Which Book are you reading

[RAMPAGE]

I have, actually, when a teenager at Sainik School. Very sad book, left me melancholy for days. Why?

Come on, It wasn't that sad. I thought it was a very sweet novel. Almost every novel's ending leaves me melancholy. Wesay hi, I was looking at its reviews at goodreads and was surprised to see that every review out there was from a female. Also, I was thinking about reading the rest of the series.

I have, actually, when a teenager at Sainik School. Very sad book, left me melancholy for days. Why?



@RAMPAGE
@Jungibaaz
@Oscar

I'm sorry, I lost track of this thread and left my suggestion up in the air.

I would seriously like to recommend Eddington's The Worm Ouroboros. Cracking good fun. I can imagine Eddington composing it when he was about WAJsal's age, and setting it down properly, on paper, in later years. It is polished writing, and consistent use of a kind of faux mediaeval English which rings true, every syllable of it. But the plot is all.

Best of all, it's in PDF:

paravel.net/ob.pdf

Oscar, have you read Candide?

Added to my goodread's list.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Come on, It wasn't that sad. I thought it was a very sweet novel. Almost every novel's ending leaves me melancholy. Wesay hi, I was looking at its reviews at goodreads and was surprised to see that every review out there was from a female. Also, I was thinking about reading the rest of the series.

I read it, let's see now, almost exactly fifty years ago, and remember being cruelly disappointed that it wasn't my kind of happy ending. Even now, I can't read stories with unhappy endings. I'll wait for your reactions to the others before getting hold of them.

 

[RAMPAGE]

I read it, let's see now, almost exactly fifty years ago, and remember being cruelly disappointed that it wasn't my kind of happy ending. Even now, I can't read stories with unhappy endings. I'll wait for your reactions to the others before getting hold of them.

Lets hope I do that soon. The list keeps getting longer.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Lets hope I do that soon. The list keeps getting longer.

I've got about fifty unread books which have been lying in Dera Bassi, with the rest of my furniture, from October '14 now. Tempus fugit.

 

[SQ8]

Oscar, have you read Candide?

Only quotes of it.
These days I am usually reading on historical pieces or religious exegesis. It is interesting to see the struggle between the orthodox(an abused term) and the progressive(another abused term) in religious thought.

 

[RAMPAGE]

I've got about fifty unread books which have been lying in Dera Bassi, with the rest of my furniture, from October '14 now. Tempus fugit.

Do you ever get the feeling that we might have forgotten to live our own lives by investing too much of our spare time reading about lives of fictional characters or anything of the sort?

@Joe Shearer

I might have asked the wrong man considering your military background.

 

[TMA]

http://www.khazaria.com/brook.html

Khazaria by Kevin Alan Brooks

https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Islam-Graham-Fuller/dp/0316041203

A World Without Islam
Graham Fuller

 

[Joe Shearer]

Do you ever get the feeling that we might have forgotten to live our own lives by investing too much of our spare time reading about lives of fictional characters or anything of the sort?

@Joe Shearer

I might have asked the wrong man considering your military background.

You perhaps asked the wrong man because I have had a bizarre life, ending in less than glorious circumstances. The poem Ulysses is being to haunt me more and more these days.

No. I read about Frodo, and I wish I had been there, in the charge of the Rohirrim (those are the people I identified with the most), but winning the tent-pegging prize against the Army team that won it all India the next year was a good substitute. Playing polo on the same field that saw Hanut Singh and Ratanada come on next was a good substitute. It resonates.

I wish I had been wooing Princess Flavia, but what happened in real life, those forgotten, misty decades ago, was more of a fairy tale. The dragon won, the hero lost, the 'fair' damsel (she was earthy and dark and the whole college hated me for having won her hand) vanished into mist, re-appearing 35 years later, but it was a fairy tale.

Including what I did for a higher cause, if I were to put my real life down on paper, any self-respecting Bollywood director would fling it in my face, and order the Gurkha to ensure I never darkened his doorstep again. It is far too implausible, far too unreal, and the characters who stalked through it were far too larger than life for anybody to believe.

Not military, but military R&D. For the part that bears examination. Think glass cockpit, think SU conversion, think look-down radar and stuff for hi-lo-hi missions, think leading the making of a mission computer for a lift vehicle that consisted of eight computers conversing with each other and coming to a consensus. There were many more, all of which were intended to make something that Pakistan owned go up with a loud and satisfying bang. It's very strange, nothing we did was aimed at the other lot.

Only quotes of it.
These days I am usually reading on historical pieces or religious exegesis. It is interesting to see the struggle between the orthodox(an abused term) and the progressive(another abused term) in religious thought.

I only know the Christian bits, unfortunately. They went through a lot of this discussion, and I wonder if you find that some of that has come back into the discussion through a side-door.

 

[meghdut]

History and analysis of Rwandan Genocide, excellent work. Recommended for interested people

 

[RAMPAGE]

You perhaps asked the wrong man because I have had a bizarre life, ending in less than glorious circumstances. The poem Ulysses is being to haunt me more and more these days.

No. I read about Frodo, and I wish I had been there, in the charge of the Rohirrim (those are the people I identified with the most), but winning the tent-pegging prize against the Army team that won it all India the next year was a good substitute. Playing polo on the same field that saw Hanut Singh and Ratanada come on next was a good substitute. It resonates.

I wish I had been wooing Princess Flavia, but what happened in real life, those forgotten, misty decades ago, was more of a fairy tale. The dragon won, the hero lost, the 'fair' damsel (she was earthy and dark and the whole college hated me for having won her hand) vanished into mist, re-appearing 35 years later, but it was a fairy tale.

Including what I did for a higher cause, if I were to put my real life down on paper, any self-respecting Bollywood director would fling it in my face, and order the Gurkha to ensure I never darkened his doorstep again. It is far too implausible, far too unreal, and the characters who stalked through it were far too larger than life for anybody to believe.

Not military, but military R&D. For the part that bears examination. Think glass cockpit, think SU conversion, think look-down radar and stuff for hi-lo-hi missions, think leading the making of a mission computer for a lift vehicle that consisted of eight computers conversing with each other and coming to a consensus. There were many more, all of which were intended to make something that Pakistan owned go up with a loud and satisfying bang. It's very strange, nothing we did was aimed at the other lot.



I only know the Christian bits, unfortunately. They went through a lot of this discussion, and I wonder if you find that some of that has come back into the discussion through a side-door.

You should definitely put some of it in writing. You have a nice, mature writing style and it doesn't even matter if it doesn't get (or if you don't want to) published. Do it for yourself. I'm sure some of your grandchildren or great grandchildren would love to read it. These days I'm trying to get my hands on my grandfather's journals but my uncle insists that I read them at his place.

Also, I'd love to hear more about that last bit.

 

[Joe Shearer]

You should definitely put some of it in writing. You have a nice, mature writing style and it doesn't even matter if it doesn't get (or if you don't want to) published. Do it for yourself. I'm sure some of your grandchildren or great grandchildren would love to read it. These days I'm trying to get my hands on my grandfather's journals but my uncle insists that I read them at his place.

Also, I'd love to hear more about that last bit.

My daughter has to oblige, for me to write something for the sprogs; my sister's grandchildren and brother's grandchildren hardly count. My mother's father wrote a fascinating, somewhat disjointed but enthralling account of how an impoverished kid made his way out to the US, got an education and came back as an imperial service officer. I read that book from time to time, and feel very humble. He is responsible for my south Indian connections, which are prolific; he was the first Bengali in the forest service in the south.

As for the end, you will have to settle for the equivalent of a Pune Colonel's sepia-tinted recollections of how Boofy Kapoor of the Imperial Bank shot his pheasant in spite of losing his trousers to a wait-a-bit thorn bush. If I put it on record, here of all places, I might find myself enjoying some enforced solitude.

 

[RAMPAGE]

My daughter has to oblige, for me to write something for the sprogs; my sister's grandchildren and brother's grandchildren hardly count. My mother's father wrote a fascinating, somewhat disjointed but enthralling account of how an impoverished kid made his way out to the US, got an education and came back as an imperial service officer. I read that book from time to time, and feel very humble. He is responsible for my south Indian connections, which are prolific; he was the first Bengali in the forest service in the south.

As for the end, you will have to settle for the equivalent of a Pune Colonel's sepia-tinted recollections of how Boofy Kapoor of the Imperial Bank shot his pheasant in spite of losing his trousers to a wait-a-bit thorn bush. If I put it on record, here of all places, I might find myself enjoying some enforced solitude.

How do I get my hands on that autobiography? What's it called?

 

[Joe Shearer]

How do I get my hands on that autobiography? What's it called?

Oh dear. It was privately published by my grandmother, and was called 'Sat Samudra Tero Nodi Paarey' - across the Seven Seas and the Thirteen Rivers.

Now that you mention it, I should do a rapid translation. It is fascinating.

 

[RAMPAGE]

Oh dear. It was privately published by my grandmother, and was called 'Sat Samudra Tero Nodi Paarey' - across the Seven Seas and the Thirteen Rivers.

Now that you mention it, I should do a rapid translation. It is fascinating.

Do it on Wordpad. That way you'll be able to make a PDF version of it.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Do it on Wordpad. That way you'll be able to make a PDF version of it.

Thanks. Nice point.