BOOK-WORM

I came across a rather interesting concept while surfing a few weeks ago... a "book trailer"... similare to a movie trailer...a sneak peek into a book... you open the current book you're reading at random and post the first set of 3-4 sentences that your eyes fall upon (strangely, each time I do this, my eyes automatically go for the left page somewhere between line 7 and line 28... every SINGLE time!!!)...visitors can then discover for themselves whether it's a book that appeals to them and also share their own personal book trailers... on a very individualistic level, I feel it's interesting to document a random set of sentences in the books that I read... so just for fun, here goes...

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND- Fyodor Dostoevsky
...And there, in its loathsome, stinking underground hole, our mouse, insulted, crushed, destroyed by ridicule, immediately settles into a cold, venomous, and, worst of all, life-long malice. For forty years on end it will recall its humiliation, to the last and most shameful detail, each time embellishing the recollection with still more shameful details, spitefully teasing and whipping itself up with its own fantasies...

THE AGONY & THE ECSTASY- Irving Stone
...The Greeks had carved bodies from their white marble of such perfect proportion and strength that they could never be surpassed; but the figures had been without mind or spirit. His David would be the incarnation of everything Lorenzo de' Medici had been fighting for, that the Plato Academy believed was the rightful heritage of man; not a sinful little creature living only for salvation in the next life, but a glorious creation capable of beauty, strength, courage, wisdom, faith in his own kin, with a brain and will and inner power to fashion a world filled with the fruit of man's creative intellect. His David would be Apollo but considerably more; Hercules, but considerably more; Adam, but considerably more; the most fully realized man the world had seen, functioning in a rational and humane world...

THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET- Salman Rushdie
Three of us went west from Bombay. Of the three, it was Vina, for whom it was a return journey, who first got caught up in the gnaw and churning of the western world's spiritual hunger, its chasms of uncertainty, and turned turtle: a tough shell over insides full of mush. Vina the radical, the word- hooligan, the outlaw, the woman on the edge: open her up and you found crystals and ether, you found someone who longed to be a disciple and be shown the straight path. Which was a part of Ormus's power over her, and India's too. As for me, she found me anomalous, oxymoronic, and accusation she might profitably have levelled at herself (but never did). Rai, the un-Indian Indian, the easterner without a spiritual side: she needed to conquer me, to show me the truth about myself, which in her forcefully expressed view I was busily denying. So she kept coming back to me, bouncing between Ormus's bed and mine.
Also, of course, she like illicit sex. I want more than what I want...

RAVAN & EDDIE- Kiran Nagarkar
Ravan and Eddie were not twins. Ravan did not wince with pain if Eddie was hurt. Eddie's thirst was not quenched when Ravan drank five glasses of water. If one studied, the other did not pass his exams. Late on, when one copulated, the other did not have an orgasm.
Let alone blood brothers, they were not even stepbrothers. Eddie and Ravan's lives ran parallel, that's all. And there is no greater distance on earth that that which separates parallel lines, even if they almost touch each other. One city, one chawl, two floors, two cultures, two languages, two religions and the enmity of two women separated them. How could their paths possibly meet?
It was music that brought Rani Roopmati and Baz Bahadur together. The paths of Baiju and India's greatest singer, Tansen, crossed because of music. And music it was which made Laila and Majnu, the legendary lovers, immortal. The music from Dil Deke Dekho should have bound Ravan and Eddie for ever and ever. But Eddie went to see Rock Around the Clock and the reconciliation between our mighty heroes was jinxed once again...

THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ & OTHER STORIES- F. Scott Fitzgerald
... There was a girl with a flowery face, dressed like Titania with braided sapphires in her hair. There was a room where the solid, soft gold of the walls yielded to the pressure of his hand, and a room that was like a platonic conception of the ultimate prison- ceiling, floor, and all, it was lined with an unbroken mass of diamonds, diamonds of every size and shape, until, lit with tall violet lamps in the corners, it dazzled the eyes with a whiteness that could be compared only with itself, beyond human wish or dream.
Through a maze of these rooms the two boys wandered. Sometimes the floor under their feet would flame in brilliant patterrns from lighting below, patterns of barbaric clashing colours, of pastel delicacy, of sheer whiteness, or of subtle and intricate mosaic, surely some mosque on the Adriatic Sea. Sometimes beneath layers of thick crystal he would see blue or green water swirling, inhabited by vivid fish and growths of rainbow foliage. Then they would be treading on furs of every texture and colour or along corridors of the palest ivory, unbroken as though carved complete from the gigantic tusks of dinosuars extinct before the age of man...

BITTER FRUIT- The Very Best of Saadat Hasan Manto
...What is my womb? A useless pot of clay, a child's toy, which I will smash into pieces.
But a voice whispers in my ear: this world is a crossroad. Smash not your clay pot in the middle of it. Accusing fingers will be pointed at you.
This world is a crossroad, but he left me in the middle of two roads, both leading to incompletion. And tears.
A tear has slipped into my oyster to produce a pearl. Whom will it adorn?
Accusing fingers will be raised when the oyster opens to reveal its pearl and disgorge it on the crossroad. The fingers will turn into snakes and bite the oyster and the pearl and turn them blue with venom.
The sky was a wash of blue like his eyes, as it is today. Why does it not fall? What pillars are keeping it in place?

CHOWRINGHEE- Sankar
I often find the past impinging upon the present, memories intruding on my pleasant, personal thoughts. Even though I can scarcely afford the luxury of indulging in solitary ruminations, the painful memories of Shahjahan Hotel cloud my thoughts every now and then. I do not know, nor want to know, the whys and wherefores. But I do realize that without my sojourn at Shahjahan, my education in the school of life would have remained incomplete. If you want to know the real individual lurking inside a person, you must come to this magnificent roadside inn.
Years ago when I set foot in the world of law and justice, there was someone experienced and sensitive enough to guide me through its mysterious lanes and by-lanes. I did not have to seek anything out for myself... At the Shahjahan, however, there was nobody to point out to me the extraordinary hidden deep within the crowded human jungle. And yet this insignificant employee, with no one to guide him, has been fortunate enough to receive priceless gems from this incredible treasure-laden world...

THE PALACE OF DREAMS- Ismael Kadare
"The task of our Palace of Dreams, which was created directly by the reigning Sultan, is to classify and examine not the isolated dreams of certain individuals- such as those who in the past were for one reason or another granted the privelege, and who in practice enjoyed the monopoly, of prediction through interpretation of divine omens- but the 'Tabir' as a whole: in other words, all the dreams of all citizens without exception. This is a vast enterprise, beside which tbe oracles of Delphi and the predictions of all the hordes of prephets and magicians in the past are derisory. The idea behind the Sovereign's creation of the Tabir is that Allah looses a forewarning dream on the world as casually as He unleashes a flash of lightning or draws a rainbow or suddenly sends a comet close to us, drawn from the mysterious depths of the Universe. He dispatches a signal to the earth without bothering about where it will land; He is too far away to be concerned with such details. It is up to us to find out where the dream has come to earth- to flush it out from among millions, billions of others, as one might look for a pearl lost in the desert..."

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
What did I learn that day in the sabha?
All this time I'd believed in my power over my husbands. I'd believed that because they loved me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me- as much perhaps any man can love- there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honor, of loyalty toward each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but only when they felt the circumstances would bring them heroic fame. A woman doesn't think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn't have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended on them so completely in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies.
For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single word..."