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Madhuri

Madhuri

has 52 followers and is following 23 people

A reader, a traveler.
  • Singapore, Singapore
  • member since August 30, 2007

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Madhuri’s last login was 3 weeks ago. show recent activity »

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Public Notes

  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hi Madhuri, hmm...what do you think of "The Sleepwalkers"? :) One day around this time last year, I sought out were Broch is buried, his gravestone is hidden away in one of the corners of a forgotten ancient cemetery in a sleepy Connecticut town (the photo of it is in my "Moments" album on FB)...I always wondered how on earth his final resting place came to be there! Hope you are doing well...
    Best, Joe

    posted 3 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Nidhi

    Nidhi says

    Hi Madhuri! i just finished reading a book "let the rain kiss you' by Vibha Vyas. It impressed me so much that I decided to be on Shelfari and share it with as many readers as I can. I strongly recommend this book to you. It's great on story value as well as entertainment. And gives you something to think about. A page turner.

    posted 8 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hi Madhuri,
    Great to hear from you! And yes, you'll have to let me know what you think of "Book of Disquiet" when you get around to it. That is so interesting that you jumped to "Temple of Dawn" after "Spring Snow"! Definitely a different way than most (including me :) )...Yes, I think he talks of Benares/crematorium, right? Sea of Fertility is one series I would like to re-read someday...I love the very ending of "Decay of the Angel", and there's a certain poignancy to it when one considers Mishima's real-life end.
    Thanks for your thoughts re: True Deceiver...hopefully, I can pick that one up at some point. Though my book queue continues to grow and grow, and I can't keep up with it!
    Things are fine with me, just very busy...I don't have nearly the time available that I did when I first joined Shelfari. Thanks for your kind comments on my latest trek, I think you mean Tuckerman's Ravine w/my older brother? Whew! A good reminder of how out-of-shape I am...that one was an ass-kicker! :) The hiking moreso than the skiing--though that was tough too...I was already exhausted before we even started the climb-up-to-ski portion, and there was one point where I misplaced my footing and in an instant lost hold of my skiis and tumbled unstopably (because of the angle) all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain! Yes, that was pretty heartbreaking. :)
    I recently returned from a very brief journey out to Washington for a memorial service (my graduate advisor died), basically a weekend, and took two days to do some solo day hiking in the Olympic Peninsula, which is a region I know you would love! I made a montage of photos from that, it's on FB too.
    Best, Joe

    posted 9 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hi Madhuri,
    Ah...so, what do you think of Temple of Dawn/Sea of Fertility thus far? Also, so neat to see you just finished "The True Deceiver" by Tove Jansson; recently, I had seen it in a bookstore and picqued my curiosity. What did you think about it/what's it about?
    Best, Joe

    posted 9 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Maulik G

    Maulik G says

    Hello, Good Evening
    have a nice collection.

    posted 9 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    And now, compare with the Baron of Teive:

    "Dreaming, daydreaming--that wispiness of spirit like in those who sigh at fashion plates, princes, and princesses, the beloved, celebrities--is a tendency I've always considered vile and loathsome....I rejected dreaming as a madman's or schoolgirl's vice. But I also rejected reality, or, rather, it rejected me; I'm not sure whether due to my incompetence, my despondency, or my failure to understand it. Neither form of enjoyment was possible for me--neither the kiss of reality, nor the caress of the imaginary."

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    "It galls my intelligence when someone imagines that things will change by shaking them up. Violence of whatever sort has always been for me, a flagrant form of human stupidity. All revolutionaries, for that matter, are stupid, as are all reformers to a lesser extent--lesser because they're less troublesome. Revolutionary or reformer--the error is the same. Unable to dominate and reform his own attitude towards life, which is everything, or his own being, which is almost everything, he flees, devoting himself to modifying others and the outside world. Every revolutionary and reformer is a fugitive. To fight for change is to be incapable of changing oneself. To reform is to be beyond repair.
    A sensitive and honest-minded man, if he's concerned about evil and injustice in the world, will naturally begin his campaign against them by eliminating them at their nearest source: his own person. This task will take his entire life."

    "To kill our dream would be to kill ourselves, to mutilate our soul. Dreaming is the one thing we have that's really ours, invulnerably and inalterably ours. Life and the Universe--be they reality or illusion--belong to everyone. Everyone can see what I see and have what I have, or can at least imagine himself seeing it and having it....But no one besides me can see or have the things I dream."

    "Have you ever considered, beloved Other, how invisible we all are to each other? Have you ever thought about how little we know each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside ourself...How confidently we believe in *our* meanings of other people's words. We hear death in words they speak to express sensual bliss. We read sensuality and life in words they drop from their lips without the slightest intention of being profound. The voice of brooks that you interpret, pure explicator...The voice of trees whose rustling means what we say it means...Ah, my unknown love, this is all just us and our fantasies, all ash, tricking down the bars of our cell!"

    "What's travel and what good is it? Any sunset is the sunset; one doesn't have to go to Constantinople to see it. The sensation of freedom that travel brings? I can have it by going from Lisbon to Benfica, and have it more intensely than one who goes from Lisbon to China, because if the freedom isn't in me, then I won't have it no matter where I go...Whoever has crossed all the seas has crossed only the monotony of himself. I've crossed more seas than anyone. I've seen more mountains than there are on earth. I've passed through more cities than exist, and the great rivers of non-worlds have flown soverignly under my watching eyes. If I were to travel, I'd find a poor copy of what I've already seen without taking one step. In the countries that others go to, they go as anonymous foreigners. In the countries I've visited, I've been not only the secret pleasure of the unknown traveller, but also the majesty of the reigning king, the indigenous people and their culture, and the entire history of the nation and its neighbours. I saw every landscape and every house because they were me, made in God from the substance of my imagination."

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Madhuri,

    Thanks for your patience! Okay, well, my friend Iulia suggested Book of Disquiet, which is one of her favorites, and I have recently finished it. It is indeed amazing. Pessoa wrote in heteronyms (basically, a 'multiple personalities' idea), and Book of Disquiet is authored by 'Bernando Soares', who is a sort of humble, keeps-to-himself clerk, and he is apparently the heteronym who comes closest to Pessoa himself.

    Book of Disquiet is composed of fragments, thoughts that Pessoa intended to one day cobble together into a completed book (and actually, a shorter book--he intended to pare down and select among the fragments, but he never finished it--his writing, at the time of his death, was left in fragments with some organization, in a trunk). In Soares, Pessoa is illustrating someone who refuses to accept the "real world" and has difficulty adapting to it. What I love about Soares is that he goes in quite an opposite direction about the things that are valued and sought after in our societies: "success" (money, prestige), action and reforming, being social and establishing social ties, travelling. He rails against each and every one of these, with the persuasive tongue of a poet. Actually, Soares' writing as I see it has an affinity with Eastern philosophy/religion--there is heavy use of "never" and "nothing", that way of suggesting non-being or negating, Pessoa doesn't really talk about Eastern religions at length, though I am sure he must have been at least somewhat familiar with it, since he was quite well-read. I don't entirely agree with Soares philosophy--at times, he sees himself as somewhat of a pathetic figure--because it is so extreme/intense and he is so isolated/alienated and unable to adapt to the reality of the "real world", I think if you fully followed his path, you would be bound to not be too happy.

    I also just finished reading "The Education of the Stoic", which is a nice companion piece, though nowhere near the scope or majesty of "Book of Disquiet". "Stoic" is authored by the Baron of Teive, who is an aristocrat who leaves that as his last 'testament' before killing himself. Pessoa says Teive is meant to be a mirror of Soares, both men are men who cannot live in this world. The difference is Baron of Teive's characteristics, due to his aristocracy, are more cold, analytical, repressed. He is someone who wanted to have success as a writer, but found he was unable to produce something that satisfied his standards, and became hopeless about life as a result. Soares' writing is more melancholic, reverie-like...he embraces his emotions and tries to 'grab what he can' out of life given his viewpoint, whereas the Baron tends to just fully reject living as the 'logical' conclusion to his situation.

    I will post to you some of my favorite passages from "Book of Disquiet" to give you a taste of it...I think you will enjoy it!

    Best, Joe

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hi Madhuri! It's so nice to hear from you! Things are going well, just busy (as usual, and as I'm sure it is for all of us). Yes, following Kauai, I have been sticking within Rhode Island where I live and generally quite the homebody lately (I am trying to prep my house to put it on the market, and have been rather dragging my feet with it), though I am going down to NYC this upcoming weekend, which will be a nice getaway. I would like to travel next year to visit Romania...should work out. I also am planning a trip to Japan (primary) and Egypt (secondary), that likely wouldn't happen until either Fall of next year or Spring of 2012. I will tell you more about these sometime in a PM, and it does relate to reading! For example, the Egypt trip is inspired upon reading Lawrence Durell's "Alexandria Quartet."

    I actually liked "The Desert" though it didn't 'blow me away'...it was more of the descriptive sort of travel literature. Pierre Loti was quite the adventurer, though (and apparently quite a flamboyant one!), and I would like to read his other books. "Desert" is part of a trilogy, the other entrees I believe are "Jerusalem" and "Galilee." I would also like to read his books on India and Egypt. I quite agree with you, it is hard to find a great travel writing nowadays...I think it's because the world has just gotten so small nowadays, and there's hardly any sense of mystery to it...it seems the Internet can call-up instantly every last square inch of the planet! :) I tend to like reading the older travel ones, I guess because I like the tension between the place-of-then and the place-of-now (if the area still exists). I like how Loti describes his group's stopover at Saint Catherine's Monastery, back then isolated on Mount Sinai--he never mentions it by name (it probably didn't have one back in his time), but I wanted to see if what he was describing still existed nowadays, and googled it, and sure enough it does and the monastery nowadays is probably a big tourist spot for those who travel on the Sinai Peninsula.

    I have the two famed Chatwin books, "In Patagonia" and "Songlines" but haven't gotten to them yet...looking forward to it! I also have "Snow" on my shelf, waiting to be read...so many books, so little time!

    Thank you for the Javier Marias description, maybe I will get to look into him. Right now I am focusing on two works:
    James Merrill's epic poem (as in 500+ pages! :D) "The Changing Light at Sandover" which has some personal meaning to me (again, will tell you over PM) and Eca de Quieros' "The Maias"--on the book cover, Jose Saramago is quoted: "the greatest novel by the greatest Portuguese writer." I agree, it is pretty captivating so far (pretty lengthy book).

    The two ficiton books I have loved the most having recently finished: Yukio Mishima's "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" and Witold Gombrowicz' "Pornografia" (the newly available translation by Danuta Borchardt). Maybe you read "Temple" already, I can't remember. As for "Pornografia"...wow, just twisted, funny, and eloquent...I love his style. There is an introduction which also details the differences between the old translation (which was basically a second-hand translation of a French translation) and Borchardt's translation, and it shows what a difference a translation can make in bringing a novel to life and being faithful to its spirit.

    Okay, better go for now...it is great to hear from you, please keep in touch!! Joe

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hi Madhuri,
    I ashamedly haven't read Chatwin yet, but will get to him eventually. I was running with a friend this morning and telling her how much I like the classical travel literature, and how reading these can help deepen one's appreciation for certain geographies of interest. I told her, for example, about Henri Michaux's "Ecuador" (written in the early part of the 20th century; actually, it didn't seem like he liked being there that much!), or Pierre Loti's "The Desert" (the first part of a trilogy) where he went from Sinai to Jerusalem through the desert--I am hoping to read that one soon. I have a highly acclaimed "Complete poetry of Basho" (the Japanese poet) book that came out within the last year or two and I haven't read yet, but I think it has a map of Basho's itinerant wanderings across Japan as he wrote his haikus--I was thinking it would be neat to one day recreate his journey. I wonder if there are tours already (probably) in Japan that focus on that. Of course, I also think of Pasolini's book on "India" that I recently read ;)...I'd be interested in what you would think of it.

    For my reading lately, well, things have been slow because of all the things I mentioned to you in PM. I am preparing for my Hawaii trip to the island of Kauai in just a couple of days. I am planning to hike the Kalalau Trail on the Napali Coast (and also a 17-mile all-day kayak tour along the coast) which requires a camping permit from the state but I have mine, and later on see the Waimea Canyon and Kohee State Park trails (including Akalei Swamp, which has a lot of native, endangered honeycreeper birds).
    Recently, Newsweek (a well-known American magazine; I wouldn't be surprised if you are well familiar with it in India too) had a Special Issue entitled "100 Places to See Before They Disappear" (because of ecology) and Kauai was the first place they listed! :)
    http://photo.newsweek.com/2010/3/americas.html

    I have read a few books recently: "No Tomorrow" which is a classic French 'erotic novel' (though it's very very tame, and it's about 35 pages or so, so don't know that it qualifies as a 'novel'); I enjoyed it a lot. I just finished Yukio Mishima's commentary on "Hagakure" which was on the Samurai code and was written by a Samurai hundreds of years ago--it was Mishima's favorite book. I am finishing up on "The Invention of Morel"--perhaps you have read that one already...so, lots of short books.

    Best, Joe

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Joe M

    Joe M says

    Hey Madhuri, how do you like "Nadirs"? I read Muller's "The Passport" but didn't really care for it all that much (I probably should have given it 2 stars :) ).
    Hope you are doing well! I haven't had much time to read lately...life gets in the way! :) I have enjoyed your FB photos...Tiger's Nest is incredible!

    posted 1 year ago. ( send a note )
  • Bibliophile!

    Bibliophile! says

    I see that you have been reading some great books. Auster, Proust, Waugh et al. How do you like Proust? I plan to read him soon. But undecided on which translation to opt for. You seem to have purchased the Vintage version - which is the revised Moncrieff translation right? The other option is the penguin version, where each book in the series is translated by a different person. That somehow is not appealing. I would want a uniform translation of all the books. What do you think?

    And here's an interesting article on reading Proust by the author Jane Smiley :
    http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/08/28/proust/

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Bibliophile!

    Bibliophile! says

    I get the same pleasure from used bookstores that an alcoholic finds in bars. Both places, though public, make room for feverish solitude and both allow unhealthy cravings to be filled to excess - Art Spiegelman in his introduction to Joseph Moncure March's *The Wild Party*

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • puri_215

    puri_215 says

    Hey,

    I know you through your blog, Shifting Sands. Would you mind to add me as friend?

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • sree harsha r

    sree harsha r says

    Hi,

    I just read "A Bend in the River" novel. Unlike most people who call Naipaul a racist, colonialist etc, you have gone beyond the stereotype and tried to understand his vision. Naipaul has a great gift of seeing through things. He finally shed comedy as a vehicle to convey his message with this novel. This is a violent and deeply angry work. If you like Naipaul, you can read his biography (The World is What it is by Patrick French.) . I wrote a review of the book (http://tinkeradda.blogspot.com/2009/07/enigma-of-naipaul.html) . Bye, Harsha

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Swati Upadhyay

    Swati Upadhyay says

    A trip to Bombay is long pending. But can't say when we'll make it as traveling with a kid is difficult for sure!

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Swati Upadhyay

    Swati Upadhyay says

    hi! how r u? What abt the delhi trip?

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Swati Upadhyay

    Swati Upadhyay says

    Hi!!! it'll be great to have u here...sach mein its been so long since we've met. Do make the trip jaldi se!

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Swati Upadhyay

    Swati Upadhyay says

    Hi Shalu how r u? 'keep hearing bout ur frequent trips to aus. I have recently started reading actively again as Gunu now gives me some time! 'hoping to get some good reading suggestions from you.

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )
  • Harris Ali

    Harris Ali says

    Hi Madhuri, it's a very good shelf!

    posted 2 years ago. ( send a note )

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