Romance

Reader Interview of Ayush (The Newbie) @ BYOB Party in May 2019

We spoke to Ayush, an avid reader.

Describe your journey as a reader.

I used to read a great deal of children’s literature. In fact, I was gifted books for any achievements I made at school or at home. So because of this encouragement, reading became a staple in my life. I spent a great deal of time during my formative years in the library reading different genres. It was when I started reading literary fiction that I realized that I could partake of a huge palate of ideas. I write and my inspiration has always been fiction.

Your favorite genre.

I have a soft spot for crime fiction.  And I am guilty of reading cheap romantic literature.

Why is it bad to read romantic literature? 

Well, the stories have no realistic premise whatsoever.

eBook or Paperback?

I don’t mind either though the benefit of reading a paperback is that you can gift it to someone once you read it!

Favorite literary fiction author?

Undoubtedly, Virginia Woolf.  I love her writing- In her book To the Lighthouse, she describes transitions. I still get the chills thinking about it. She is relevant even today, particularly her feminist work. Another writer I admire is Amitav Ghosh.

Reading habits?

Erratic. Luckily I get a chance to read a great deal even at the workplace. So I juggle reading multiple books and multiple genres at a time on my Kindle and paperbacks.

Do you finish the books you start?

Always.

Even if the books are bad?

Particularly if they are bad. I can’t start a new book until I finish the ones I started.

Audiobooks?

Haven’t tried them yet although my friends have recommended the audiobook experience.

Favorite books?

The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barret Browning

Thanks, Ayush! Was really great talking to you.

 

Short Book Review: Lord John’s Dilemma by G.G. Vandagriff

SBR: My mood was particularly bleak and I didn’t think I could handle anything with even a whiff of the real world in it. Lord John’s Dilemma by G.G. Vandagriff is a romance novel that came in handy. Inspired by and compared to Georgette Heyer’s books, this is a Regency romance and paying due respect to the period, the protagonists do not jump into the bed from the very first page, which is such a relief. It has the feel-good, happy ending you want to read in the genre, where good people get all they deserve, namely money and their chosen life-partner. It tamed my bleak mood sufficiently.

To read or not to read: Yes, if you are a romance reader.

The Moral Urgency of Anna Karenina by Gary Saul Morson

I can not make this a part of regular recommendation, because it would make sense only to those who have read the voluminous classic Anna Karenina and preferably also War and Peace. But I couldn’t help writing about this article.

Oprah Winfrey, who chose Tolstoy’s novel for her book club, followed many others in viewing Anna Karenina as a celebration of its heroine and of romantic love. That gets the book exactly wrong. It mistakes Anna’s story of herself for Tolstoy’s. Just as Anna Karenina imagines herself into the novel she reads, such readers imagine themselves as Anna or her adulterous lover Vronsky. They do not seem to entertain the possibility that the values they accept unthinkingly are the ones Tolstoy wants to discredit.

Anna Karenina, the character, justified the “romance” of her life. Not the book or the author.

As one of her friends observes, she resembles a heroine from a romance. But Anna’s sense of herself is not Tolstoy’s sense of her. He places his romantic heroine not in a romance, where her values would be validated, but in the world of prosaic reality, where actions have consequences and the pain we inflict matters.

Is Karenin the unfeeling, uncouth man that Anna makes him out to be?

Because Anna feels guilty for hurting her husband, she persuades herself that he cannot feel. She knows better and is well aware that although he cannot express his feelings, he nevertheless experiences them. He suffers horribly from jealousy. But she makes sure not to see his suffering. Tolstoy tells us that Anna “schooled herself to despise and reproach him.” She maintains of him that “this is not a human being, this is a machine.”

If you have read Anna Karenina and have only thought of it as a tragic romance, you must read this article for yourself on Commentary magazine.