Tag: Piranesi

Books – The Truest Brilliance of Humankind Captured

One of the most pleasurable tasks in December for me is to go back and wander over my reading lists for the past year. It is always a source of pleasure, and sets the intent and purpose for the year ahead at the same time.

Book Club:

This year, I joined a book club and that provided for many hours of companionship with an eye to discussing the books afterwards with your friends.

We managed to do a variety of genres in our book club too.

A broad array of topics can be discussed with this set of books, and the cups of tea, and the sparkling conversations were truly delightful. Feminism, colonialism, sexism, sense of purpose, and so much more.

Booklegger Books:

I volunteer from time to time in elementary school classrooms and the Bootlegger Volunteer program is one such where I get the opportunity to talk about and discuss books in classrooms.

  • Van Gogh Deception – By Deron Hicks 
  • Life in the Ocean – Oceanographer Sylvia Earle – By Claire Nivola (author of Wangari Maathai – Planter of 30 million trees in Kenya)
  • The man who dreamed of infinity – the life of genius Srinivasan ramanujan by Amy alznauer illustrated by Daniel miyares
  • The Firework Maker’s Daughter – by Philip Pullman
  • Firefly Hollow – by Allison McGhee
  • Tesla’s Attic – By Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman

Guilty Pleasures:

It is the reason I pick up books and authors whose work feels like home every so often. There is familiarity in their worlds – a safe haven for those looking to be refreshed without too much effort. The worlds where humanity has all of the problems we do – only with an eye for humor, magic, and simplicity that we crave to build for ourselves in our real lives. Malgudi, Fairacre, Thrush Green, Hogwarts, Corfu, Blandings Castle, the idyllic worlds of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, and many more. 

  • Miss Read
  • P G Wodehouse
  • J K Rowling and many fan-fiction authors who are frankly brilliant and so deserving. Many times, I’ve hoped I could know if they went on to write other books, for I knew I would read them.
  • R K Narayan
  • Gerald Durrell

Children’s Books:

I don’t know why people go in for self-help tomes when there are brilliant children’s books for all of us to enjoy and devour. Who was it who said, It takes a true genius to explain things simply? I agree with them.

Some of these authors and illustrators are truly unsung geniuses – I wish there was a way for all places of adult work such as financial hubs, hospitals, Houses of Parliament, civic offices, transportation hubs, technology companies, insurance companies, retailing outlets etc to have a good library with children’s books to dip and delve into for a quick refresher of spirits.

I used to work at a company with an exemplary work culture. (sadly the company is no longer there) The walls were adorned with beautiful artwork, we received books as gifts every now and then, authors came to visit, and we had library nooks – surrounded by excellent books in design, literature and philosophy. I have done some of my most rigorous work in these hallowed halls of the library.

If you had access to places like this, it is truly life-changing. Some noteworthy books:

  • The Shape of Ideas – By Grant Snyder
  • On Tyranny – By Timothy Snyder (in progress)
  • The Oboe Goes Boom – Boom – the band book on the kind of instruments and the brilliant way in which the names in each of the pages actually refers to a famous player of the instrument.
  • You Can Learn to be an Artist – this book was brilliant, but it made me want to cry. It made me want to rage against the world for creating AI and taking away that simple joy of art from humans – for those who say you can do the same with the screen and a prompt now, my response is, “Why can there not be any pursuits left to mankind that is not dependent on a screen?”
  • A Songbird Dreams of Singing – Poems about sleeping animals – by Kate Hosford – Illustrated by Jennifer M Potter
  • Astonishing Animals – Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit – Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten
  • Worldwide Monster Guide – By Linda Ashman, Illustration by David Small
  • Sometimes, I feel like an Oak – By Danielle Daniel & Jackie Traverse
  • My name is as long as a river – Suma Subramaniam
  • The fox and the star – Coralie Bickford Smith (brilliant artwork – sweet story – truly captures the loneliness of being – read again)

Understanding Ourselves

What makes us human? How do we know whether we are keeping healthy in our minds and bodies? These are topics that cannot be easily answered – and yet so many philosophers and writers attempt to do just that – understand our complexities.

Alternate Universes

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk  away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth” – Neil Gaiman in The Ocean at the End of the Lane

  • The Lefthand side of Darkness – By Ursula K Le Guin
  • Goddess of the River – Vaishnavi Patel
  • Our Missing Hearts – By Celeste Ng
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane – By Neil Gaiman
  • Generosity – By Richard Powers
  • YellowFace – By R F Kuang ( about the publishing industry)

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

I would probably add books and nature to the list by Tolkien.

Books that Challenge Perception

A Stranger to Ourselves  – Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us – by Rachel Aviv. 

I opened the door and welcomed the girls in. I had clutched in my hands the book , A Stranger to Ourselves  – Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us – by Rachel Aviv. 

The daughter and her friend had completely different greetings – but the tones were likable enough, and I smiled broadly.

“So, whatchu reading now?”

“Ooh! That sounds heavy Aunty!” 

I told them. 

This book outlines the lives of six different people across different cultures and timelines, and their struggle with mental health.

Given all of our advances in health, mental health still has a long way to go. The unseen frontiers of the power of our minds, the terrifying depths to which it can plumb us, the giddying heights to which it can make us soar, the ruts from which no tow truck could extricate us – they are all true.

We chatted about this-and-that and other book recommendations.

“Oh Aunty! You should totally read Piranesi!” said the daughter’s friend, her eyes widening when she realized that I’d taken her suggestion and read a teenage angst novel. “You like mythology – well, I don’t want to give too much away – but you’ll like it.”

Piranesi – By Suzanna Clark

Piranesi is a book that I found vague and disconcerting in the beginning. Then, a book I wondered about long after I’d finished reading it. What did it mean exactly? The premise is that a person is stuck in an alternate reality – a large palace-like place with corridors lined with statues, flooding basements where the ocean tides creep in, and large, open spaces in which to ponder life about. But that is it. There are no other creatures – save a visiting raven or two – and one other person called the ‘Other’.

How to make sense of a reality like that?

I read these two books together a few months earlier. I had them jotted down somewhere to be written about. Given the flurry of posts and things to write about, I thought I would leave these out.

But I found that I couldn’t.

For these books both lodged themselves for different reasons. 

Piranesi makes one think of all the palaces we construct in our minds – which ones are escapable from? Which ones serve as prisons?

Stranger to Ourselves makes one wonder about what a narrow path normalcy is. 

“I think, therefore I am.”

– Rene Descartes

The next time I saw the girls together, I asked them what they thought of the books, and we went on to have an inspired discussion on how our thoughts shape our reality and so on.

Books References:

  • Piranesi – Suzanne Clark &
  • Strangers to ourselves – Unsettled Minds and the Stories that make us – Rachel Aviv