It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world or Hello, again…

For the past few days, I’ve been feeling a lot like Gordan Way. I don’t remember much about this character from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but what’s stuck in my head is a description of how he would call up people, preferably being directed to their answering machines, and then talk his heart out as to what all was needed to be done. I don’t remember much about him apart from the fact that he kinda gets killed by an electric monk and his horse – at least I think it was a horse, it might as well have been a donkey- but the more important thing is – I kinda understand his urge to tell people about his elaborate list of Things to Do.

I find myself trusted with responsibility; tons of it. Sure, there might be the tad bit of me that’s pleased with this development but a larger more ‘get me out of here’ part is sick with worry. It’s not that big a deal, except I can’t seem to quit making lists. Also, I might be secretly a tyrant in the making; what’s worrying is how pleased I am by the idea.

I spent twelve hours yesterday and today morning formatting and editing a piece of work, just to realize a moment after I had dispatched it, that I’d forgotten to do something as basic as run it through an MS Word Spell n’ Grammar Check. I’ve most probably over–edited it and most definitely forgotten to add page numbers. I am not quite sure whether I could pass it off as a balancing act.

The LAN connection in College has been tweaked so that certain searches on key words evoke an error message. Considering the Third year First Round Internal Moot Problem is about a gang raped woman whose bisexual husband runs away with her first gay ex-husband, the ingenuity of this tweaking is mind numbing. Ah well.

I wish I could say that I am mooting again for the right reasons; more than the right reasons, wish I could say with a theatrical smirk and a half shrug – ‘Coz I am good at it.’ A lot of people in my batch seemed to have given up on it…at least for this year. I persist because…well, because I don’t want to regret not giving it another shot, because I love the high and the effort that goes in, and even at its worst, there is a delirious part of me that knows that looking back it will all seem funny. I realize the last lines straight from one of those American movies, where the hero/heroine amidst cheery pop music decides to do whatever big thing that he/she had been feeling rather ambivalent about. Chances are, this being the real world and all, if I don’t make the cut, I’ll be bawling my eyes out, but I am, for most parts, certain that, heartbreak or not, I’d still be glad that I did it.

In other news I still do not have a Law and Economics topic. Also, though the ‘geeky coolness’ of saying I am studying Space Law still makes me grin, my project topic on spectrum and orbit leasing might have wooshed over my head, narrowly missing my hair. Not that, technology was ever my forte…have I told you about the time when I crashed not one but two laptops in the space of a week? Oh wait, that was last week! Philip, to whom all my laptop woes are directed, told me he was going to donate to a corpus fund so that he could buy me a typewriter. I went through all the classic symptoms of de-addiction. All I could think of doing when all my friends were listening to music, playing games, watching movies, doing projects – in short hanging out with their own respective laptops was well clean. I dusted my books, regained the surface of my table from piles of accumulated junk, ironed my clothes and when all that could be done was done, I did something more along the lines. Think about it. I spent entire Sundays cleaning! The Horror!

Of course, I am back to my old ways, now that my laptop’s returned. I just spent an entire evening writing this long drawn out rather pointless post…which was the only way I could think off coming out of a really long hiatus. It was either this or one of those mindless ‘you’re tagged’ blog polls. And I used that, the last time

Cooking Up Memories…

I am learning to cook. Well watching my mum cook at times is more like it. Even though there are some primitive notions attached to the whole process (GirlReaching Marriageable Age – Must Know To Cook) I quite enjoy it. Especially when there is this cooking show inspired voice over going on inside my head- “now that you’ve added the onions, stir the contents until golden brown” or “lift up the lid and mmmh the flavour just hits you, doesn’t it?” I’ve got my very own ‘You Can Cook’ going on in my head.

My childhood is polka doted with memories that are connected to food. My first (hopefully made up) memory is being irritated with all the other kids, at my birthday party, for eating my sweets, my memory of leaving Lucknow as a seven year old, is connected to the fact that Anup uncle bought me not one but TWO packets of Lays chips from the railway station and that when I went to the planetarium for the first time in my life I had vanilla cup ice cream. Need I go further?

Reading about food itself for me is terribly satisfying. I am sure one of the reasons I always loved the Enid Blyton books was because of all the food that was spread out. I mean most of the Secret Seven’s started with an inventory of all they could eat at their latest meetings, the Famous Five’s though very dicey about the whole toiletries issues never lacked in food supplies and was there ever a St Claire’s semester when there wasn’t a midnight feast?

One of the quaintest books where book foods have been gone into is What Katy Did Next. She spends her time in England eating all the food that is described in books and surprise! Surprise! not all of it is good! However good or enticing it may sound- sausages pressed into gingerbread do not mouth watering make.

One really cool food book that I’ve got recently is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. For someone who’s grown up thinking that the genial Sanjeev Kappoor is the archetypical chef the transition to Bourdain’s life of sex drugs and well cookery can be something of a culture shock. His cast of chefs seem more suited to the Mafia than the kitchen, but the love for food and cooking – what matters most- is very evident. I am half way through, and it est good.

Last year, we, in the intrepid editorial board of our college’s rag tag magazine Writer’s Block, scouted the city’s streets and back alleys in search of good food on the excuse that we needed to fill the odd 600 word Restaurant Review column of our mostly monthly rag. Never again, do I think that I am going to be in the company of such, for whom the ability to ingest copious amounts of food is a matter of pride and honour.  Of course our original intention was not forgotten and we wrote about the food and though describing ‘Pancakes at Piccadilly’ in a profusion of food clichés is hardly the literary heights of food writing, it was extremely entertaining.

When I read our very own food reviews now, it’s weird how it’s not the food that I remember.  It’s the subtext that stands out clearly – the stuff we didn’t write about.–– Bhavna singing from the back seat of a mostly empty bus, waiting at a railway crossing for the longest goods train ever to pass, Anuj’s attempts to finish a kula of lassi in one go – the sad realisation that I must never ever be photographed with food ever again.

And suddenly I am glad, that my memories are all connected to food.

On Writing…I think.

I found this little…something  in a forgotten word doc:

To write would be an awfully tiresome venture,

and yet to read and to know

that one has not written and has not even tried -

Slaughtered before utterance half thoughts of mine-

waiting forever for the other shoe to drop.

Perhaps it is the Cinderella tale all over again-

left with one shoe? What would you do?

For the other one, start a quest?

Or grumble at being an unlucky fool?

I think this was a result of reading a qoute by Henry Miller on writing  at the time and and hence the title of the post.

On & On…

Have you ever found, how, it is at the most importunate times that you are seized by the most wonderful of ideas? I always have the most awesome (albeit not the sanest) plot lines take hold of my head when I have exams. I start day dreaming scenarios and dialogues while my civil law module lies abandoned. Of course, by sheer force of will, I try and prevent furthering of these thought processes. funny thing is, the moment the exams over, the plots lose their sheer intensity in my head. weird.

but that wasn’t what I really wanted to blog about. (then again, the fact that it was the first thing that came out, kinda defeats the above argument) what I wanted to tell you about is how I feel like rambling on and on.

Yesterday, I made a new gmail account. I’ve had one before but it wasn’t the sort you give to possible short term employers (no it didn’t say flowerpower87 or bazooka900 but it still was not formal). The new one, has my college name attached to it. .NUJS it says and I will probably need another one, say three years down the line but it meant something to inextricably link my name to .NUJS, though it probably has been linked to it ever since I decided to come here almost two year back.

Of course, now I have to make the painful switch from my old hotmail account to the gmail account. My first and foremost plan, is to have my mail transferred automatically from hotmail to gmail via pop3 or the Mail Fetcher option. Only problem is hotmail for some reason best known to itself, allows pop3 only for users situated in the UK, Italy and other such places. No problem, a little google search for post office numbers in England, and a little tinkering with my personal info on hotmail and voila I am proud citizen of the Great Britain. This should have worked, as they seem to rely solely on the personnel info (and not the more tricky IP addresses) to allow pop3, but I still seem to be encountering an error, and probably will have to do more tinkering around. Any Ideas?

In other news I finally went to the Kolkata Book Fair, one terribly dusty event. The bigger names Random House, Oxford, Cambridge and Co were terribly disappointing, but the smaller shops had the sort of collection that fills you with the bittersweet thought that you can never have read enough. There was also Benfish apparently one of the best fish food people in cal but it only made me realize how much I miss my mama’s fish curry…sigh. Anyways, ended up buying way too many books and will therefore probably end this semester in near penury. More about the books later.

Also, I seem to have a writer’s block when it comes to writing for Writer’s Block. (Aha Aha truly contrived providential pun, but what the heck). I need all the points I can garner and yet the words refuse to come. I do believe blogging takes care of all my urge to write and thus have no ready prose available When I Really Need To Write. Gah!

Bunked class today because of itchy red spots on my body that itch. I seem to have the strangest luck with Docs. they usually are good at what they do albiet eccentric. this one has been inviting me to his daughter’s Bengali Wedding in November of 2009 ever since last year. He was terribly excited at seeing red itchy spots that itch and was convinced that it was a) Diabetes b) chickenpox. Later, I had him wittle it down to an infection/allergy and now am forced to take pills that cost a fortune. I googled it and was not very surprised to find, that there was a generic drug at half its cost. I think there is some provision in some law that lets me have the right to demand the alternative cheaper med, but I’ll probably  lose that wedding invitation.

I seem to have a small albiet regular readership (yes, yes, it’s all thanks to you, Sroyon). I keep thinking that people must end up on my blog by mistake, but how many times can people end up on my blog from the same set of urls, eh? at least, that’s what I’d like to think.

A Serious Discussion on Why Weird Awesome Things Will Never Happen To Us

Darshana and I had today (you guessed it!) A Serious Discussion on Why Weird Awesome Things Will Never Happen To Us. We realized in synchronized ‘enlightenment dawned on her’ moments that we were a little too perfectly wired toward appreciating the weird and fantastical to actually come in contact with anything that could really really fit the description.

What I mean is, imagine one day there is an actual real Zombie Attack…while everyone would run screaming through the city, we’d probably be giddy with delight at the fact that FINALLY it is actually happening. We’d kick vampire butt if ever called to do so, with our knowledge of n+1 ways of killing the bloodsuckers, or if an alien life form were to suddenly appear before me and ask my help to build a Galactotranspositer you can bet you’re arse, I’d be calling up my engineering cousin to enlist his help pronto.

And that is the problem isn’t it? Weird Awesome Things will never happen to us, because we’ve already imagined them happening a million times over. Not for us to see a compulsive cool samurai style fight between the two chaps on the metro, not for us a sudden mysterious blood soaked stranger pushing a dirty torn letter into our hands filled with war time codes. No, none of this is meant for us, because instead of fainting/screaming/going into hysterics/asking what, when, where and a million other questions, we’d be completely in our element and ready to go.

Telling us…me (Darshana doesn’t know I am writing this, though I have been using the collective for a while now) that the Weird Awesome Things …er…um…you see…oh! what the heck…DO NOT EXIST…does not in anyway reduce the gravity of our discussion.

Gods Behaving Badly

I had a gift voucher from my B’day left to kill, and to foil the dastardly plan of my friend, who’d got me the gift voucher in the first place and had therefore thought she’d escaped from going gift searching for me, I dragged her along. Ended up spending over two hours rifling through books at Starmark, before I decided on buying this particular book.

The blurb on the cover page of Marie Phillips’ Gods Behaving Badly calls it ‘very very funny and delightfully original’. I wonder how many people buy books because of these blurbs. I mean, it can’t possible say something bad about the book, now can it? like for instance ‘A sad attempt at humour but kids these days they’ll lap it up anyways?’

Ah well, as for me – I picked it up because it seemed to be an attempt at bringing two of my favourite genres – mythology and urban fantasy together. Think about it, greek gods from the past living right across the street or jostling for space with you in a bus. You gotta admit, the idea has potential.

And I have to say, the book ain’t bad. It’s funny in parts, moves at a decent pace, and as a whole is a good read. I love Eros’ conflicting faith in Christianity, love that the mere presence of Ares is enough to stir trouble between two of the most saccharine sweet characters in the book, or even the fact that Apollo tries to break into stardom by acting in a third rate TV show, that specializes in foretelling the future happiness of old women and their cats. Sometimes when it hinted at the greater fears of the gods – about dying, about living forever in bad company, about being too inconspicuous in the modern world it showed real promise.

Then again, there is characterization that is so run of the mill – Aphrodite as the slutty conniving sexy goddess, Artemis as the  uptight goddess of hunting, Hades, Persephone etc etc who don’t seem to have picked up any character since the bygone eras. I am not saying that the intrinsic characteristics that the Greek myths present should be changed but surely they can be developed upon!  Then again, I am not quite sure I like it when she changes things around. for example, when she says that wisdom and clarity don’t go hand in hand when it comes to Athena (who basically is a twenty first century nerd) it doesn’t make sense. Isn’t the whole hoopla about wisdom that it’s about saying the right thing at the right time and being able to get it across which may not be found in intelligence? Weird.

The  human characters in the book Neil and Alice are terribly sweet and terribly in love which can get terribly boring after a while. I get it, you’re trying to show how the average sweet, nice human is just a pawn in the games of the gods, but give the average human some more credit. We aren’t all that nice!

The ending again is a little too concoted. ‘Faith keeps the gods going!’ the revelation lacks punch, it has been said before loads of time in a much better way (Go Read American Gods, Now.)Also, the author stops just when it gets a little more interesting and of course a whole lot more complex. Suddenly you have tons of people believing in the Greek gods again. Now what? Does the Church declare war?Do the aethists societies go dunk themselves? Do the Americans have Artemis endorse their right to carry arms stand? Do the Greeks charge royality for worshipping their gods? Okay, so my suppositions get crazier by the sentence, but that’s the point. I like endless possibilities at the end of a book, I do, but here it just seemed that the author knew she couldn’t tackle all the wacky possibilities and therefore left her readers with an open epilogue. It would have been awesome, I think, if the book had actually begun at its end point and worked its way through all the tangled compex problems that come with having a sudden renewal of mass scale faith in ambiguously intentioned gods.

I liked the book though, mainly because like I mentioned earlier – I love mythology and urban fantasy. Where else, I ask you, will you get to read the following sentence “I’ve got a god passed out on my kitchen floor and I think the world’s about to end”?  Nope. Nowhere else.  Also, I liked the book because it figured Greek gods who are some of my favourite gods; for I have always thought that if you actually believed in them, then you’d never be surprised when bad things happened coz you’ll realize that as gods they’ve got better things to do than bother about your temporary existence. Gives you a wondeful perpective on fate and stuff.

Also, for those interested in worship of Greek gods in modern times: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/05/greece

Burn, Burn, Burn

I found this, a few days back, when I was blog hopping:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,

mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,

the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,

but burn, burn, burn.

I don’t know the context of these particular words but now  I am filled with the urge to read more of Jack Kerouac.

Tall Tales On Books – Abandoned And Unread

I like to think, that I am one of those people who read. I also like to think that I am a modest reader. Sure, I was part of the extremely silly (but clearly superior) bunch of idiots who thought they were way cooler than everyone else in class, because they had read the Lord of the Rings before the movies; but, for most parts I know that though I read, there are just too many freakin’ books in the world, for me to make a dent, any time soon.

But here’s the thing. I usually finish the books that I start. Really. Even if, somewhere within the odd first fifty pages – I get the feel that I really do not want to find out what happened between the chic and the groping tentacles, I still finish the book. Force of habit; a wish to be fair; respect for the outrageous amount my dad probably shelled out for the glossy paperback. Call it what you will, but I nearly always finish my books.

Except when I don’t, and then because of my love for lists, I keep track of them, remember why I didn’t and find out why others did. I am not surprised that I can’t think of that many. But here’s what stands out in no apparent order:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I bought War and Peace, and Anna Karena together, when I was probably in my eight or ninth grade, from the cute-but-poor-second-hand-bookseller outside my favourite bookshop in Hyderabad. I got through War and Peace not just because of my tenacious will, or because I was full of pity for Pierre whom I couldn’t bear to abandon mid-book/s conflicted and so very puppy-like lost, but also, I admit for what its worth, for the very superficial reason- that I wanted to be able to say that I had read it; that I had read War and Peace. To begin Anna Karenina immediately after that was nearly impossible for me, especially since I knew what happens in the end. I remember talking about Anna Karenina in all-brazen indifference on messenger to my friend once. My exact words are not what I remember. It was probably something very aseptic, Anna Karenina? She dies, right? Or, something akin but I remember my friend’s response and it was, I swear, like I could hear him talk and he said, “she dies, yes” but the sentence didn’t quite end there, as if there was more to that ending that I could…should find out by reading the book. I think I’ll get back to the book…someday, all because of a two lined conversation on it on messenger.

2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

There’s no easy way of saying this. In fact I am slightly scared saying it, considering the fanatics I know who worship this book and call it life altering. But I couldn’t get through it. In fact, it is probably one of the few books that I have chucked away physically because I couldn’t stand it. (Another one which comes to mind is Alcott’s Good Wives which gnawed away on all that was special and precious in Little Women but for the record I finished it and wrote an alternate version of it and my mind rests easy on that account.) Getting back, I don’t really know what it was that pissed me off about the book. It disgusted me for some reason, and I take solace on what someone told me about Ayn Rand’s books. You either love them or hate them. There’s no middle ground. I doubtless fall in the latter category and all the purported wisdom of the books is lost on me. Such is life.

3. Cyclops by Clive Cussler

I don’t remember much of the very little that I managed to read of this. I am not a big fan of the Cold War books – “must stop the Evil KGB” kinda lost its charm after the first few dozen books I read in that genre. (One of the really tongue in cheek lovely pieces set in the Cold War period that I really like is a short science fiction piece by Michael C Clarke featuring bumbling Floridian bureaucrats, fake icebergs, and Russian spy ships but that’s obviously another story altogether). Anyways, I vaguely remember something about the Russians in this one. That wasn’t, however, the reason I stopped. There was something about a colony on the moon, which I am totally okay with. But this colony was called Jersey Colony and I just stopped reading after that, because I don’t care if you decided to name it after the State or the cows but after all the awesome names we’ve come up with for astronomical objects, if you are going to have a colony on the moon don’t you dare call it something so very bland! (And this is coming from someone who was completely okay with Planet Bob in Titan A.E! I have a sneaking suspicion that the fact that it came out in Matt Damon’s voice made it seem like a really good idea at that point of time. )

4. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

I had read a lot of Hardy back to back by then. I read Return of the Native, I read Tess of D’Urbervilles, I read A Pair of Blue Eyes, and then I got to The Mayor of Casterbridge. And what can I say, except my will gave out. I am not against unhappy endings per se; sometimes I am appalled by the saccharine sweet endings that are cooked up in books (coughharrypottercough). Perhaps Hardy captures life, as it is in some… most cases, but I couldn’t bear the gloom and doom, okay? My very simpleton needs for some hope and happiness reasserted themselves and I abandoned the book before the really gloomy bits began.

5. This Book I Began But Sadly Could Not Finish

This one I really regret. I was taken to one of my relatives’ home, and as my mum and the aunty gossiped their way into the Guinness books, I sat dour faced while my equally unhappy near aged relative fiddled with her thumbs, yawned and generally wished me long lost and staying that way. At last, desperate for some sort of escape, she sighed and said: would you like to see our books? What can I say? I am sure she had nightmares of the unholy gleam that filled my eyes at the statement.

So I got escorted to what I have to admit was a decent hoard of books and because I had no pretensions (and because really how much longer could my mum gossip?) I chose a thin volume of something, which I have but a vague memory of. Sometimes I think it was a play. Sometimes I think otherwise. It had a girl who was engaged to an unscrupulous jerk of an officer, and there was some rebellious individual who barged into her rooms at night. I know it sounds nearly too overdramatic and reeks of the romantic bug but I remember thinking the girl was pretty cool and level headed. Sadly I got dragged away before I could get much further. Years later, when I was dragged back there, I lurked around trying to find the book, but I was bitterly unsuccessful. Even my desperate attempts to get my near aged relative to divulge the name of the book proved fruitless because, get this, she couldn’t remember! As if! If that isn’t part of some devious dastardly plot to…do something, colour me Purple!

Then again, I sometimes think that it’s a good thing that I never finished it. What if, I had hated it? For now, I am okay with the undone memory of the book in my head. I’ve even nearly forgiven that near aged relative. Because there is something in thinking that someday I will chance upon the book again and I’ll get to read it. It’s just one of the countless things to look forward to in life.

Four Reasons Why I Am An Astronout…Not

I was actually going to tell you about the joys of reading 5.0 years Prior Han Solo Adventures: At Star’s Ends, when one has eminent End Semester exams but crazy thought processes has expanded this modest post into a listing of the four weirdest popular culture reasons why I have ever taken time out of the self absorbed world that I live in and looked up at the stars to wonder.

Here goes:

4. LOST IN SPACE (THE 1960S SHOW)

I was in second grade, section A to be precise. Star Plus was still an English channel and didn’t have a single ‘K’ serial. It was a Science class and we had a teacher who was teaching us about the planets.

Me (interrupting her somewhere between Neptune and Pluto): Mam, How many planets has man landed on?

Teacher: what? None, of course

Me (still terribly sure): but in lost in sp…

Teacher: Don’t be stupid. Man has not landed on any planet. Now, moving on, Pluto is the 9^th pl…

Now, it wasn’t that I actually believed in Lost in Space! There were no talking robots; no way would a family be sent up in space; no way could there be so many hospitable panets were they could so easily land; as for aliens – pfft; all imaginative, of course. I wasn’t that stupid! But the point was, I kinda thought that man must have landed somewhere at least. Just like they did on the moon. Maybe, just one step and all that jazz.

But my Science Teacher got it right (except for the Pluto part of course) and I remember this as being one of the most formative experiences of my short life span – right up there with finding out that plants use both Carbon dioxide AND Oxygen and Disney Movies horribly distort the truth. Lost in Space was my first science fiction show and I remember it in a vague affectionate albeit irritated light. Why? I remember thinking, even back then, did the boy have all the adventures while the girl stayed back near their space ship and tended after their little alien gardens? Still it was, like I said, my first sci-fi show and it is still the first show that I think of every time I see the weird silver air-conditioning fittings in our college library; but that’s another story all together.

3. FARSCAPE 1999- 2003

Hands down. I LOVED this show. There were no super intelligent shades of blue, but there were super intelligent bald blue priestesses, there were cuter less irritating robotic bugs, a villain who lived in the hero’s head and had philosophical discussions with him and my god! A ship that reproduced…like got pregnant and gave birth and everything…

The storyline in itself was hardly unique. You take a reasonably good looking American guy with a father’s unfulfilled dream and let him fly an experimental space ship and you can bet my arse that Houston, there-will-be-a-problem and he’ll get lost and thrown in with a bunch of aliens. But the execution of the simple premise was done with such flair towards ensuring equal parts adventure, humour, ridiculousness and ensuing craziness that I cannot but love this show. In its heights, I had the Farscape font, knew the theme song dialogue by rote and would quote dialogue from the show and laugh at the normal people who didn’t get it.

2. TIE-IN BOOKS

I’ve never seen Star Trek…the original one that is and maybe because I’ve not seen that I’ve never actually watched the rest of its brood. But I know Star Trek, in a manner of speaking; read its lore. The awesome fan base for the show will scoff at my at best second hand knowledge for the show which springs from reading a little too many of its tie-in novels and loving them. Weirdly enough, I’ve found I like tie in novels of Star Trek, and the same now goes for the Star Wars ones that feature Han Solo (though I seem to exclusively like the ones before he actually meets Luke and the rest in the original movies.) This maybe because of my innate love for all types of fan fiction but I am always surprised that I like the Star Trek ones even though I’ve not seen the show

1. GATTACA -1997

Now this one is a lie. I just wanted to talk about it. Yes, It is a sci-fi movie; yes, the final destination is the space unknown (or Titan to be more precise) but the movie is, to put it at my corniest, about a lot more than that. I cannot talk about this movie without waxing ineloquently about it. I saw it when I was younger and it’s probably gonna stay with me all my life. Suffice, to say, you have to watch this movie and ‘to each his own’ be damned because you better not get back to me and tell me that you didn’t like it.

Reading as an Obligation

Back when I had my one year fling with literature, I knew a lot of people who were serious about reading – academically. They picked up tomes upon tomes of indigestible works for their supposed “literary” value and read through them with single minded devotion . I usually had a problem as to how they ascribed the merit to the book – was it because they or someone they knew had enjoyed it or was it because it dealt with something that resonated with them or was it simply because they had loved the spiky red glittery title on the front page?

9 out of 10 times it was because it had won some high brow prize; Now, I am in no way dissing the high brow prize winning books because they usually are good, but something that always bothered me was how some of them seemed to read exclusively these books and not others; how some just assumed that the book had to be good because it won the prize; or even weirder how some assumed that they HAD to read the book because it won the prize – like an obligation if you will.

Not quite sure why I am bothering with this, considering that, all I wanted to do was write about the vampire books, I’ve just finished. Maybe it’s some sort of opening defense for the choice of books, I’ve been reading.