We Can Be The Writers We Want To Read

I really enjoyed this. i agree with every word. 🙂

The Absurdity of Having Guilty Pleasures

I recently became active on Goodreads. Those of you who don’t know what it is, check it out. It’s addictive. Just remember that I warned you.

I used the Barcode Scan option in the Goodreads app on my smartphone like a baws (I LOVE that little beep it makes! Do you love the beep? And I get excited every time it finds the correct book. It’s…it’s like magic!) and scanned one of my favourite books and gave it four stars even if it is –shudder- “chick-lit”. I then stared at my phone for a few minutes and added in the comments box: “A guilty pleasure.  :)”

I’m not very sure why I felt the need to clarify this to the world. Why did I feel the need to be guilty about enjoying this book?Yes, it’s extremely girly. Yes, it has a corny, happy ending of the kind that “serious” readers abhor. It’s just comforting, entertaining and enjoyable.

It’s true that I generally don’t enjoy this “chick-lit” genre of books, also known as popcorn fiction or beach-reads. I find the very name  derogatory to the “chicks” who may enjoy them, and I find that the stories themselves are  stereotypical and I think they degrade women despite the fact that their target audience is women. I also agree that they give people unrealistic expectations about romantic love. (Trust me ladies, being with a man who gives you butterflies in your stomach each time he looks at you will be very disconcerting and uncomfortable in the long run!)

The thing about me is, I’m constantly on the lookout with books with female protagonists who live normal, relatable lives, to read when I’m down or when I am not in the mood to read something new. Needless to say, this is an uphill task because most female characters in adult fiction are side-lined or entirely generic. And the ones in girly books are, well, way too girly. Or way too helpless. Or worse, way too focused on finding her “soul-mate”. I understand that finding romantic love has never been more important that now, with familial bonds weakening and friends being entirely too absorbed in their own careers, and I am in fact, a believer in romantic love. But what about your life? The one outside of your significant other? It infuriates me, especially when women themselves are the ones producing such tripe. This task was a lot easier when I was a teenager, it seems, and I could comfortably read and reread Jacqueline Wilson books till the books got tattered and the covers came off. I still give them a go sometimes when I’m down, though of course, the age difference is too great for the characters to be relatable now. It’s sad but I now find it easier to relate to a thirty-something protagonist than a teenage protagonist, despite only being in my early twenties. (Except Katniss Everdeen. She’s awesome.)

I must stop digressing.

After looking long and hard, I feel like people imagine that clever, unique teenagers will evolve into dull, man-obsessed young adults and therefore won’t enjoy books about clever, unique girls their age anymore.

Anyway, this book is an exception of sorts. The book was more sensibly written than most chick-lit and I’ve read it more times than I can count. And it’s made me feel fuzzy and happy each time. And this yet again begs the question: Why am I guilty about owning it and reading it and enjoying it? Does it make me less of a feminist to read a book that targets women exclusively? Does it reduce my intelligence in any way to have a comforting book that doesn’t hodge-podge-jelly-brainify me, when I’m having a bad day? (Blog title reference for the win!) Does it make me a fraud of some sort if I own a book that doesn’t make me think or add value to my life in some way, except to make me happy? I think about all these questions and the answer to all of them seems to be no. Doesn’t it?

Yet, this book will only ever be a guilty pleasure in my bookshelves, the one I won’t list as a favourite, even though it probably is. I feel like this makes me a fraud more than anything else. I’m afraid of being judged, as someone shallow, as someone silly, just like I judge people who read “chick-lit”, despite knowing a number of exceptions. I just start off by having this assumption and this makes me kind of snobbish and shallow.

Is there something wrong with reading “chick-lit” books or is there something wrong with the classification itself? Why aren’t there any dude-lit books?  Or is any book that isn’t chick-lit automatically dude-lit? (Excepting feminist literature, I mean) All of these questions confuse me greatly. I feel sad that some sort of patriarchy seems to have seeped into one’s choice of literature as well. When did I become so judgmental? I miss being a child where I devoured every book, including wildly age-inappropriate books without any thought as to whom it may be targeted at.

What is your opinion on so-called Chick-lit and the way people perceive it?

Why do people have guilty pleasure books, movies and shows?  It’s not like crisps, or nutella or alcohol, or something remotely addictive or unhealthy for one to feel guilty about it!

Do you judge people based on their choices in literature, movies or music? Do you subscribe to the theory, “It’s not what you’re like; it’s what you like”? (High Fidelity reference. Read it.)

Do you have any recommendations of books with strong female protagonists?

Do you know of any good books with bookworm protagonists? I miss those.

Tell me in the comments.

Note: the author enjoys nothing more than a good, well-reasoned debate.

Cheers.

Oh, if anyone is wondering, the book I’m speaking of is Bad Behaviour by Sheila O’ Flannagan. I’m cringing as I write this title. I need to do some more thinking about what can only be described as this bad attitude, of mine…

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay

I needed to hear this from somebody else. Intelligently written. 🙂

Life Scribbles

“So, what do you want to do with your life?”

THIS is the great existential question of our generation.

No matter how many times you ask me (mom, dad, strangers who pretend to care), my answer will always be the same.

“I DON’T KNOW.”

Why can’t the existential question of our generation be something simple.

Like, are you a dog person or a cat person?

Easy.

Dog person.

Or

“Orange juice or apple juice?”

Easy.

Apple.

But, no. Adults, teachers, peers, and anybody who can get a word in edge wise will ask you the same loaded question over and over again as if one day, you will have a satisfying answer.

I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I can tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to constantly worry about figuring out what I do want. I don’t want to force…

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Being a Book Reviewer with Reviews Conspicuously Absent

I am astonished at myself. I created this blog to review books, nothing more and nothing less. Yet, over the past few weeks I’m surprisingly finding it increasingly difficult to review the books I read. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, I’ve been increasingly reading books of a genre that escapes description due to its sheer complexity. It’s like, when someone asks me what the book is about, I say, “It’s about this man, and he does things, I guess…” I feel like it isn’t what the book is about that makes it so fantastic, but the way it’s been narrated and put together. Take High Fidelity, for example;  it’s about a 35-year-old record store owner who splits up with his long-term girlfriend. I told my friend this and she asked me why I’m reading such depressing books! But the book isn’t  depressing at all, it’s funny and clever and gripping with such simple yet wonderful insights that one can’t help loving it. It’s just so…real. And the music! I want to listen to every single song mentioned in this book. And it made me feel like signing up for singing lessons despite having sub-zero musical talent. I don ‘t know why. I was just so excited about music and everything to do with it after reading it.  How would I review it, though? I don’t know! Is it about relationships? Is it about music? Does it teach any valuable life lessons? The answer is both yes and no to all these questions. It just tells a story, and does it well. The rest is up to the reader.

Also, I am against spoilers.  I can’t do a review if it gives the plot away. So I usually make up for it by simply describing how a book made me feel, and this works pretty well for me.  Except, most of the books I’ve been reading have given me the same feeling of excitement and exhilaration; a feeling of something having changed within me after reading the book and a deep desire to keep writing myself. This is great for me, of course, but it’s absurd for my reviews because people would think I’ve gone nuts if I wrote this in every review I write. It would also become a tad repetitive. I don’t know the reason for this. It might have to do with the authors I’m reading or it might have to do with the fact that I’ve begun to read again after nearly a year and I’m particularly thrilled by this. The book review part of my blog (the supposed main part) is suffering greatly as a result.

On the other hand, I’ve been itching to write and I’ve been going around confessing personal things on my blog, which is completely uncharacteristic of me. Surprisingly, people have found this interesting and I’ve gotten a lot of appreciative comments from friends, family and family of friends, as well as strangers. I’ve also gotten a number of followers which is immensely surprising to me, because I was convinced, and still am  a little, that blogging is the equivalent of setting letters in a bottle into the ocean.  I’m immensely grateful to all my followers and the little orange plus on the right of the webpage, which sends a little shiver of glee through me every time. I’m not sure but I think that’s what inspiration feels like. 🙂

Keep reading and writing everyone, it makes being alive feel like a worthy endeavour. 🙂 Cheers.

Being a Lousy Law Student

This post is more for me than it is for anyone else. It might not even make sense to others. But that’s okay. It might seem even comical to those people who believe apathy is fashionable.

I didn’t know this could happen either, trust me. I believed that passion can only be felt for the arts, not for something as mundane as the law. I then proceeded to prove myself spectacularly, comically wrong.

Let me explain.

I have been through the wars, and for the first time, it has made me want to write, rather than hide and cringe every time I see my metaphorically dusty blog.

I don’t know how many of you have read my posts closely enough to know this, but day-dreamy little Sindhu, with her eyes glazed over, and her nose in a book, has a misguided dream of being a lawyer. I’m 3/5ths there presently, and I’m constantly bloody afraid that I’m going to be terrible at it: I’m definitely a terrible law student.

Law school sometimes goes out of its way to prove me right, constantly hitting me in the face with bad grades and several other humiliating failures, like it did yesterday for the umpteenth time. I don’t want to lie; I cried. For hours. I’m tearing up again now.

But at the end of the day – and yes, I absolutely accept that this makes me batshit crazy – I still love it. I love law. I also love law school. I don’t know if this makes me very brave or very stupid. What do you think?

Okay, thank you for that chorus of “stupid”! I have my reasons, you know! You really should ask.

Firstly, I’m hoping that being a terrible law student won’t necessarily translate into being a terrible lawyer. I’m not daft. I remember things I’ve learnt, for the most part. I can analyse and such.  I’ve gotten compliments too, about my lawyerly talents, even if they have been “few and far between”, so to speak.

Besides, although I have done badly in my examinations, I haven’t failed or anything. (Yes, I’m grasping at straws here.) That’s good. Right?

I came to law school with starry eyes and lofty ideals, and that girl isn’t lost yet. I’m hoping that I can still make a difference, provided of course, that those people who are already making a difference let me help them make a difference. (In other words, hire me, NGO’s. This is an awesome cover letter!)

Most importantly, I really REALLY love studying law. It excites me in a way that previously, only fiction could. When I do legal writing, even though I know I’m not good at it, I don’t care about other writing anymore.  Some articles about the plight of the economically-backward make me cry with a passion and fill me with fury of a kind that I previously only experienced when Dobby died, and I want to be part of the revolution to fix their plight.

My love of fiction was unequalled and now law comes a close second. I can’t give it a better testimony than that.

I want to quit trying to be a lawyer. The thought has crossed my mind plenty of times. I don’t think I can, though because law is the thing that keeps me sane, even though it doesn’t seem that way right now.

I may only be mediocre at best, but that’s okay. I can always marry a rich guy. 😀 I’m only kidding. I can always live in a smaller house, buy fewer clothes and shoes (Yes, but just as many books) and be a lousy but happy lawyer. I can, no?

I want to whine that my talents are unrecognized, that the grading system is unfair and that the entire education system needs an overhaul. All of these things might even be true. Maybe I will be the person advocating for such concrete changes tomorrow. One never knows.

However, the thing that I needed to realize – and the thing that many others in my place need to realize – the thing that a wise but generally annoying friend of mine helped me realize is that it’ll all be okay. I’m doing what I love. I know what I want to do in the future. And working towards it will give me more happiness that achieving it ever could.

cliched ending>

But you know what? If the ending isn’t happy, I can’t write about it. Or even talk about it. That’s just how I am. At least when it comes to my own life.

Bear in mind, happy endings don’t occur when good things happen. Happy endings occur when people feel happy. Ushoo. So much wisdom. I overwhelm myself with my brilliance.

Let’s move on now before I end up converting this blog post into a bloody self-help book.

 

Woes of a College Student aka Why I Need to Make Use of the Kindle My Dad Gifted Me

I live in a hostel room that is, for real, 7feet by 7feet in area. I’ve seen closets that are bigger. And it is filthy. Now, I by no means am trying to shift blame because I truly am one of nature’s messy persons. It is ridiculous that people like me haven’t died out ages ago from living in squalor and getting diseases. It’s one of the failures of evolution, I suppose.

Nonetheless, here I am, alive, kicking and a voracious reader to boot. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is, (and future college-goers everywhere need to remember this lesson) it’s a terrible idea to try and fit close to a hundred books (not including my academic books) into such a tiny space!

My home, with my big room is itself currently overflowing with books, with me literally having to keep some books on the floor, and on my bed, and on a chair, etc. There are books on a little makeshift shelf in the bathroom.

In fact, I’m almost thankful to those imbeciles who borrow and don’t return my books because the vacuum left by those books gets filled up in no time.

In other words, I am Sindhu Rao and I have a problem.

Much like the Earth, and – dare I say it – on what is likely a larger scale, I am facing an over-population problem. Especially in my aforementioned tiny room. I seriously considered throwing out some of my clothes to make space for my books. I also considered throwing away my bed, but that’s stupid because then, there wouldn’t be any space for the books under my bed.

Therefore, the time has come. I resisted it greatly but I must cave. The kindle my dad gave me a year ago is all of 7 inches long and it is slim and lightweight.

I began to warm up to the idea of using it when I was able to read The Goblet of Fire in an atrociously dull class without being observed. It was easy. Instead of a bulky paperback, I was reading it on a tiny Kindle. It was magical.

Well, I have finally decided to take the leap. I will dust off the poor neglected Kindle once I get home today and connect it to my WiFi and then – we will see. Will it be the beginning of a long-overdue love affair or will my resolve fizzle out? Only time will tell. (Dramatics aside though, I haven’t much choice if I want to keep reading.) I take solace in Stephen Fry’s words of wisdom: “Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”

 

Poem: A Micro-blogging Website

Disclaimer: It isn’t very good, so bear with me.

It’s teeming with activity,

Constantly buzzing, updating, and changing.

Yet, on examination;

After digging a little deeper,

One can clearly establish that,

Though it is vibrant and alive,

And constantly churning things out,

It is unrefuted and not questionable

That is contains nothing of value.

Yes, there can be no doubt about this fact:

My brain has become a micro-blogging site.

Something Inspiring. :)

I apologize for simply reblogging a lot instead of writing myself. I’m unable to write, is the simple truth. I’m very disturbed and tired and in an awful mood a lot of the time and that hinders my creativity in a big way. I’m trying to help myself get out of it, and I want to share the helpful things with you in case any of you are suffering the same way. 🙂
Cheers.

How I’m Handling A Writer’s Slump: When Writing–Fiction, Nonfiction, Blogging–Becomes Hard.

I’m suffering from this but I feel a little better after learning that somebody else, a published author to boot, is going through the same thing.
I hope I get over it soon enough.

Creative Writing with the Crimson League

I have a writer’s confession to make: I’m in a slump. Stuck in writer’s quicksand. I’m an author who can’t write.

Yep. I talk about “writing every day” as a writer’s goal, and the joys of being a writer, and I dish out hard-earned knowledge from ten years of writing, while I have no drive to write lately.

That happens to all of us from time to time, I think, but I’ve never had a period of time before where writing–all writing–was so tough.

• I’m really struggling to find the energy and dedication to edit Writing for You: A Writer’s Guide to the Craft of Fiction. And that worries me, because I am honestly thrilled about the project and stoked for the upcoming release (July 31).
• I haven’t worked on fiction in a month. Seriously. A month. I have a first draft of a NaNoWriMo novel that I have…

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