrassingly and endearingly familiar scenes!
   
   ebook!!
   
   
   
3. Chronicles of Narnia (1, 2 and 3), C.S. Lewis: Bad timing for me to start these. I was reading LOTR and HP that and sadly, these books got eclipsed! But these are pretty good. Little less descriptive, at times more descriptive for my liking. 3 on 5 I'd rate them. But I was kind of reluctant to start and continue the fourth in the series. I was also disappointed to find that the kids are different in each book. Anyway!
   
   ebook!!   But I so badly want to find an illustrated version of this!! And also the Lemony Snicket books. Looks like I should find a someone in US to buy these!! I can't find them anywhere here.. :(
   
   
4. Naked Face, Sidney Sheldon: Er... The yoozh! Was good. Good thriller. No where boring.
   
   Library book.
   
   
5. Mittoorodi Kathalu, Namini Subrahmanyam Naidu: Hillllarious! Written in nellore language :D. Heavily slanged and and awfully honest and super funny stories! Interestingly, the few to whom I recommended this book got so offended by the language! Mind you, these people don't get all that offended at all listening to Eminem or something!! All the swear words written in mother tongue aren't that cool I suppose eh?!
   
   My dad's. Somebody gifted it to him.
   
   
6. The Witches, Roald Dahl: I can never find a bad thing to say about a Roald Dahl's!! Enjoyed reading every tiny bit of it! It's like eating CadM!! :D
   
   ebook!!
   
   
7. Harry Potter (!): So ashamed of myself! This time it was Audio books! There were 200 something mp3 files, each around 40 mins long!! I don't want to think of how much time I wasted!! ((((But it was good))))
   
   torrent download!
   
   
8. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens: Heart warming!! This is so much like that movie  It's a Wonderful Life. In my head, they were all the same actors! :)
   
   ebook!! A legal copy of ebook I must mention!! The copyrights have expired so it is avaible in Google Books; the full copy. I want an illustrated version of this one. The one illustrated by Brett Helquist. Can't find it here. Maybe  should try Amazon... :-S
   
   
9. Alice in the Wonderland, Lewis Carroll: I'm glad I read this! We had a part of this (that Mad tea party I think) as our English lesson in school. I did not like it then. After reading the full story however, I had to change my mind. Cute story :)
   
   Awesome find this one!! This is a fully illustrated collection of four stories! Hard bound, colour pictures, glossy paper and everything! I was so happy that day when I bought this, I was grinning all day! Seriously, my absolute favourite shopping is book shopping!! :D:D
   
   
10. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie: Neverland! Bloody brilliant!! I would read this again just to keep pondering over that idea of Neverland!
    
    It's one of the four in that book above. But I have to mention it as a separate book, duh!

And here are the ones I'm currently reading. They are mostly short stories though –

1. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien: Second read but it is taking forever!!
   
   It is that big red colour book you find everywhere!!
   
   
2. Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis: Don't even remember what page I stopped at. I guess I'll have to start from the beginning. Sigh!
   
   ebook!!
   
   
3. Grimms Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm: These are my everyday perk-ups! :) Some stories more than the others. 
   
   Bought a second hand copy of this; all yellowed pages. There is a name on the first page in some kid's scrawl... It's so cute! :D
   
   
4. Fairy Tales, Hans Anderson: Very, very good bedtime stories! 
   
   I love the cover art of this book. You'll find this in the Penguin classics section in any good bookstore. Got mine there, obv!
   
   
5. Wicked Stories/ Heartwarming Stories, Various Authors: Edited by Ruskin Bond. Saw the name Ruskin Bond and bought it straight away! Good stories too.
   
   
6. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger: I'm not able to make time for this one somehow. Maybe I have this feeling that this is going to be one of the "serious reads"! I did not understand the title; had to google it!
   
   I overpaid for this one. Stupid airports. :(
   
   
7. The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling: I cannot define the genre or the age group of this one. It sounds and seems like below 13, but it is kinda serious for preteens. I've read so many version of the Jungle Book  but I just wanted to read the original one. Happy I did :). The other stories are good too!
   
   I got this one from one of those sellers who go to schools and take orders.. Long story leave it.
   
   
8. Shopahlic and the Baby, Sophie Kinsella: Love it! Can't wait to finish it!
   
   ebook!!
   
   
9. Amaravathi Kathalu, Satyam Sankaramanchi: Good short stories; good plots and messages. Very arty narrations; I should say typical narrative rather. Telugu short stories seem to follow this kind of narrative. Don't know who started it. Maybe I should concentrate a bit more on telugu literature. I cannot tell apart the some of the writings of Mullapudi from Satyam's; and some other contemporaries. They all seem the same to me. The style and language I mean.
   
   Vishalandhra book house :D
   
   
10. Namini Iskoolu Pustakam, Namini Subrahmanyam Naidu: After Mittoorodi... I'm a little disappointed. These stories are too....real. Hm... I'm hoping I'd change my mind after completing this.
    
    Vishalandhra again!

Phew! No wonder my memory sucks. I always do this.. Bite more than I can chew. And then complain about it. Anyway.... Good thing I'm making lists. 
Anyway, I'm a bit more organised now than I was before starting this post! :D

Sad little life!

It is always bad thing to dig the past.

I have ALWAYS made it a point that I don't dwell for too long on anything. Happy or sad things, or even the boring mundane stuff that happens everyday. If I'm careful about anything, most definitely it is this. I don't linger for too long on memories. This has sort of impaired the memory system of my brain that I don't usually remember what I did or had YESTERDAY!

Memories, they say, are beautiful. And people agree on that more that often. So am I the only one who is always afraid to look back?
When people ask me (usually when we nothing to talk about) "What is your happiest/saddest moment?", I have nothing ready to reply. I normally make something up. I simply cannot bring myself to remember any of the said happy/sad moments!

Today, however, I don't know what got into me. I started going through old photos again, checking old conversations and mails. And to my utter disbelief and horror, my memory is not at all bad! I remember so many things. In vivid detail! I even remember what my sixth class friend's handwriting looks like! I remember all the good times, the bad ones, the terrifying moments and everything. And right now, I feel so....disturbed! I can't think properly. I can't look at some of those mails without choking up. I can't bloody talk to anyone even! Oh, I hate this!! One moment I'm happy to have known so many wonderful people and the next moment I'm hating myself for hurting most of them.

Anyway, this will pass. Hopefully.



And I have been reading a lot too. But somehow I don't want to talk about them.

I love sketches. Charcoal, black ink especially. And I love people who can do that. There is this friend from past. She has put some of her drawings online. They are good. I mean really good - not just pretty, but professional good!

We were classmates. She once brought some painting to school. She has sent that to some competition and it got first prize or something. It was nice. But at that time, people were a little jealous of that and started a new rumorof  sorts that she is too vain and stuff. You know how school kids can be! But back then I was too timid to tell the others that it isn't vanity and that the painting was actually good.

I remembered all that today. Now this girl is way past making people just jealous. They will HAVE to admire her. I already said they - the sketches -are professional-looking didn't I? We normally feel jealous when the thing we are jealous of is within the achievable range. When we know for sure that the something is beyond our capacity that's when we truly start and admire it.

Anyway, after seeing those sketches I'm slightly proud of me that I did not completely succumb to some stupid school gang. 

And kudos to that friend of mine!

Regrets

I need a proper closure!

If you think you are in a relationship that isn't working at all,then you HAVE to be the one to break up! I know it sounds cruel, heartless and a really bad thing, but it has its rewards. Even if you didn't get to do that, please try and stay in touch with that person you're breaking up with at least for sometime. So you can curse him/her all you want, or do something really nasty like breaking their stuff, or just cry your heart out unil you've had the closure! It IS a big deal. They (the lucky b******s who never had to deal with this kind of a thing) say that you can be mature and just 'let go' or 'stay positive' or 'try and forget'. But that is just impossible. Ok not impossible but really, really difficult to implement in real life.

When you are not the one to break up, the only upside as I see it is that you don't get to be the 'bad guy'. Yes, it is the ONLY good thing about. Because in this case you will get to bear the greater share of the pain and hurt. And then there is this ego dynamic: he/she has decided that 'I' am not good enough!! When you tell this thing to friends, family and others, (you will again have to take the greater part in this, surprisingly) you have to go through every tiny detail of the scene; the questions keep coming until you indecently lose your temper and do something stupid. The other person - the one who initiated the break up - will not have to face this somehow. I think people are a little scared of a person who's brave enough to do something like that. You can practicaly hear their thoughts "Oh how can you do that! I should go talk to him/her and ask what the REAL story is!" And they do. This when you - the one who was on the receiving end of the break up - will be facing the volley of questions from the "concerned ones". It's not like you can say something about it, I mean they do behave as if they are "concerned"!!

Anyway this is all off-topic.

Closure was the topic.

What I want to say is, when you're the breakup-er you already have your reasons and everything so your closure is achieved the minute you breakup. When you're the breakup-ee, you normally don't have a reason to not be with the other person. And if you are a sloppy romantic or have an inflated ego, you will probably spend the rest of your life trying to figure out why it hadn't worked.

Why I need a closure? I'm already tired I'll tell it some other time.

Later.

The Client - John Grisham

When I want to read something light and easy I normally pick up a Sidney Sheldon or John Grisham. Light and easy meaning I don't have to put too much effort to stay in tune with the book. Sometimes it so happens that you are reading non-stop yet you lose track of what's going on. With a John Grisham's, this never happens.

I'm a bit pessimistic. So my "reviews" will have more cons than pros. ;-)

The storyline is good. A ten-year old who knew too much pretty much tells you what the story is about. The ten-year old holds the story together quite nicely.

But, there is a kid in the story so that means there are a lot of limitations. The other people in the story cry every ten minutes; maybe to make the readers appreciate the kid better or what I don't know! And since there is a kid, there a lot of chick elements present - the tears, food, touches of feminism here and there. This is a lawyer book :-D so there is always a lot of money involved. The climax is a little confusing and a little pointless! Except for the kid and his lawyer, the other characters were a little weak and sort of....dilute!

The good things are - the smart ass conversations, the smart ass kid, the fact that the technical details are kept to an optimum level so nothing goes above your head, and needless to mention, again, the writing! It's a page-turner in spite of everything else.

Later!

Film Adaptaions

I'm absolutely bored. I always seem to have so much to say. Everyone is asleep now and I have this strong urge to yap. So here goes..

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LOTR

Brilliant movies! Stunning, awesome, MAGICAL!! One of the few adaptations where the movie was better than the book. No scratch that last! There's no competition really. But LOTR, all the three movies would rate as my first best film adapt. ever! 

Here's why. The actors are so much cuter than the characters in the book. Well, maybe except Strider. I didn't like that actor so much I don't know why! The narrative about the um...species(?) I mean hobbits, dwarfs, elves, Gollum, etc. did not have a very clear picture about their looks. When I watched the movie, I was so thrilled and they were nothing like I had imagined. Rivendell too- superb in the movie! The photography, the music, the costumes...aah! It was a treat to the eyes believe me! Pity the books weren't too descriptive about. It seems as though the author has written taking everything for granted. Like hobbits roam around everyday and seing dwarfs and elves are as common as visiting your distant uncle or aunt! Like how in a non-fantasy fiction book, there is no description how the man looks like - two hands, two legs, a trunk, a face and so on. 

The sequencing in the movie was a great idea. Frodo - Gandalf - the war - orcs etc. instead of one continuous  story like in the book. Because when you are reading, it is very easy to get tired of reading two pages of Frodo walking! Sometimes I used to misplace the bookmark in the book and read the same page and don't even realise I did! Although I sometimes wished it was continuous; but then it would have made a great serial or something. Like Mahabharat in DD!

In favour of the book - I was a little disappointed with acting in a few scenes. I won't name the roles or the actors; I have too much respect for the movie! :-) Also, however hard one may try, a movie can never completely capture what's in a book. Because reading a book is too abstract and each reader has his/her unique version of imagination built up inside their heads. And the biggest of all, the people who made the movie only adapted  the book. The book is brilliant, and so the movie tried to reach that same amount of brilliance :-D

(Somehow, in my movies vs. books debate, books always win! )

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P.S. I love you

This, I must say the movie is far better than the book. Maybe that's because there were too many changes in the movie. 

In this again, the photography and music made all the difference. The book itself was really no big deal, except that letters-from-dead-husband plot. Wow, I made it sound so romantic! :-) It was just another romantic. 

The movie got its tang from the afore said modifications. The main characters live in the US, not in Ireland, the girl wears good clothes and designer shoes, she's sort of a realtor not some boring columnist, the heroine's girl friends' roles were cut short, the girl's mom, and the biggest of all Gerard Butler!!

This is one of my favourite movies. A big tear jerker too. 

I'll continue later