Going by the book

Many moons ago, I started doing book reviews. It wasn’t because I liked reviewing books, or because I was especially interested in telling other people what I thought about something I had read, but because by reviewing a book, I got to keep it. And at that stage in my life, books were not what my money could be spent on, even though I had a veritable passion for them, so any source of acquiring them was fine by me, never mind that it was not particularly ethical a way of doing so, when I thought about, which I tried not to. Then my income increased, as did my comfort levels for an everyday existence and some of my more expensive habits (like book buying), and the drive to do book reviews correspondingly decreased – or, rather, it became more discriminating. So, if and when asked, I would pick and choose the books I wanted sent to me for review, opting for those on food, on travel, on crime and punishment (aka mysteries and thrillers) and, occasionally, the latest on the over-hype list.

But the word spread and I was commanded to review books for a would-be-literary website that was a part of the Internet company I was employed by. That worked up to point, except that since the books were part of the e-commerce scheme that the firm had begun, and sales were all, what I was sent for review was hardly what I would have wanted to collect. Jokes about various kinds of people and different communities abounded and, after about the five millionth gag on a characteristic of a group of people, the humour failed to elicit even a lacklustre response from me or anyone who may have been told the joke I was trying to find funny. Spirituality was another hot topic and after the nineteenth volume on the essence of God and the existence of good in the self, I was ready to never read again.

And then, as the word wandered over to a larger audience, people started calling to offer me books to review. While I always insisted that the final decision would be made by the books page editor of the publication that I was, by then, working with, I was rather nonplussed by the selection that I was being presented: how to win over your boss in ten days and get the keys to the washroom just before he went off on a week-long vacation; why wearing a tie will always help in promotion prospects in a sales-oriented job; when God is within you but is so busy battling the evil that resides there that you feel you have been forgotten in the more practical scheme of things…well, perhaps not exactly that, but you know what I mean. The books were not what I have ever seen anyone read, but I do know that they sell, perhaps to visiting aliens from a planet so far away that it has never been discovered.

But in all this, there have been moments to remember. When I was sent The Impressionist and told that I had to review it within a mere ten hours; when I called Kamila Shamsie in London and had more fun talking to her on the phone tan I did actually reading her book; when I spent a couple of hours talking to Shashi Tharoor about a work of fiction that was, at best, average, even though the writer was someone I could have cheerfully reviewed; when I gave a certain amateurish work a scathing review and the writer and her friends and family wrote in and called in to protest in terms that questioned not just my reviewing skills but also my very existence…it has been a fun span in my career and one that I would happily continue with, ups, downs, really bad books and all.

Today I am very selective in what I want to review. Most of the popular fiction comes my way, even though I tend to want to read and keep only the detective and fantasy novels. I have plugged solidly through stuff from managerial types telling people how to do better at work and through how to use mud to become more beautiful (which has, fortunately, little to do with ‘inner beauty’. And I enjoy the use of words to describe each one, whether I actually read it or not…which is a trade secret that I am not going to share at this time and in this blog!