Despite the limitations of the genre that allows but sketchy characterization, some of the characters stay with you even after the book is read. Rascal Rusty with his out-of-the box pearls of wisdom, Captain Sobti with his sage perspicacity and Father Hathaway with his benevolent advice. Then there’s loony Keya, spoilt Ayesha and trade union leader Arai.
Web 2.0 is here with Facebook, Orkut, Twitter ets defining the day for many. It may not be mainstream yet, but it has certainly added a two way collaboration possibility to the erstwhile one way process of writing. It builds a relationship between the author and the reader before, during and after the process of writing. Can a best selling novel be written on Facebook? Can a novel have 1500 authors? Neha Tara Mehta of Mail Today newspaper writes about all this and more on 28 Dec 2008.
Is Bollywood finally waking up to realize that it helps to have a good script to make a good movie? I don't know if we can apply that broad brush to paint all directors in the same color. Livemint.com in its issue dated 20 Dec 2008 has a piece that talks about the growing desire of directors to pick a bestseller since it has all the ingredients - gripping narrative, pre-soaked audience and of course name recall.
The Asian Age runs a list of best sellers for the week. For two weeks now the Booker award winning novel The White Tiger has been topping the list. The others that follow have been pretty consistent too. Brisinger has been at the silver medal winning spot and Meenakshi Madhavan Reddy who writes the immensely popular blog called The Compulsive Confessor is holding forth at spot number three while I am holding fourth
The Telegraph says, " Married But Available (HarperCollins, Rs 195) by Abhijit Bhaduri follows Mediocre but Arrogant and is likely to be followed by Middle-Aged but Active. It is the story of Abbey, an MBA in the Eighties, when MBAs were just beginning to be accepted as god’s greatest gift to the corporate world. The prose is hardly of Booker quality, but the plot could interest a film maker wishing to capture on celluloid the pains and dilemmas of a man the rest of the world calls successful." OK guys, I have made tentative plans of how I will spend those millions. Now let us get cracking on the deal, Bollywood ... unless they meant Hollywood."Low on heavy fundas and high on humor and a feel good read." says Times of India
Do books that tell a great story also make great films? Are these two different forms where the twain shall not meet?While I can instantly think of films like Ben-Hur, Frankenstein, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or for that matter most of the films made by Satyajit Ray who always chose great stories and turned them into visual delights on celluloid.
Married but Available, that’s a book, written by Abhijit Bhaduri, an HR employee with Microsoft. No, the book is not about promiscuity. It deals with HR management. Bhaduri, in fact, has a thing for titles. His first book, of which this is a sequel, was called Mediocre but Arrogant.
matter. There is of course a definition in wikipedia to define what this genre is all about. By the way, type in "Guy Lit" in wikipedia and you discover there is no such category. Is that called discrimination or what? More importantly there is a kind of a predetrmined pigeonhole into which we are putting the kind of stuff chicks write or read about. Stuff that guys read or write about. Don't we all do a bit of everything? I know enough men who found the film Sex and the City good to watch. Enough men flip through Femina as women who buy Car and Driver.
