.....rant over

I'm back.... :) Sheesh - now there's groundbreaking news!
Where was I? Oh yes, trash! The reason for my tirade - travel reading. I'm a lightweight when it comes to airport reading, so I tend to veer towards rubbishy romances (actually, the term is misleading - for you men out there, 'romance' these days is soft porn at a minimum, just without the pictures) or murder mysteries. Well, I have been round and about a fair bit of late, so decided I'd best acquire some reading material from amazon in an effort to slash profits at the airport bookshops, especially after the malta trip when i read my first Hello! or was it OK? Well, in either case, it sucked - all about preganant women, and whether tomkats baby was dressed better than brangelina's or that fruit salad of gewnnies... i mean, honestly - who cares?!?!? what happened to all that rude gosisp about who was sleeping with whom and such like?? This is why I'll never write a novel - it'll be like Vikram Chandra's by the kilo effort, without any blooming conclusion!
The point I was making, was that glossy pictures of posh/becks and assorted bacchas don't ring my bell, so I armed myself with a slew of trash for the next time... I mean, this is published goods. Instant credibility, right? Gah! I should have know when I read, correction made an attempt to read this IITan's effort: 'India - A journey through a healing civilisation' (I had to google it coz i couldn't remember his name or the books!) which is and I quote 'In 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, Shashank Mani, an IIT alumnus, organized a train journey across India. The purpose – to get a sense of how the country had changed in the past fifty years of independence, and what needed to be accomplished in the future. On this twenty-two day journey, in a specially chartered train, were 200 Indians from different walks of life – young men and women whose commitment would help shape the country’s future.
Together they made a voyage of discovery that took them from the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, an enduring symbol of the price of freedom, to Bodh Gaya, where Lord Buddha gained Enlightenment; from Tilonia, and Bunker Roy’s novel experiment in village development, to Ralegaon Siddhi, where Anna Hazare has wrought miracles in terms of economic growth, spiritual fulfi lment and education.
As they travelled, they discussed among themselves the issues that bothered them as citizens, and possible solutions. They came up with ideas on how best to fight corruption and kindle a new spirit of entrepreneurship. There was a reaffirmation of love for the country, tempered by an awareness of just how much more needed to be done, whether it was in population control or in protecting the environment. In a world suffering the first signs of an ‘industrial hangover’, the developmental models discovered during the journey offered the participants new and pragmatic alternatives.
As India enters its sixtieth year of independence – and as the original 1997 team plans one more ambitious journey across India – this story is a fitting reminder of where we once were and where we need to head.'
Yep, we love being verbose..anyway, the concept seemed interesting, but the style... well, there wasn't any. Somya tried. Aashish tried. I tried. Can't remember who managed the most number of pages, but don't think any of us reached double digits. It was just the most boring writing ever.... there was just no desire to turn the page, forget the words magically leaping off and grabbing you, taking you along for the ride. Abyssmal - so we kept waiting for someone to read it and tell us what it was all about. Still waiting....
It just seems that anyone can now all themselves an author and get published. Not by Papaji Publishing either... this one was Harper Collins. Hell - didn't anyone there read it??? Did all their editors keel over and die? How could anybody who reads, allow such dead writing to be printed on pages, bound and sold as a book to an unsuspecting public? Dunno. But I managed to give away my hard earned money on some more namunaas. This time, trash too. A romance novel that was just so badly written, that not only could I bring myself not to finish it (and this was post several stern admonishments to self about paisa vaisooli), I couldn't bring myself to carry it off the plane... let some poor sod think they've found a dirty book and suffer! Share and share alike - that's what I say!
The time after, something about werewolfs because I was fascinated by Patricia Briggs (now that's a bloody good writer!) - her style, humour and language... yeah well. I'll now wait till someone recommends something, borrow it to make sure, and then think about buying.
I'm not really expecting Munro or Woodhouse. They were geniuses. The stories irrelevant - you bought the books just for the sheer pleasure of how they arranged the words. Always the correct ones, in the most incredible order, tripping over each other in their haste to be read... how many times have you had to stop and put down the book just to finish laughing at a sentence.... read it over again, and get hysterical all over again. Or just to go back and read the sentence again, for the beauty the language afforded you. But surely, to read books that seem to be written by joyless authors isn't right. And I'm not referring to their state of happiness, but just the limitless joy of words and the imagery they create. I've read newspaper articles on the current state of the economy, that are more evocative, and actually make you want to read the next sentence despite the fact your portfolio is now worth less than your battered jeans and you wish you had done that Iceland holiday now instead of in August! Where are the editors? Isn't it their job to protect the public from such atrocity? ....... or is it just me? Kismet has forsaken me after all these years to make me reach for books you can't even feel pity for? What is going on................???????