“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. -T P”
We should remain aware of such trouble yet, despite knowing this, we should at least keep our mind ajar; who knows, one day it rains heavily straight into our mind, and there we feel lessening of that needless temper that has been gathered there. The accumulation of the refined rainwater has such power.
In 2024, my personal and work life was flat; nothing miraculous happened. The only youthful exuberance that was churned out in my flat-senile life was by some out of sudden long travels. I travelled a lot this year. Or you can say I was forced to travel in a rapid turn of events. I went far down in central India, visited some places, then went even down in southern India and visited more places. Out of all these places, what I remember most was ‘palaces’.
I like forts and ruined historical structures always. Don’t they carry and keep, still in the air, the lost miasma of some buried stories, of some bygone love affairs? ‘Golkonda Fort’ (an 11th-century fortified citadel at the outskirt of Hydrabad), ‘Bengaluru Palace’ (a 19th-century royal palace in Banglore), and ‘Bibi Ka Makbara’ . (a 17th-century mausoleum in Aurangabad) remained the three most memorable monuments for me in my travel this year.
You can see how to reach these places on the internet; they are amazing tourist attractions!
Now books!
My year started with Charles Dicken. I bought the hard copy of his ‘Bleak House’ in a small town at the bank of the Ganges in the north. And I witnessed exceptional craftsmanship from the author. Then I read a few more books by the authors I had previously read.
The first new author this year turned out to be Olga Tokarczuk; her book Flights was an amazing addition to my traveling year. After this book, I decided to read some new book releases this year and got an opportunity to read a few new authors. I also read some nonfiction and light fun books. Some poetry anthologies included.
By the time April started, I found that I had already met my annual target, which was 25 books. So I took a deep sigh, ordered a small chocolate donut, eased off my bookish sentiments at once, and decided to enjoy life, keeping myself away from books. This was the same time I dematerialised myself, ceased to be visible from anything bookish, and stopped any type of perusal. It was the
same travel time I mentioned above.
Time quickly passed, like a fleeting yet very engaging scene of a play by some antique writer. I looked on the calendar one day and found it was October. I logged into the ‘My Books’ section here and caught sight of the fact that in the last 6 months, I have not read a page. It was not that I could not get time to read, but I had become too complacent after meeting my annual target, and I was also not motivated enough perhaps.
But during this long reading slump, one major bookish event occurred in my life. For the first time in my life, I bought more than 35 contemporary and not-so-old books for less than 3000 rupees. A very good quality, almost new book in an event in Bangalore. It was the biggest book haul of my life. I frolicked that evening, seeing my now inordinately large book shelf. I bought so many books after this event too at different places. The count of all these books together is going to be my annual target for the next year. This 6-month period turned out to be the ‘period of accumulation’ for me. May be sometime in the future I can organise a ‘jumble sale’.
‘When you are not reading them, accumulate them.’
After this slump, I started with ‘The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene and then read a few shorter books to build momentum. It worked really well, and I kept this momentum going till the last day of the year. When I finished my year with 22 more titles, with the author Evelyn Waugh‘s Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder and Goodbye to Berlin of Chistopher Isherwood.
Two debutant novelists I will appreciate this year were for the book The Nude and Grey Dog.
Poetry, I did not read much this year but I will remember Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems.
Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically was the best new nonfiction/essay book that I read this year.
The strangest book that I read this year was Bound to Violence
The most comprehensive book (scopewise) that I have read was Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing. One book that slithered into me was Norwegian Wood for its simple and lucid prose. Narration and story wise, I loved A Gentleman in Moscow. Herzog and Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder will be among the top two mesmerizing reads for me.
The list of all new authors/books that I read for the first time is here:
Novel/ Short stories
1.Flights by Olga Tokarczuk,
2.Norwegian Wood by Murakami Haruki,
3. Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
4. Hans Christian Andersen
5..Bound to Violence byYambo Ouologuem
6..Grey Dogby Gish Elliott
7.Green Frog: Stories by Gina Chung
8.Mater 2-10 by Hwang, Sok-yong
9. Clockwork by Philip Pullman
10.The Power and the Glory by Greene, Graham
11. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton
12.Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
13. Herzog by Saul Bellow
14.Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
15.A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
16.Ways of Sunlight by Sam Selvon
17.Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
18.Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
19.Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder by Evelyn Waugh
20.I Remember Grandpa by Truman Capote
21. Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writing by Kumar Sukrita Paul Lal Malashri
22. The Nude by C. Michelle Lindley
23.Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
24.The Why Why Girl by Mahasweta Devi
Non-Fiction/ Essays:
1. Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically by Melissa A. Goldthwaite
2. Book of Cakes by Linda Collister
3.100 Words for Rain by Alex Johnson
4.The Ambuja Story: How a Group of Ordinary Men Created an Extraordinary Company by Narotam Sekhsaria
5.Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home by Alex Alberto
6.No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan
7.What is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre
8. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Poetry/ anthology:
1. Central Avenue Poetry Prize by Beau Adler
2.A Planet Is a Poem by Amanda West Lewis
3.The Poetry Pharmacy Forever by William Sieghart
4. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins,
So, this was another 5-star year for me, as I exceeded my expectations and bookish target by a substantial margin. Out of 47 titles I read this year, I read full books by approximately 35 new authors this year. But through the anthologies of poems, nonfiction, and short stories that I covered, I plainly read more than 100 new authors this year! Can you believe this?
This was in brief what happened in my bookish world.
With the brief recap, I wish all my book friends a lovely, healthy, and happy new year 2025!
Let’s end this year with a poem.
“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”
― Ogden Nash,
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