Short Book Review: Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin
![Last Train To Istanbul](https://i2.wp.com/wortharead.pub/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/LastTrainToIstanbul.jpg?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1)
Do you think the books make the best valentine? Have you read a book and are craving to chitchat about it with someone? Have a favorite book that you think everyone would love, if only they knew about it? Want to see what others are reading and have interesting conversations beyond weather, traffic, and real estate?
Then come to the BYOB party and talk away! Try to avoid a bestseller and if you have a copy, bring it along and read us a passage. All languages are welcome.
There will be refreshments and swag courtesy Worth A Read.
So, what really happens at a BYOB Party?
Everyone brings a book and talks about it. Conversations follow and they are good. So are the refreshments!
You can take a look at what happened in some of our earlier parties here:
Do I have to be there for the entire duration of four hours?
We aren’t closing doors or locking you in. But the party is best enjoyed if you are there for the entire duration and listen to people talk about a variety of books. Trust us, you won’t know how time flew.
Do I have to bring anything?
Nothing really. But if you have a copy of the book you want to talk about, you might want to bring it in. Other attendees might want to have a look, or you might want to read a paragraph from it.
I am an author. Can I bring a book written by me?
A good writer should be a voracious reader. It would be preferable if you brought a book you really like written by someone else.
Who are the organizers?
I have more questions. Who do I contact?
Shoot an e-mail to jayajha@instascribe.com.
Okay! I am ready to come. What do I do?
Join our meetup group, RSVP, and come over!
If you are not on meetup, you can also RSVP on Explara.
Update: The Party has been postponed to a week later (February 20) due to some logistic issues. An updated post will be there soon. A separate mail is being sent to those who registered.
Do you think the books make the best valentine? Have you read a book and are craving to chitchat about it with someone? Have a favorite book that you think everyone would love, if only they knew about it? Want to see what others are reading and have interesting conversations beyond weather, traffic, and real estate?
Then come to the BYOB party and talk away! Try to avoid a bestseller and if you have a copy, bring it along and read us a passage. All languages are welcome.
There will be refreshments and swag courtesy Worth A Read.
So, what really happens at a BYOB Party?
Everyone brings a book and talks about it. Conversations follow and they are good. So are the refreshments!
You can take a look at what happened in some of our earlier parties here:
Do I have to be there for the entire duration of four hours?
We aren’t closing doors or locking you in. But the party is best enjoyed if you are there for the entire duration and listen to people talk about a variety of books. Trust us, you won’t know how time flew.
Do I have to bring anything?
Nothing really. But if you have a copy of the book you want to talk about, you might want to bring it in. Other attendees might want to have a look, or you might want to read a paragraph from it.
I am an author. Can I bring a book written by me?
A good writer should be a voracious reader. It would be preferable if you brought a book you really like written by someone else.
Who are the organizers?
I have more questions. Who do I contact?
Shoot an e-mail to jayajha@instascribe.com.
Okay! I am ready to come. What do I do?
Just RSVP here and turn up on time!
“Marvellously intelligent and entertaining” – one of the reviews printed on the back cover of English August
says and I concur. Profanity, sexual jokes, and scatological humor abound, the protagonist is drunk and stoned almost every single moment, you feel like whacking him for being an indulgent, self-absorbed, spoiled youth who doesn’t take anything or anybody seriously; and yet you can’t help but see the world through his eyes – in all its mundane, petty and purposeless glory.
You can decide what to make of the book. You can laugh out loud and forget about things. You can identify with the protagonist’s sense of purposelessness and isolation if you have been or are going through a similar experience yourself. You can wonder about the big, fat Indian bureaucracy, its lethargy and its corruption. You can hate our hero for being apathetic to a job where he could impact several lives meaningfully if only he would stop being cynical. And that is the beauty of the writing. It doesn’t preach or impose anything on you.
English August is a true modern Indian novel. There is no romanticization of either the good or the bad. There are no exotic, dreamy portrayals. No ultimate happy union of the east and the west, of the megalopolis and the hinterland, of the Kolkata-and-Delhi-boy and the small-town locals. It is an affectionate yet unsparing portrayal of India.
In its craft, language and style, it stands right along with the best English novels worldwide.
Below is the book description from the publisher’s website. (The edition I read was from Rupa and Co.)
“A tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary” goes the subtitle of the book I have selected for this month. It indeed is all of that. One might argue that the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the primary tale here, but it wouldn’t have made as fascinating a read if it also didn’t include the stories of the eponymous professor and the madman, two people intimately connected with the dictionary’s development. They were Sir James Murray, the primary editor of the dictionary, and Dr. W. C. Minor, one of the most prolific and productive contributors to the dictionary for about twenty years.
Okay! Quiz time:
Here are the answers, some at least. Others are partial and some withheld.
And did you know?
Puritans interested only in the history of the dictionary may find the pages detailing the lives of these men distracting. But it is this glimpse into the lives of people involved (admittedly only two of possibly hundreds or thousands, but two very important ones) that gives the story its charm. You also get to hear of author’s ruminations on the advancing war technologies in the Civil War era contrasted with the area of medicine that was still old-world, and ill equipped to deal with the injuries of advanced weapons. You also get to know about the limitations of the understanding of mental health issues in nineteenth century and how it has changed since then. Some of it is perhaps there to pad up the pages and may sometimes feel too pedagogic, but the story flows smoothly. The time, surroundings and even private conversations of the people from a bygone era have been recreated with such confidence that one might wonder at times if the author has taken too much of creative liberty. But there are many letters, old newspaper articles, court proceedings and detailed asylum records that the author goes by, which lend credibility to the raconteur.
A dictionary is something we take for granted in today’s world. It has evolved from the printed tome it used to be to its online avatars. And now we may not even care to go to a dictionary-specific website because a google search to define a term throws up the details right there. It is easy to forget what a humongous enterprise creation of something like a dictionary, which is to represent a language in its fullness, is. A book like this is important to remind us just how thankful we have to be even for the things that feel like they have always been there.
One important warning is warranted here. The tale of insanity has some rather unsavory and grotesque moments. So, despite a cute topic like making of the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, do not hand over the book to kids. Read yourself first to determine if they are old enough to handle it.
Below is the book description from the publisher’s website.
It is known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. The creation of theOxford English Dictionary began in 1857, took seventy years to complete, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story–a story of two remarkable men whose strange twenty-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking.Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands of contributors who submitted illustrative quotations of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor. He was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, fifty miles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray’s offer was regularly–and mysteriously–refused.Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly ten thousand definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor–that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane–and locked up in Broadmoor, England’s harshest asylum for criminal lunatics.The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius, and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riveting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man’s tortured mind and his contribution to another man’s magnificent dictionary.