Today happens to be the birthday of Chetan Bhagat: the best selling English novelist in India’s history. Bhagat’s four novels Five Point Someone, One Night at Call Center, Three Mistakes of My Life and 2 States have remained on the best selling charts since their release. Two of his novels have inspired and adapted into films by Bollywood. Bhagat an alumuni of IIT Delhi and IIM  Ahmedabad is also a popular columnist and eminent speaker,with his colums appearing frequently in Times of India, Dainik Bhaskar etc. Time Magazine has named Bhagat as one of the hundred most influential people in the world. He is one person who is credited in making India read like never before. He also give motivational speeches in Leading MNC’s and institutions. Such has been Bhagat’s quest for writing that he left his high profile investment banking job in Hong Kong and has settled in Mumbai, only to concentrate more on writing.

Henry Fielding (April 22, 1707- October 8, 1754) was an English Dramatist and Novelist. He is known for his rich earthly humour and satirical finesse. He wrote his books with the pen name “Captain Hercules Vinegar”. His preferred genre was that of Satire and Picaresque. He was the part of literary movements such as Enlightenment and Augustan Age. Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews are believed to be his most notable nobles.

Vladimir Nabokov ( April 22, 1899-2 July,1977) was a multilingual Russian novelist and short-story writer in the post modern era. Nabokov’s first nine novels were in Russian, then he rose to International fame as a master English short story teller. He spent his childhood and adolescent years in St Petersburg, Russia. Though it was his stay in Berlin, that he learnt the nuances of writing and became a recognized poet and writer. He made America his second home and worked as a professor in Wellesley College. It was the grand success of Lolita that Nabokov moved permanently to Montreaux, Switzerland, and completely devoted himself to writing. Lolita has been rated at No.4 in the modern library 100 best novels.

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Laughter is precious but what if there was a machine that would make everyone laugh – how precious would it be? Very, as little Jeffrey and Ben discovered. Working in a junk shop they found a machine that produced rip roaring jokes that sent everyone, including their temperamental neighbour, into splits.  And theirs is a story that will bring a smile on the faces of our young readers as well.

In The Joke Machine, McCall Smith does not preach. Nor does he get naughty and suggest pranks or deride elders. No, just by using his imagination he creates a book that will enthrall children with its imaginative plot, simple writing style and whacky illustrations. At the same time, Smith manages to convey some important messages. Messages about laughter, joy, and friendship. Messages about curiosity, about not giving up, about letting the children tinker about with machine parts. Messages which are delivered so simply that one does not even notice them. And at the end of the book, the reader gets up wishing that he or she too had a joke machine that would enable to him to laugh away life’s troubles and to fill the lives of those around him with joy.

A must read for children in the 5-10 age group.

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Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was born in New York City on this very day. She was a celebrated novelist, short story writer and a designer. She wrote a close to 85 short stories and several design books. She was well versed in French too, several volumes of her work  published in both English and French is a testimony to it. Her affluent upbringings instilled in her a firsthand knowledge of the America’s privileged classes. She added humor and wit to give greater dimension to her stories of social and psychological insight. “The Age of Innocence” “and “The House of Mirth” are believed to be her most notable work. Through these books she has successfully highlighted the complexities, hollowness and the falling apart of the privileged American class.

“Beware of monotony; it’s the mother of all the deadly sins”.

                                                                                               -Edith Wharton

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“I recently turned fifty, which is young for a tree, midlife for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter miler whose son now says, “Dad, I just can’t run the quarter with you anymore unless I bring something to read.”

Fifty is a nice number for the states in the Union or for a national speed limit, but it was not a number that I was prepared to have hung on me. Fifty is supposed to be my father’s age, but now Bill Cosby, Junior is stuck with these elevated digits and everything they mean.”

Thus begins Bill Cosby’s second book which he wrote when he hit the half century mark. Our parents are already there. Someday we will get there too; maybe some of us are already there. The time when birthdays are no longer happy events; when the number of candles on the cake begin to weigh it down; when every morning we look at the mirror in horror, desperately trying to hide that strand of white hair, or the wrinkles on the forehead.

Ageing is not easy. After having lived life to the fullest, after having experienced the speed, the momentum, to slow down is not easy. And yet, it is inevitable. All of us will age. And while we can continue to remain “young at heart” and “remarkably fit for our age,” we will invariably not be able to  do as many things as we did previously.But there is no need to despair. It’s natural and Cosby helps us realize this by taking up the everyday annoyances of growing old and laughing at them in his own flamboyant style.  The sagging love handles, the inability tie your own laces, fading memory, declining eyesight,  receding hairline, poor digestion, Cosby shares them all and laces each irritant with a healthy dose of humour.

Written in a chatty, colloquial style, the book is easy to read and relate to. The worries and anxieties described by Cosby are all too real. For those approaching or already past their fifties, Time Flies may well be a tool of acceptance; of learning to laugh at themselves and live with the inconveniences brought on by time. And for those who still happen to be “young,” it might provide a better understanding of what their parents and elders go through. Yet, many a times, one can’t help feeling that Cosby is exaggerating. Often one is tempted to shake him up and say, “Seriously dude, fifty isn’t that old and you definitely don’t go bonkers at that age.” The other thing that jars a little is the overly long introduction by Poussaint. It is way too preachy to be in sync with the rest of the book because for all his grumblings not once does Cosby turn prescriptive. Pouissant, on the other hand, is full of advise and observations which baffle. For instance, he takes President Reagen’s re-election into the White House at the age of seventy three, as a mark of turning attitudes towards the elderly. Seriously? Then we Indians must be really good at respecting our elderly because seventy seems to be the average age of our leaders.

These aberrations aside, Time Flies is a light read that you will probably finish in just one sitting. Pick it up if you are looking for a healthy dose of the All American humour.

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A French aviator and writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery is best known for his best selling master piece: The Little Prince. On his 110th Birth anniversary, we bring together some of his Little passages filled with Great meaning!!!

“All grown ups were children once,
Although few of them remember it.”

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”

“If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general’s fault. It would be mine.”

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.”

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.”

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He does not say “My men were beaten,” he says, “I was beaten.”

“I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man’s self-respect is a sin.”

Daily life is insane…it’s almost as if your spouse, your children, your parents, in short everyone is conspiring to drive you mad. Often you feel like pulling at your hair, throwing things at someone’s head or just screaming at the top of your lungs. And then, some more. Well, you could do that or simply pick up Erma Bombeck’s If Life is a bowl of cherries- what am I doing in the pits?

In this book Erma Bombeck delivers the ultimate laugh-it-out pill manufactured out of the seemingly innocuous everyday irritants that lace our lives – a snoring spouse, the “super vision, super-hearing” mother, the sorry-i-am-late syndrome….Remember the nail versus bare wall debate that takes places in your house every time you want to put up a painting or a hook? The Frustration you experience as a working mom trying to get your kids to co-operate? The identity crisis that threatens to overwhelm you when you decide you’ve had enough of cleaning pots and dirty underwear? The horror you feel when your mom, sitting in the front seat of the car tells you to stop making faces at your baby brother, without turning her head? You will find all that and much more in this 255 page book.

Written in the 1970s Bombeck’s book brings to life the daily dilemmas faced by the All American housewife. And yet, surprisingly, four decades later, we can still relate to much of what she says. The scenarios she creates are not a thing of the past or Western, they seem like instances (albeit exaggerated ones) from our everyday lives. And her take on them, her exaggerations and her satire have you in splits. Try as you might, you will not be able to come across a single page that does not have you cracking up. Here are some instances:

My son slouched into the kitchen one night, threw his books on the countertop and said, “I’ve just had the worst day of my entire life and it’s all your fault.”

” How do you figure that?” I asked.

“Just because you made me go up to my room and turn off all the lights before I went to school, I missed the bus. Then, with all your nagging about cleaning up my room, I couldn’t find my gym clothes and got fifteen points knocked off my grade.”

“The gym clothes were folded in your bottom drawer.”

“Yeah, well, what yo-yo would expect them to be there?”

“You’ve got a point.”

“I hope you are happy,” he grumbled, ” I have failed English.”

“I did that?”

“That’s right. I told you I had a paper that was due before lunch and you made me turn my lights off last night and wouldn’t let me do it.”

“It was one thirty in the morning.”

“Just forget it. It’s done. Did you have a good lunch today? I hope so because, thanks to you, I didn’t get any.”

“What’s THAT got to do with me?”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t advance me next week’s allowance. And more good news. You know the suede jacket you got me for my birthday last year? Well, it’s gone.”

“And I’m to blame for that?”

“I’m glad you admit it. All I hear around here is, ’Hang up your coat, hang up your pajamas, hang up your sweater…’ and the one time I take your advice and hang up my jacket on a hook in the lunchroom, someone rips it off. If I had just dropped it on the floor by my feet like I always do, I’d have the suede jacket today.”

“It sounds like quite a day.”

“It’s not over yet,” he said. “Didn’t you forget something?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like, weren’t you supposed to remind me I had ball practice after school?”

“I put a note on your desk.”

“Under all that junk I am supposed to find a note! It would serve you right if I got cut. And I might just do that. I swear, I was talking to some of the guys and we decided parents can sure screw up their kids.”

I smiled, “We try.”

OR CHECK OUT THIS ONE:

I don’t know what there is about a nail in the wall that makes strong, virile men cry. The first time I was aware of this phenomenon was a week after my husband and I married. I passed him in the kitchen one day while carrying a small nail and a hammer.

“Where are you going with that hammer and nail,” he asked, beginning to pale.

“I am going to hang up a towel rack,” I said.

He could not have looked more shocked if I had said I was going to drive a wooden peg into the heart of a vampire.

“DO you have to drive that spike into the wall to do it?”

“No,” I said resting on the sink, ” I could prop the towel rack up in a corner on the floor. I could hang it around my waist from a rope, or I could do away with it altogether and keep a furry dog around the sink to dry my hands on.”

“What is there about a women that they cannot bear to see a smooth, bare wall?” he grumbled.

“And what is there about men that they cannot bear to have the necessities of life hung from a wall?”

“What necessities?” he asked. “Certainly you don’t need that mirror in the hallway.”

“You said that about the light switches.”

…And so the nail versus the bare wall has gone on for years in our house…

GIVES YOU A SENSE OF DEJA VU?

That is the beauty of Bombeck’s work. Every instance seems like it is straight out of your own life. And suddenly the very things that had us screaming and shouting and popping BP pills are funny. A must read for every one who enjoys a good laugh and has the ability to laugh at himself or herself….after all that is what real humour is about!

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Written more than fifty years ago, The Secret diary Of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend deliciously flaunts adolescent angst through the life and events of a teenager from a dysfunctional family. Written in the form of diary entries that are recorded by Adrian, a 13 and 3/4 year old British lad, readers will love and cherish this hugely popular “modern classic”

The book starts off with a detailed description of a hilarious New Year Resolution. Then, as the reader reads through the pages of Adrian’s life they will soon find themselves falling in love with the character and the naïve, weird ways he has of explaining things to himself. His diary entries offer nuggets of wisdom and delightful insights into his “dramatic” life. In the background, we find reference to some historic events of the time such as the marriage of Princess Diana. Readers will immediately see through the particular observations and misinterpretations and relish the unintentionally ironic, “self centered“ view of the world through the eyes of a confused adolescent.

This is an earnest comical account of a boy who is at the crossroads of his life. His teachers and the other people around him have yet to notice that he is an intellectual. The school bully torments and pesters him unless paid off with allowance money. His bright ideas keep landing his dog at the vet’s office for frequent visits. He doesn’t understand his parents or their marital problems… and for the very first time, Adrian is in love… Filled with a good amount of humor, this is a light hearted and cheerful read. Although most of the excellent wit is at the expense of Adrian and his sweet yet tacky mannerism, readers will fall in love with the character and giggle, laugh, cry and reminisce what it feels like to view the world anew when the age of innocence ends.

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