Sunday, May 9, 2010

Left Cold...and Warm by Reading

It's summer in South India and in last week's Bookwise column, Latha Anantharaman wrote about books that left her cold in spite of the sweltering heat by sheer power of suggestion; the same suggestive power, she says, that warms one's body and soul, on a cold winter evening, just by watching a sitcom set in a centrally heated apartment in Manhattan. Here's an extract —
I tried that same power of suggestion this past month, while sweltering under a
whining ceiling fan. I fingered the bookshelves and poked through the towers of
unread books on every table, and I constructed a new stack of summer reading.

The first thing I happened on was a volume in a stash from Scholastic,
Shiver, by Maggie Stiefvater. It had a snow-white cover, with wintry branches
and one small dot of blood. It was a story about a golden-haired girl and a
wolf, as so many good stories are. It called to mind Red Riding Hood, bleak
winds, starvation, and yellow eyes lurking in the pines of the Black Forest.
Most of all, it probed the female fascination with wild animals, especially the
ones we're warned against.

However, I have, summer or otherwise, never felt the need for a book that could leave me chilled, being the sort of person who goes after books that radiate warmth. And nothing warms me like the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring. Of course, there are other favourites too. Give me Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and The Sunday Philosophy Club anytime!

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