Learning from History

Anne Frank was a young teenager, with nothing special to distinguish her from her peers, except for the misfortune that she had been born in Jewish family during the Nazi era in Germany.

Originally published in Holland in 1947, the book was initially not appreciated nor did it elicit much interest. However, following the publication of it's English translation in the United States in 1952, it's popularity soared and it's sale reaching millions of copies.

Since then the diary has been translated into more than 30 languages and has become one of the best recognised works of literature emerging from the Second World War period.

Several movies and plays based on Anne Frank's story have also been made and spawned much sympathy for the plight of the Jewish people under the Nazi regime.

During the days of relative freedom and before the family went into hiding, Anne had recieved a diary as a birthday gift from her father, which she used to record the events in her daily life, exhibiting much insight and literary elegance.

Her diary provides a window into deprivations of life under captivity, and the emotional ups and downs experienced by people involuntarily thrown together in a confined space.

She describes the terror they felt whenever there was an unusual sound outside their hideout. Ath other places in the diary, we find the portrayal of swings of human emotions; the sibling rivalry with her sister, her dislike for her mother when she was disciplined and her brief, adolescent romance with a boy few years older than herself.

The last entry in the diary was made a few days before the family was discovered .

Her death announced at the age of 100 this year, brought back the attention of the world press to the story of Anne Frank and her family.Publishing the diary and making it available to the world was a very crucial and hard job. yet in the end all the efforts have been paid off and the book is much appreciated.

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Reading on the Go

For all those people out there who love reading books, we have exciting news for you!

An application called 'kindle' has been introduced through which one can read over 63,000 books on gadgets like ipad, iphone, and ipod touch. Plus kindle books can also be read on Kindle, Kindle DX, PC Mac, BlackBerry, and Android based device. The Amazon Whispersync keeps track of the the last page that you have read, plus it also bookmarks, notes and highlights across all of your devices, so the next time you pick up from right where you left.

Many of the other features available include Amazon's wireless reading device with FREE 3G wireless that can download books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs too. It has features that will make the electronic paper display look like real paper even in bright sunlight !

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Read for free

Believing that the most accessible way to understand a culture is through its literature, The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature offers a forum for the people of Britain to gain greater understanding of the Asian cultures and Asian communities around them.

The event that saw nearly 500 Asian-themed books 'released' into Marylebone, London throughout May was staged in conjunction with BookCrossing, a free online book club which began in order to encourage the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise, with the aim to make the whole world a library.

Books destined for crossing were registered online and given an identity number that allowed them to be tracked and then set free into the world. Only fate can decide where the books end up.

Festival organisers invited the public to come and release books of their own. Books were left in coffee shops, restaurants and even clothing stores. Each book carries a label that encourages people who pick them up to read the book then leave it in a public place for another reader to 'catch' it. The identity number in each volume will allow the reader to go online and register where they have left the book and to follow it as it makes its way around the country and beyond.

The books released include:

Nine Lives: In search of the sacred in modern India by William Dalrymple

The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

The Buddha of Suburbia by Haneef Kureishi

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai

The Immigrant by Manju Kapur

Another Gulmohar Tree by Aamer Hussein

Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer 

Under the Weather

Book fairs held around the world are facing more than just administrative and organisational problems; Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano that has caused billions of dollars worth of losses to airline companies has more tragically caused low attendance at both the London Book fair as well as the one held in Beirut.

Discovering and inspiring a modern and fresher perspective on Arab literature, a book festival was held in Beirut from April 15 to 18. Yet even after the four-day literary exchange, writers and editors were detained within the city as a result of the volcano's activity and the resulting ash cloud. Though most authors who live in the Middle East departed, the Europe-based ones were forced to await the reopening of the airports.

The London Book Fair held from April 19 to 21, continued to offer a packed schedule of seminars and events despite predicted low attendance. Special arrangements were made for those unable to attend due to travel constraints; a range of seminars were provided by the organisers as podcasts to be downloaded free from the Fair's website.

Cut them to size

The publishing world is far from ordinary. With the latest exposé on Oprah Winfrey, there is enough fire, or shall we say smoke to stir things a bit. But the comparatively duller world of cookbooks spiced up when Penguin Australia's newly published The Pasta Bible faced racial backlash; the recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto prompted readers to add 'salt and freshly ground black people.'

The error was brought to light when a member of the public contacted the publisher, which led to around 7000 copies of the book being returned to the Penguin warehouse to be destroyed and reprinted. Recalling copies already present in shops and stores was a task hailed as 'extremely hard' by head of publishing Robert Sessions, so no action has been taken in this regard thus far.

The misprint was present only in one recipe; the continual recurrence of pepper in the remaining over 150 recipes proves according to Sessions, that the error was a mere one-word slip. He also added: 'Proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite unforgivable.'

Copyrights . . . and wrongs !

April 23 has long been associated with Shakespeare; yet in 1923 booksellers in Spain, as a tribute to Miguel de Cervantes who too died on the same day, celebrated a book day. In 1995 Unesco decided that the annual World Book and Copyright Day would be commemorated on this date.

The day is associated with the indeligible mark that books have left on the society at large; the social and cultural advancement of each society is a testament to the literature it has produced.

Apart from highlighting the 'pleasures of reading' that most people today refuse to acknowledge as a necessary element in intellectual enlightenment which they arguably lack, the day is also a reminder to honour and adhere to copyright laws.

In the past two decades copyright infringements have risen considerably, so much so that internationally it has become a matter of deep concern. The trade loss of the US book industry due to piracy has jumped alarmingly and despite having strict piracy laws throughout many countries, proper implementation, which has come to be known as a cliche, is the root cause of the continual rise of piracy throughout the globe.

Licence to thrill

The latest adventure of Her Majesty's number one spy, famous for his British suiting and cars, is all set to be written by American writer Jeffery Deaver. Ian Flemming Publications ltd, in an effort to breathe life into the super-spy and his dare-devil antics, has roped in sixty-year-old millionaire thriller writer Deaver, who was hailed as 'the master of ticking-bomb suspense.' To date he is credited for writing 26 novels and selling more than 20 million books worldwide.

The novel, which has been mysteriously but temporarily dubbed Project X, will be published in a years time - in time to mark Bond creator Flemming's 103 birth anniversary.

Deaver was chosen after he voiced his great admiratoion for Flemming in his acceptance speech when he won the Crime-Writers' Association's Ian Flemming's Steel Dagger Award for his book Garden Of Beasts in 2004. He admitted to being a fan ever sibnce he was a child and claimed to have learnt much of Flemming's literary technique.

'I can't describe the thrill I felt when first approached by Ian Flemming's estate to ask if I'd be interested in writing the next book in the James Bond series,' he admits. 'The Bond books were important parts of my life. They appealed to me as wonderful stories but also stood as singular examples of a thriller writers craft.'

Jeffery Deaver is best known for his crime novel The Bone Collector, which was later turned into a film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Before turning his hand to writing books full-time, Deaver was a journalist, like Flemming, and also a lawyer.

To date more than 100 million Bond books have been sold around the world.

(Notables by Deaver: The Empty Chair, The Coffin Dancer, Roadside Crosses, The Broken Window, The Burning Wire: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel.)

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Alternate Fairy-tale morals

Every child loves fairy tales. Since the days of Aesop, they have taught us lessons about human nature, like how patience is important and strangers are creepy.
But is this the only way to look at folk stories? Is the obvious moral also the only moral? Here are some other takes on favorite bedtime cautionary tales:


Title: Little Red Riding Hood
The Gist: A young girl tries to bring snacks to her grandmother in the woods. A wolf convinces her to procrastinate, eats the grandmother, dresses in the grandmother's clothes, then tricks Red Riding Hood and devours her as well. A huntsman finds the wolf and cuts him open, then pulls out Little Red and her grandmother. They fill the wolf's stomach with rocks as a kind of sick joke.
Morals: A real huntsman shivs first and asks questions later. A wolf in sheep's clothing is not as bad as a wolf in Grandma's clothing.


Title: Rapunzel
The Gist: A witch tricks a gardener into giving up his daughter, Rapunzel. The witch puts Rapunzel in a tower and refuses to let her get a haircut. A prince shows up and climbs Rapunzel's rope-like hair. The witch gets upset and blinds the prince. Rapunzel magically cures the prince's blindness with her tears.
Morals: Orphans make fantastic physicians. Love is blind, but only for a few minutes.
 
Title: Cinderella
The Gist: When Cinderella's mother dies, her father marries a raging harpie of a stepmother, and Cinderella becomes servant to her nasty stepsisters. Cinderella isn't invited to the ball, but her fairy godmother gives her a makeover and a sweet ride, and the prince hits on her. When Cinderella has to come home at midnight, she leaves a glass slipper behind. Her stepsisters cut off their toes to try and fit into the shoe, but the prince isn't fooled. He finds Cinderella and they live happily ever after.
Morals: Princes are horrible at remembering faces. Toe scars, like love, last forever.

Title: Hansel and Gretel
The Gist: Hansel and Gretel are left in the woods by (guess what?) their stepmother. They find a gingerbread house in the forest. The owner, a crazy witch, locks them in a cage and tries to force-feed them until they're fat enough to eat. The siblings manage to push the witch into an oven, where she is burned alive. Then they find their way home.
Morals: Cannibals don't build houses out of normal things like wood. Don't preheat the oven 'til absolutely necessary.

Title: Rumpelstiltskin
The Gist: For incredibly arbitrary reasons, a local king commands a peasant girl to spin straw into gold. If she doesn't, he'll execute her. A dwarf appears and says he'll do it for her, but she has to give up her firstborn child. The girl tries to get out of it, so the dwarf says he'll break the contract if she guesses his name (like, what?). She stalks the dwarf and finds out his name, then "guesses" it. Rumpelstiltskin is so angry that he tears himself in two.
Morals: Girls, beware of dwarves. Dwarves, beware of girls. Everyone, beware of kings? =D

(Source: Sparknotes.com)

The Island - Elin Hilderbrand

Elin Hilderbrand's latest novel, The Island, tells the story of four women living on Tuckernuck Island, where Birdie calls her daughter, Chess, to spend a week in the old family vacation home to celebrate the latters engagement. Later Chess dissolves the engagement and shortly afterwards her ex fiancee dies in a climbing accident. Time passes and Birdie invites her sister India, and her other daughter Tate, to try and help Chess find her way out of the deep depression she has fallen in. They plan for a quiet, nurturing month caring for Chess, but the island has its own ideas. The reality will turn out to be far more exciting and healing than any of them expect.
  

The island is a novel with impressive depth and detail with all the mess and complication of real life. The characters are interesting, however it's a little funny how everyone in it is exceptionally good looking. No uglies or even moderately attractive people here! I enjoyed every minute of getting to know them. If the end is a bit of a fairy tale, all neatly tied up and happy, I liked the book even better for it. A thoroughly enjoyable read !:)

(Other books by the same author I found to be worthwhile reads - Summer People, The Blue Bistro, The Castaways, The Love Season.)

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Beowulf

The Odyssey T

The Iliad