Indian Summer (about the fall of the British Government in India)
The Lion and the Tiger (the rise and fall of the British Raj)
Othello (manga)
Genshiken (manga)
Embroideries (French translated graphic novel written by an Iranian woman)
Pushman (graphic novel)
Walking the Indian Streets (by Vinod Mehta about his coming to India after studies in Oxford)
Who's Who in Enid Blyton (all characters of her books, which I took for reference for my character development for my comics)
three more that I cannot remember right now...
and still then I took four more books today on my yet another auspicious visit to the library:
Finding Your Voice (about originality in writing)
Old Friend From Far Away (about memoirs [I love them])
A Vintage Book of Indian Writing (a collection of many books and stories by top Indian English writers)
The Plain Jane (Graphic Novel)
AND
Saboteur, a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
Long list I know.... how am I going to find time to do justice to my impulsive grabbing-of-books-off-shelves-at-the-library syndrome?
(sigh) I ask myself.
haha, no actually, I am looking forward to it. Its just a matter of priorities.
PS. And one more thing, apart from all these books I have a half read Max Lucado Facing Your Giants looking forlorn and dejected on my table, and two other books that I snucked out from my old apartment, Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and Rise of Christianity (which is a social studies study of how and why Christianity succeeded like it did especially before Constantine made it the official religion of his kingdom).
AND
I was reading an autobiography of Richard Wagner called My Life in the library all evening and was so engrossed into it that time flew and it was 8pm already. Wagner is my favourite composer and he composed for theatre with dramatic music inspiring composers today like John Williams, who composed for Harry Potter (I love the HP music), Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan, E.T., and what-not.
Here's an excerpt from Wagner's autobiography:
The mysterious joy I felt at hearing an orchestra play from close up remains with me as a voluptuous memory to this day: even the orchestra's tuning up excited me fantastically: I remember particularly the striking of fifths on the violin struck me as a greeting from another world - which incidentally had a very literal meaning for me.
In ecstatic dreams I met (Beethoven and Shakespeare), saw and talked to them; upon awakening I was bathed in tears..
For me music was ... a mystically exalted enormity: everything concerned with rules seemed only to distort it...
So, he is an amazing fellow. If you are interested, try out his piece called Tannhauser Overture. It is my personal favourite. I take to wings with this music. There's a story to the music. Very deep story that unfolds with the music, but that which is indescribable.
Wagner and Kishore Kumar inspire the landscapes in my mind. Kishore Kumar is another guy. Thats another story.
But my point is, I am so impulsive when it comes to books. I've lost count of how many books I am concerning myself with at this point in my life... that'll include all books half read and left lying in my room back in Shillong:
Propaganda: Formation of Man's Attitude
Wuthering Heights
Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
probably some more...