Beer and Buddies; Books and Brew

These are the four b’s that a human being needs to live with, if I were stranded on an island either of these two combinations I wouldn’t miss anything. They help you survive anywhere and everywhere. Friends, your partners in crime, rescuers in crisis, misguides, philosophers when not in senses are the people whose company you will cherish all your lives.

You can act silly with them, pull their legs, offend them, pretend you hate them and get away with all this, although not without getting it back. They are the ones who laugh at your lamest jokes. I didn’t have good friends until I got to college, it was in college I met the people I now call friends for life. College is the perfect place to bump into like-minded crazy insane people. It is only in science opposite poles attract, when it comes to people it is the other way round.

There is nothing like having a good conversation over beer with your best buddies. That is how you stay high on life. Together they will help you survive any calamity. The two come to your rescue in the worst of situations. Last weekend we celebrated two great creations together, it was the friendship day and the world beer day. There you go, they even compliment each other this way, isn’t that just perfect? Beer is better with friends and  friends better with some beer not a lot though. I hope you did enjoy your weekend with the tow and didn’t let it go a waste.

The second combination books and brew is perfect for the times when you want to spend time on your own. A captivating book and a strong cup of coffee are enough to keep you entertained for a long time. The best sleepless nights are spent in the company of books and coffee.  It is the best way to have some peaceful, lonely and quiet time. The coffee keeps the sleep at bay when you are reading an exceptionally good book and you don’t want to fall asleep while at it.

With either the buddy and beer or books and brew combination one can forget the world around, things around seem to be simpler and more fun. So folks cheers, celebrate the companionship of these for eternity. Brew your life in a high way.

Book Review: Midnight’s Children

After Gone with the wind, this is the second book that took me a month to read and again the book was completely worth a read. In the beginning the plot seemed twisted, the author is writing about the present in one line and then shifting focus to his grandfather’s life in the next line. The book is not at all a light read. At some points the reader might get irritated and wonder why the author is rambling on but later on it all seems justified.

Midnight Children expresses a historical connection through the literary journey. This journey is again not singular; it is the journey of self and a nation. It begins a few years before 1947, set in the Indian sub-continent it sets the stage for Saleem Sinai, the narrator’s birth. Saleem was born in 1947 exactly at midnight along with an independent India and a new country Pakistan. All the children born at that time get unusual gifts.Saleem’s gift is his “nose” that allowed him at first to go into people’s heads and know what they are thinking. He is also able to telepathically communicate with the other midnight children forming a kind of  radio link of sorts with the rest of the children.

The narrator is not someone you will look upto or admire, the characters are curiously lopsided. The entire narration  is allegorical, which perhaps suggests an enhanced enjoyment of the work after studying a bit of Indian history. The seems to be well researched and times it was hard to differentiate if the history was fictional or factual, Rushdie did a great job weaving in the history. Beneath the dense, slightly overwrought language, there were tons of surprises in store. Till the end, I literally had no idea where the story was heading.

Although it was not a book that I immediately wanted to finish or the kind I would read even past my bed-time but I’d still recommend it. And I think will read it again myself. To conclude I’d say this book is a masterpiece literature and very hard to come up with.Have fun reading it, although you have to be patient this one.

Gone with the wind.

I don’t read love stories, that isn’t my genre. Even if I try reading such stories I end up abandoning the book halfway. But Gone with the wind by Margret Mitchell got me hooked.There are no two ways about the fact that GWTW is a rollicking good yarn.It will make you hate  Scarlett O’Hara the main protagonist and feel bad for her too. She is selfish, jealous of her best friends and often cruel and mean in her pursuits.And you feel bad for her all that she is going through.

Rhett Butler is of the same league and he is the only one who can see through Scarlett but you might end up loving his sarcasm.Ashley is disgustingly weak throughout the book.Its Melanie who is the real hero. Only one other time can I remember being so moved by the death of a character as I was by the death of Melly in Gone With the Wind, and that was by the death of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter.

It’s melodrama at its best and is long-running and at one point after 300 pages I wanted to stop reading this too but something kept me going. Set in the American South before, during, and after the Civil War, the story catalogues Scarlett’s attempt both to hold on to her idyllic past as southern aristocracy and to survive the harsh changes inflicted upon her land. Its hard to write a book with the main character so spiteful and full of hatred, but Mitchell did it pretty convincingly.

The book is quiet racist but I think that is Mitchell’s way of depicting the era.Its probably present reality with all the faults and weaknesses of the humankind. The book has made me really curious about the civil war and I would love to read more books about it. The way it has been depicted is quiet enthralling.It was heavy-going and somewhat frustrating all the way through with consistent themes of death and sickness, deprivation, grief and inequality.

Even if you are not an ardent romance, chick-lit, historical fiction reader you have to give this book a read. Though the sheer size of this book may seem intimidating but it is definitely worth reading.

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