Checking out

It is becoming more and more obvious that the blog(s) are not going anywhere fast, which is to be expected coz I have a fulltime job. I think I should accept the inevitable and formally close up shop here. The blog was supposed to track my sabbatical which comes to an end in late April (21st to be exact), if I use the 1 year timeframe I started with. So we are coming to a logical end anyway. A pseudo-profound taking-stock post is obviously called for, and hopefully I'll pull my thoughts together and do that.

The blog enabled me to keep in touch in a nice way with several people, I wonder if there is some way to keep that going without the heavy duty time commitment of a blog. I've heard of this tool called Twitter, does anyone know more about it ?

http://gentopix.blogspot.com/

Cool blog !

http://www.gsi.gov.in/rajasaur.htm

The kind of trivia that is so uniquely web...

A seed from a tree near the Arghyam office. These seeds have been drifting down from the tree in great numbers over the last few days. It comes with its own 'natural' plastic shrinkwrap.

Film -- "Vanaja"

I just noticed this site off a Google ad on despoki.blogspot :

http://www.vanajathefilm.com/

It sounds like a cool film and the site is a masterpiece of tasteful minimalism.

Georges Simenon

I reread Georges Simenons' "Sunday" recently. Simenon is a remarkable author. He transcends 'Frenchness' (actually he was Belgian) to universal appeal. There are some explorations that can be done along this line of thought. There are not that many European authors that I like (Albert Camus and Umberto Eco stand out, even then only some of their books). I don't know if this is because I'm too rooted in my Anglo-american reading background, or because the authors are not universal. It would be interesting to know how the reverse works -- do European readers take more easily to English (or other like Indian, South American) writing ?


Back to Simenon. His writing is completely about human nature. There is an endless creativity in his writings and an infinite variety of situations and responses. His Inspector Maigret series tends to be lighter and and more about creative murder situations :-). They can be a lot of fun, in the "Light reading for the serious reader" category. His other books, like the ones in the photograph, can be quite dark.

Definitely someone to try if you are on the literary trip.

Some stuff about Simenon

PS: Salon has an interesting article that gives you some feel of how the literary scene in France works