reading habit
Book editor’s note
Samhita Arni is writer, teacher, illustrator and a great lover of cats. Her ‘Sita’s Ramayana’ was a New York Times’ bestseller, and her most recent foray ‘The Prince’ won the Neev book award 2020. And she loves reading books almost as much as she loves writing them. Full disclosure: She’s a close friend and splainer supporter!
The book addict’s quiz
What is your most powerful childhood memory of a book?
My grandmother’s copy of William Makepeace Thackeray’s ‘The Rose and The Ring’. She gave it to me years later. Also, her copy of an ancient, illustrated version of Edward Lear’s nonsense rhymes, and her copy of Don Marquis’ ‘Archy and Mehitabel’. She would tell me stories, read me out portions of these books—and the way she did it would just light up my world. She was a brilliant storyteller.
Now that she’s gone, I have her copies of these books—but I have to say, it’s just not the same without her. She made these words and characters come alive in a way that fired up my imagination.
<Now, that’s an amazing grandparent—the kind that makes parents look bad:)>
What line of literature or poetry can you quote ad nauseam? Brownie points if you can tell us when and where you quoted it most recently.
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”—again, that’s what my grandmother always would say to me. Years later, I realized it was from TS Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ which is one of the most brilliant poems ever.
I also remember this from that poem:
Let us go then you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
Let us go through certain half-deserted streets. . .
I think I might have messed it up in remembering it line for line, but the last time I recited it was with one of my cousins, I think on a beach in Kerala, pre-pandemic.
<Of course, all cat lovers love TS Eliot.>
An author you adored as a child but haven’t thought about in years?
Enid Blyton. Goscinny & Uderzo, the creators of Asterix.
<We get Blyton, but Asterix? Not even Obelix or Vitalstatistix? We are sad on their behalf.>
Which book would you gift to your new best friend, and which to your worst enemy?
New best friend: Susanna Clarke’s ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell’. Or ‘Terra Nostra’ by Carlos Fuentes.
Worst enemy: ‘Twilight’. Or ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. Maybe Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels. With all the pages with the sex scenes ripped out.
And there’s a Mills & Boon title, ‘Covert Conception’, which features two people who have had sex when drugged by a cult to produce a sort of alpha-baby—a eugenics plot. But there’s lots of romance and steamy passion interspersed through this plot. Maybe that would also be a nice thing to gift an enemy, minus the sex scenes.
Or another romance title: ‘The Tycoon’s Virgin’. (Yes, I have read far too many of these books than I would like to admit.)
<TBH, sounds like it would be more fun to be your enemy… Also: Why is ‘Covert Conception’ not a Netflix series already?>
I would love to see a movie/series adaptation of __ starring __ as __
I would love to see a movie/series adaptation of ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ starring MYSELF as Flora Poste (forgive the narcissism, but no one else can do it like I could do it. Basically, this novel is my life.)
<Kate Beckinsale has nothing on you, dear Sam!>
A book review that was better than the book?
Hmm. I think reviews of Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’, were both better than the books.
Every review of Thomas Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’. I think Piketty has done brilliant work, but it has been easier to read the reviews. So maybe that’s not entirely accurate, since we wouldn’t have the reviews without the book. So I take that back.
(But at this point, may I do a huge shout-out to the most brilliant and under-rated economics book of all time, Branko Milanović’s ‘The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality’?)
<This is a polite way of saying that no one reads Piketty—just his reviews, which is both wise and a big time-saver. Also: ‘Never Let Me Go’? Take that back!>
Which book do you pretend to have read?
Many. I’ve lost count. Usually books that are somewhat famous/or in the press at the time, and so I pretend to have read them. But one that I think everyone assumes I’ve read, but I haven’t in fact, is ‘Beowulf’. Also, I did once pretend to have read ‘The Kalevala’.
<Also: Piketty.>
What is the first “forbidden” book you read in secret?
Recently, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. I don’t read this genre, but this book was surprising and insightful, I loved it.
At age 14. My father caught me reading Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’, and said “What! You shouldn’t be reading Henry Miller!” Whereupon he realized that he had misread the name—and that it was Arthur, not Henry. But it was too late. This had aroused my curiosity. I promptly went to the library and started reading Henry Miller’s ‘Sexus’. It was titillating but not my cup of tea.
<Lol! Of course! Is there a greater sin than a creative writer of fiction reading a bestseller self-help book on productivity? We think not!>
What’s one of the funniest books you’ve ever read? Something other than the usual suspects like Wodehouse, Adams, Durrell et al?
‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons. This is a great read for single, party girls who are broke; since it features a single, party girl who is broke. I too have been a broke, single girl who loves (loves, loves) partying, and had to stop partying (on account of broke-ness) and try to be more serious, and this book captured the special, hilarious, wonderful delight of that experience. If Flora Poste was alive in today’s world, she would be loving the gig economy.
<Or she’d be the modern-day Carrie Bradshaw, except smarter and funnier>
Send us a photo of your tsundoku pile.
<100/100. 50 points deducted for hiding your stash of M&Bs>
Note: Reading Habit is curated by our books editor Anushree Kaushal. Want to send along recommendations, feedback or just say hi? Email her at kaushalanushree@gmail.com