Musty Library

What is illusion and what is reality?  When I look around I sometimes find that all that surrounds me could be illusion and what I think is a dream could very well be reality.   What I perceive it to be, it is.  This is the crux of Illusions – the adventures of a reluctant Messiah.  The book has an unreal quality to it but the settings and the way the pages of the print copy of the book are actually smudged make it very real too.  The text too looks like a photocopy of the author’s handwritten diary.

In Illusions I found great many truths … avenues of thought I didn’t know existed opened up to me and found myself several times on roads I didn’t want to travel for fear of the truth I would encounter.  It is a book that has touched me like no other.

Bach says about Illusions: “I don’t enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won’t even reach for a pencil.  But once in a while, there’s a great dynamite-burst of flying glass, and brick, and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, ‘I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper.’ That’s how I met Illusions.”

Writing about dogs and man’s relationship with them requires knowing them.  DavidWroblewski knows his dogs.  Edgar Sawtelle is the mute son of the Sawtelles, dog breeders and trainers whose approach to breeding is about as different as it can get.

“Real training meant watching, listening, diverting a dog’s exuberance, not suppressing it.  You couldn’t change a river into a sea, but you could trace a new channel for it to follow.  This was the debate she and Gar had cheerfully never resolved.  Gar claimed her training successes proved that his records, properly interpreted, brought each new generation of pups closer to some ideal, even if he could not put that ideal into words.  Trudy knew better.  The training had, if anything, gotten more difficult over the years.”

But this story is not about training or breeding.  Or even about a mute boy.  It’s about….okay well I won’t tell you what’s it about…no fun in giving the story away.

What I loved about the book is how it has been put together.  Not a line out of place, not a thought too early or too late.  Each event sliding into the next in a segue so smooth that it doesn’t leave room to doubt the impossibility of even the supernatural which peeks on occasion in the tale.

In some ways it reminds me of Tarun Tejpal’s The Alchemy of Desire, which I never got around to finishing by the way.  Both Tarun and David are master craftsmen when itcomes to mortising scenes into a perfect finish.  Nothing out of place and with not even a joint line visible.  You only know it at a factual level.  Something which your eyes can’t show you.

Eating like starved kings?   That’s when Edgar had runaway from home with some of his dogs.  If you can imagine how a starved king will eat, you’ll love this book too.

I swear by most of what Kahlil Gibran has said and The Prophet has

The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

been an eye-opener in more ways than one.  It has helped me realize that situations and people’s attitudes are not something I can change, but my reaction to any given situation or attitude is well within my power.  He teaches perception; how we perceive all that is important to those who strive to live and not just exist.

Here’s Kahlil’s take on how love is best perceived:

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.  Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”

He says that love is something that is not in our control:  “And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, it directs your course.” and that is a pretty powerful statement.

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.”

It is a very slim volume and can be carried in your pocket!  Everytime I read it, and I do that many times over and over again, I find something new that helps me fly! There is something for everyone on topics extending from love, marriage, children, to  joy and sorrow, pain, pleasure, and even death “And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”

An extremely sad and an extremely funny book.  Made me think too.

“All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie.  I couldn’t stand it.  I know it’s only his body and all that’s in the cemetery, and his soul’s in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn’t stand it anyway.  I just wish he wasn’t there.”

Written in the first person, a few days in the life of Holden Caulfield made me laugh out loud and at the same time made me want to crawl into a corner and bawl my eyes out.  His love for his sister and brothers – living and dead – filled me with a longing to be loved like that.  In Holden’s words, the book “killed me and all” and “God I wish you could have” read the book too!

I have just finished reading this amazing book.  Easily one of the best books I have read.

Llewellyn describes everything in so much detail and yet I didn’t feel like the story was dragging.  It is a book where sometimes I found myself just reading and re-reading a sentence and silently mulling over it.  His style is very engaging and I soon felt a sense of oneness with Huw’s family and at the same time like a stranger who could only look through the window into a loving home and even if I was made welcome into their family, I would never be a part of it. It is an intensely nostalgic, sad, and yet a very happy novel.  A book that didn’t just tell me a story, it effortlessly wove a tale around my own thoughts.

“It is very strange to think back like this, although come to think of it, there is no fence or hedge round Time that has gone.  You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.”

“… if I had not started to think things myself and find things for myself, I might have had a happier life judged by ordinary standards, and perhaps I might have been more respected.  Though neither happiness or respect are worth anything, because unless both are coming from the truest motives, they are simply deceits.”

This was Llewellyn’s first book followed by None But the Lonely Heart, A Few Flowers for Shiner, The Flame of Hercules, Up into the Singing Mountain, Green, Green My Valley Now, and I Stand On A Quiet Shore. He has written a couple of plays too, Poison Pen and Noose.

You can be sure you will find these books in our collection soon.

Well, ok, after all the brouhaha we have finally started posting here.  And musty library is still in the works .. so if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to tell us.

Now about book reviews.  This is going to be a place where we are going to share what we thought of a book, may be treat you to a few juicy snippets, may be a note about the author, may be suggest similar books or authors, whatever takes our fancy!  You, of course, are welcome to share your thoughts too. You can send in your reviews too.