reading habit
Book Editor’s note
Am I the only one who was strangely thrilled by the sight of Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal? This is the kind of world event one hopes for in their lifetime, big enough to be shared by everyone around the world, and yet small enough to be safely meme-ified into a fond memory. In its honour, my quick fixes today are about ships, seas and other maritime miscellany. Happy reading!
A list of literary reads
One: Which book gets to be called a “classic” has always been an arbitrary decision, usually made by people who all look very much like each other and very little like the rest of us. Mental Floss has put together a list of early reviews of twenty such classics which serve to make you think twice before you decide to finally pick up your pretend-to-have-read selection. (You can never break me, ‘Ulysses’. I will see you in hell.)
Two: Some ground-breaking literary history has been made. The Guardian tells us about the International Booker Prize 2021 longlist and, more specifically, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has become the first writer to be nominated for the prestigious award as both author and translator of the same book, ‘The Perfect Nine’, and the first nominee writing in an indigenous African language. You love to see it.
Three: My heart soared at this Atlas Obscura piece about Rebecca Brill, a huge Sylvia Plath fan and devout reader of her diaries, who discovered the author’s fascinating relationship with food in her private journals and has been tweeting every mention of it. “Brill has tweeted out a meal from Plath’s writings once a day ever since. Every Sunday, her collaborator, Lily Gibbs Taylor, illustrates one of the tweets.” There’s a sponge cake recipe in here too. Genuinely my favourite discovery of the month (thanks Lakshmi!).
Four: Here to scratch a very specific vicarious itch: in the New Yorker, Grant Snider lovingly illustrates the many mental calisthenics you experience when you see another person’s bookshelves. He revels in judging you by your bookshelf, but loves you nonetheless, and gives you advice on how to save yourself from such judgement. An all-round delight.
Five: I failed quite spectacularly at this quiz in Book Riot, which asks you to recognize a famous quote after it has been put through Google translate a bunch of times. Why was it so hard? Try for yourself and let me how you fared. I’m still shaking my head at my performance and continuing to be in awe of translators.
Six: Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the immensely popular 'Maisie Dobbs’ series, where the eponymous protagonist solves mysteries in the interwar years. In this CrimeReads essay, Winspear tells us about how she started, how she was compelled to question the nature of genres, and what’s changed in her outlook on reading and writing since her success. It is inspirational stuff for all aspiring writers, especially those trying to get their amateur detectives to stumble across a murder they can cheekily solve.
Quick fixes, aka a few varied recommendations
My favourite murder on water: My love for murder mysteries is, I’m sure, quite evident by now, and no one does murders on a train, on a plane, on a ship, or literally anywhere as well as Agatha Christie, forever Queen of Crime. ‘Death on the Nile’ is an enticing, fabulous read. Hercule Poirot is on a cruise on the Nile where he befriends the handsome newly-wed couple, Linnet and Simon Doyle. He is forced to bring his little grey cells into action when Linnet is murdered. Inject this directly into my brain, please.
My favourite novel on a ship: ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ by Peter Carey is one of my favourite novels of all time, and it plays out primarily on a ship! Oscar is a priest and Lucinda is a young heiress and the owner of a glass factory. They couldn’t be more different, except that they’re both gamblers, one obsessive, the other compulsive. They meet on a ship to Australia, and Lucinda ends up betting Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a far-away small town in New South Wales. The bet changes their lives forever (as it did mine). You do not come out of this novel unchanged.
Engrossing non-fiction about a ship: Not the Titanic. Erik Larson’s non-fiction is legendary, and his book, ‘Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania’, tells the story of the luxury passenger ship as it begins its voyage carrying civilians in the middle of WWI in 1915. Caught in the middle of a sea full of warships and clandestine tussles between the two sides, its journey resulted in a disaster. This account is a captivating tale of a lesser-known side of the war.
Super cool non-fiction about seas: ‘Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time’ by Dava Sobel tells the story of John Harrison, who invented what we now know as the chronometer, essentially solving the centuries-old problem of sailors getting lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land, due to their inability to measure longitudes. It is also a brief history of navigation and clock-making, and someone should make a movie on this stat.
A book about the Suez Canal: In 1956, in an attempt to clutch at colonial straws, Britain and France, working with Israel, tried to reclaim the Suez Canal, which had recently been nationalized by Egypt. The plan was one of the biggest mistakes of the time, resulting in blocking the canal for months. Fantastic historian Alex von Tunzelmann’s ‘Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace’ deals with the subject matter deftly and interestingly, as the many players hit and miss and continue to try their hand at a peaceful outcome.
Bonus: ‘Sail Away’ by Rabindranath Tagore ❤️
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.
