MG Vassanji

I'm impressed by The In- Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji so I thought I would find out a bit more about him. I seem to like books written by East Indian authors. I don't know whether this is because I have East Indian friends, because I met quite a few in Trinidad, or just because I happen to like the themes they write about. This book reminds me in some ways of Alistair McLean's book in its themes of immigrant families and the tie to the place, to the land they grow up in as well as the connection to an earlier homeland.

New Book

Our next Lit Wits book is M.G. Vassanji's The In Between World of Vikram Lall and I am starting to get into it. I think I like it. It is not an easy read but like A Fine Balance, worth the effort.

I found this wonderful quotation:

Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 1928
English mystery author (1893 - 1957)

Blink again.

"One of the things I'd like to do is to show people how to start "positive" epidemics of their own. The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly. That makes it something of obvious and enormous interest to everyone from educators trying to reach students, to businesses trying to spread the word about their product, or for that matter to anyone who's trying to create a change with limited resources." This is from The Tipping Point.
I think I will have to read this book. More about Gladwell here.

I did it, I did it!

My short story is in. All 1095 words of it. I don't care if it wins or not. I reached my goal. I entered, wrote the thing and sent it in. That's all I intended. Winning something would be encouraging of course...:-) Should I enter the summer contest? Hmm

Blink

I finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell a while ago. Very provocative. Certainly made me think about the strengths (positive and negative) of our subconscious which "informs" our actions often without our knowing.
On the negative side - do you think you have few biases? That you are not racist or sexist? Why not try some of the tests Gladwell talks about. They can be found at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Short Story Challenge

I have entered an on-line short story contest. The challenge is to write a short story of a given length and theme in 24 hours, starting April 9th. I don't hope to win only to get the writing done and send it in. By announcing my goal here I hope to increase the odds that I will meet the challenge. I will let you know how I do - or don't!