Narayoni started reading The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
A fantasy adventure saga set in the early days of Middle-Earth features humans and elves, dwarves and dragons, orcs and …
I love reading books belonging to multiple genres: fantasy, scify, historical fiction, detective fiction, books from the Victorian era, etc.
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A fantasy adventure saga set in the early days of Middle-Earth features humans and elves, dwarves and dragons, orcs and …
"‘This is a very ambitious one. I wanted to suggest an Indian writer writing about India, after having spent many years abroad, or living there. There are hundreds of them — well, if not hundreds, at least twenty-five. I find these people absurd, full with one mixed-up culture and writing about another, what kind of audience are they aiming at. That's why their India is just not real, a place of fantasy, or of confused metaphysics, a sub-continent of goons. All their Indians are caricatures. Why is that. Because there really are no universal stories, because each language is an entire culture.’"
"A buffalo passed by, and with a casual whisk of its tail, deposited some dung on his forearm. Oh, you bastard, said Agastya. He scraped the dung off on a tree and smelt his arm. The stench remained. He began to laugh, oh how insane his existence was, it even included getting shit off his arms. "
Agastya Sen, the hero of English, August, is a child of the Indian elite. His father is the governor of …
Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the …
Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe …
Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his …
Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it - even though she's just become his …
Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe …
"No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise. “Cultivate happiness!” I said briefly to the doctor: “do you cultivate happiness? How do you manage?”"
— Villette by Charlotte Brontë
On the "cultivation" of happiness
"Not that true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know."
"Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chambermaids in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance, was an individual of no social significance and little burdened by cash? They did know it, evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in a moment’s calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty well under its pressure."