On reading books new and old

So, I was having a chat with a friend about a non-fiction book I am reading. And as I paraphrased some interesting bits from the book for her, she got interested into the book, and while chatting with me, searched for the book on Amazon. It turns out that the book (which, by the way, is a history of one of the most important corporate and one of the biggest brands in the world today) was available in unused/new edition at around a $20 price point, a few used books were available for around $1. This was where things got interesting.

My first response, of course, was to ask her to buy the used book, as it was not a historically significant or important book or a rare edition. It was a mass market paperback. Then she told me about the book’s description: dog-ears, class notes, margin-notes and so on. I immediately almost demanded that she buy a new, unmarked copy of the book. 

And this, of course, turned the discussion to why we buy books and how we read them. My stance (any friend agrees) is this: I would never buy a pre-read/annotated non-fiction work, while I would always prefer a read/secondhand/used fiction classic. As we reflected on this seemingly odd choice, we realized it had nothing to do with how we see the aesthetics of the books or how we receive books as physical objects, but deeper implications on how we read books.

When we read non-fiction, we are primarily dealing with facts and the author’s opinion/interpretation of them. In that case, if I don’t agree with the author, there are already two voices speaking in my head even as I try to digest the author’s theses- her and mine. Reading an annotated/highlighted/margin-noted copy of the book just throws a third voice in the mix. And this causes complications, especially in situations where both the annotator and I disagree with the author. Troubling questions arise: Is it just me disagreeing with the author and the annotator an interested party who also happens to disagree? Is his disagreeing with the author affecting my opinion? What if the author is right but I don’t see it because it is a 2:1 opinion poll? The same thing applies where the author, the annotator and I agree. How much of my agreement is due to the annotator agreeing with the author? Is my opinion being pre-shaped? Reading used/previously owned non-fiction books can cause problems.

Contrastingly, when it comes to fiction, I tend to prefer used books. There is nothing which matches the joy that I feel when I come across a particularly moving passage and find that someone else has also read it and loved it with the same fervor that I do. It is a sort of sharing that any day beats quoting my favorite lines on twitter or facebook and seeing 30 people respond to them as they identify with those lines. There is a very simple reason. The person who highlighted those lines in the book I am now reading had the context, the bigger picture of the lines, which the people who like the shared lines on social media might be lacking. That makes for a singular feeling of a deeper, richer joy of finding something discovered commonly which is simply, in my opinion, not possible with social media or ebooks.

Anyway, that is my take on reading new or old books. I would love to have your views on this subject so close to my heart.

Reading books on beaches

Walking on loose sand in flip-flops builds character as opposed to walking on tightly packed sand still being lashed at by the tide. Have you ever noticed that the last and most successful incursion of the tide leaves slight, wavy outlines drawn in slightly more grainy sand over other finer sand, wavy much in the same way as the curves of the lines a child draws clouds in. And that the sea when it goes back leaves a fine meshwork of lines in the sand forming grids shaped like spindles or crescents or what have you, occasionally pockmarked with the tiny burrow holes of the very small sand crabs which scuttle around. As you walk around sometimes the tide will wash across your ankles and calves and when you turn back you see that the footprints you had left in the sand have been washed away which is absolutely fine with me, not being much of a footprint leaver/follower anyway.

The first time I take the 30 minutes’ walk on this beach looking for a quiet place where I can just sit down and read it is eleven in the afternoon and the sun beats down heating the sand under my feet and the air around me and boils all the snark filled up inside of me so that I feel a strange, selfish, and I am sure far from unique sense of antipathy towards these people frolicking around, cooling themselves in the water or tanning themselves on the beach. Those young men throwing balls at each other and laughing their joy as the sand flies in sprays where their feet hit the ground, the mother with their children standing at the very edge of the surf and letting out Kilgorish whoops of joy as the sea laps at their ankles or sometimes going as far up as their calves, the middle aged, the other children who are running everywhere, occasionally bursting into sounds like firecrackers set loose randomly,  balding men who lie on deck chairs amid their rolling layers of fat, like beached whales, their pale bellies generously slopped with suntan oils/creams with spare bottles lying around just in case more is needed, their mouths open, gaping at the world as if they are inhaling the sound of the surf through their mouths- in that instant I hate them all. I hate them for enjoying themselves so much, I blame them for the fact that their vacations seem to be going just according to plan while I want just one simple thing from my vacation and that is to read a book in a quiet beach side bar with a bottle of beer at my elbow and for having walked for thirty minutes in this heat without having found one quiet place to do so. At that moment I blame them for everything that is wrong with the world. And a minute after that I realize how mean and petty and cheap and selfish I am being and something that is very much like shame seems to wash down on me. A few minutes after that I find my quiet place.

Just for the record, the novel I am reading is Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and as I dive into it, Stephenson’s gleeful snark at pop culture while ironically writing a novel about major factions of that pop culture seems to perfectly complement my snark from a few minutes ago- right from the moment where he introduces his main protagonist as The Deliverator to his descriptions of the pizza delivery industry as the most intensely competitive one in the world to the moment where we come to know that the protagonist is called just that: Hiro Protagonist.

But I started off writing this not intending to make this an essay on what I feel about beach vacations or Snow Crash. I like reading on beaches and do so whenever I get the chance to just plop myself on the beach. My favourite adventure sport while on vacations is plonk myself right there on a chair or just a towel, listen to the sea and immerse myself into whatever book I am reading at that moment. The sounds of the sea soothe me and mostly I don't mind even if there are people around, though it is better if they are not.

I have always had an intense fascination for the sea, having always found some sort of awful majesty even in the dirty waters of Juhu- I have written awful poems about it, essays that do not express ten percent of what I feel when there, I have read stories and novels which have attempted to tell me what their authors feel about being there, but in the end listening to the sea is something which cannot be done with someone else's ear- that is like trying to have a spontaneous conversation with the services of a translator. Or like listening to someone else read a book. The best way to know what it is like, you have to go there and listen to it just like to really read a book, you have to really read it. The sea tells you things, I imagine it tells all of us of different things. The only way to know what it tells you is to go to it, close your eyes for a moment and listen.

Somehow, I have always thought it is the same with books. Someone (I think DFW) once said that every writer begins with writing in someone else's voice, then slowly she finds her feet and her voice becomes her own. I have always felt much the same about reading. When we first begin reading, we read with someone else's eyes: either taking the author literally as she has written it, or reading in the words of the author the validation or condemnation of the critic whose review we read before reading the book and then, finally, when we are really reading, we read the book in its own words, with our own eyes and then the books begin to tell us things. They begin to sing to us, their voices telling us stories which might be found in the pages of the books but which are as much inside our head. Much like the sea. And that is the secret of all things in this world, isn't it? The secret of all things holy and what makes reading or going to the sea or writing or living a holy experience? That going to a beach or reading a book or living a life is not about going to the beach or the story of the book or the legacy of our life at all. It is about the stories that form- what the sea tells us, what stories that book leaves in our head, what we take in as we live our lives.

P.S.: I might have forgotten to mention that the female protagonist of Snow Crash is a girl called Y.T. which stands for Yours' Truly.

The Desiderata of Happiness

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

: The Desiderata of Happiness by Max Ehrmann

Somethings About Books

1. The Best Book You Read Last Year- 2666 
2. A Book That You’ve Read More Than Three Times- Tons. Practically everything by Alistair Maclean and Frederick Forsyth
3. Your Favorite Series- The Philip Marlowe Novels/Chaos Walking Trilogy. Everyone knows everything about the Marlowe novels, so I will only talk about the Chaos Walking Trilogy. The hero of the novel is the last boy of a planet populated exclusively by males on a strange planet where everyone can hear everyone’s thoughts. What is there not to like.
4. Favorite Book of Your Favorite Series-  The Long Goodbye/The Knife of Never Letting Go (The first book of the Chaos Walking Trilogy. See above)
5. A Book That Makes You Happy- Yes Minister/The Harry Potter Books. Yes Minister is pretty much obvious. I have also spent many a happy afternoon at home with the Harry Potter books, it wasn’t until the sixth, I felt, that the series went to the dogs.
6. A Book That Makes You Sad- The Great Gatsby. I have read Gatsby only once, and it is a sad, sad book. But while, in isolation, I might have treated it as a kind of gentler, brighter version of Wuthering Heights, I have read a lot of Fitzgerald recently, and am halfway through Tender Is the Night, and occasionally read a few pages of Gatsby again.
7. Most Underrated Book- Tree of Smoke. I know Denis Johnson is a heavyweight, but somehow, no one I talk to seems to have read this great novel.
8. Most Overrated Book- The White Tiger
9. A Book You Thought You Wouldn’t Like But Ended Up Loving- A series, the Septimus Heap series. I read the books in a phase where I was very disappointed with the current fantasy fiction I was getting. With the simple language and engaging storytelling, I breezed through the first one in six hours odd and I do not think any of the books took more than a night to read. Fun filled, engaging novels.
10. Favorite Classic Book- Wuthering Heights. Enough said, really, no?
11. A Book You Hated- Almost everything by Arthur Hailey (also filed under books you liked when you read, but came later to regret). I ran through Arthur Hailey and Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum like a thresher running through so much dry wheat when in high school. During grad school, chanced on a Hailey novel, tried to read it, and almost puked. Archer and Sheldon I can still read, though.
12. A Book You Used To Love But Don’t Anymore- The Godfather. Read it many times while still in school. Read it later, and it is not the same. While the story is still great, the prose is pedestrian, the sentences clunky, the characters seem artificial, and the book simply pales into insignificance after having seen the movie.
13. Your Favorite Writer- David Foster Wallace/Raymond Chandler. Or Ray Carver’s poems.  If I had to choose only three books I could spend my life with, I would pick one of each. If I had to pick only one, I would draw straws and lose either way.
14. Favorite Book Of Your Favorite Writer- All of Us, The Collected Poems of Raymond Carver.
15. Favorite Male Character-Philip Marlowe. What is not to love about a cynical, alcoholic gumshoe who is still not half as bent as the world around him?
16. Favorite Female Character- Lenore Beadsman. (Provisionally- cannot remember any other right now, except for the titular character in G B Shaw’s Candida)
17. A Book That Disappointed You- Ratner’s Star
18. Favorite Book Turned Into A Movie- LOTR.
19. Favorite Romance Book- Wonderboys, I guess, counts as a romance.
20. A Book You Wanted To Read For A Long Time But Still Haven’t- V, Strange Interlude, Poetry of Philip Larkin. At least I have read V halfway through.
21. A Book That You Wish More People Would’ve Read- Wizard of The Crow
22. A Character Who You Can Relate To The Most- Philip Pirrip
23. A Book That Changed Your Opinion about Something- A Fine Balance. Never had the idea of the horror which is also hidden in the history of this country stricken me as hard.
24. Favorite Title- Red Earth and Pouring Rain
25. A Book Everyone Hated But You Liked- The Percy Jackson books.
26. Most Eagerly Anticipated Books: Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon), and the sequels to Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey.

If you think this excercise was a narcisstic waste of time, send your brickbats to Anne.

P.S. Of course, everything on this list is dynamic. If you ask me to answer these 26 questions tomorrow, you might get different answers to many of the items.

1Q84

(This is not a book review. I have no pretentions to the literary nous required for writing a book review. These are just some thoughts which ran through my mind while and after reading the book. I have tried to not include plot-spoilers, but when one talks about a book, some details of the plot, of necessity, are given away.)

I had never heard of Leos Janacek or his Sinfonietta before I began to read about Haruki Murakami’s new novel, 1Q84. But once I started reading the novel, the urge to listen to the piece grew, and one night, when I was about 600 pages in the novel, I set it down, went to youtube and listened to a performance of the piece by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It was a warm, beery night, and I played that music again and again for nearly two hours and still could not find proper words to describe the music, or the sensations it was causing. It is feisty, bold, joyful, melodious. I am listening to it again as I am writing this.

When we are talking about 1Q84, it is important that we talk about music. Sinfonietta pervades the novel, it is music with which one of the lead characters grows up, it is the prelude to the most important plot turn of the book, and pops up quite frequently in the course of the story. I don’t know why Murakami picked up this obscure piece of music as a key thematic element in his novel, what was running through his mind as he must have sifted through compositions of other musical greats, but for some reason, after having read the novel and listened to the music, it seems an apt choice. Though, of course, it feels slightly ironic that a small symphony, one that hardly lasts for 20 minutes, be the key element of a novel that runs for 925 pages.

With Murakami, it seems it is not so much what the story is, than how it is being told. There is a celebrated story about how Murakami decided one day while watching a ball game that he could write fiction, and so he does. There is a parallel in the novel, where the two lead characters who have not met each other for twenty years (not since the time they were ten) decide that they love each other, and each sets out to find the other.

Tengo Kawana is a mathematics prodigy who has lost interest in math, and who decides, much like Murakami, that he wants to write fiction. So he teaches three days a week at a cram school, and spends his time writing fiction which never seems to go anywhere and pre-screening entries for literary prizes before they go to the jury. In this process, he comes across a very powerful story called Air Chrysalis which has, sadly, not been very well written. It is a novel about a young girl’s life at a commune, an incident involving a blind goat that has died and the enigmatically named little people. In a literary scam of sorts, editor Komatsu has him comprehensively rewrite the novel and it becomes a bestseller.

Aomame is a sports instructor/physical trainer, who sometimes plays avenging angel. One day, on her way to an appointment, she gets into a traffic jam at the elevated expressway, hears Sinfonietta on the radio, and is informed by the traffic driver that there exist special stairways used by maintenance people which go down to the street level, and she might prefer to go down and take the train if she is getting late. With it, comes an ominous sounding warning: ‘Things are not what they seem’. So, Aomame goes down to the street level, and just like that, the world changes.

This is not the regular world in which the story is set, it is Murakami’s world. It is a world which has transformed itself into a world with two moons, little people, secretive communes and air chrysalises. Things are not what they seem, indeed. For it is the world of a novel written by a dyslexic girl, Eriko Fukada, or Fuka Eri. This world is also 1Q84.

I have always felt that Murakami’s writing is not so much action driven as reflection driven. Important events happen, yes. The plot does contain twists, but mostly you can see them coming. If I were to use a driving analogy, it is not a winding drive on a road that passes through mountains; it is more of a languorous drive through rolling plains. Getting somewhere is important, but equally important is the pleasure is to be had in the process of reaching there. In that sense, 1Q84 is a beautiful book. But precisely because of that, it is a bit overlong. It runs to 900 pages in a 600 page plot. The other part is that while Murakami is a brilliant writer, the fact remains that in terms of virtuosity of language, he is no David Foster Wallace. Or maybe it is the translation. So, some sections feel too long, sometimes the reflection of the characters seems pretentious, and frankly over-indulgent.  Thankfully, such spots are very rare.

On the whole, while 1q84 is not another Kafka on The Shore, it still is an eminently readable novel and one of the better books you are likely to read this year.

On Reading (Or Not Reading eBooks) and Shopping Online For Books

(This post is not a reasoned and logical argument for or against the reading of ebooks vs “real” books, or shopping for books in online stores as compared to brick and mortar stores. If you are looking for something of that nature, might as well stop here. What this post is, though, it a mere statement of some facts, and an expression of what feel about said facts.)

Fact 1: I like reading. I read books, magazines (when I can lay my hands on them), articles, poems, plays, essays and whatever else catches my fancy. I read online, as well as on paper.

Fact 2: I have owned an ebook reader for more than two years now. It was one of the first high-value purchases I made when I got a job, the enticement being the mobility it would afford me. In two years, I have managed a grand total of four and a half books on the reader, all of them from the light-weight, easy to read Percy Jackson series of novels.

Fact 3: I shop for books. A lot of books, far more than I read, or can realistically hope to read. I buy them, nevertheless, in a sort of wishful thinking that someday I will get around to reading them. I have shopped online for books three times, all three occasions in the past twelve months. The websites involved have been Flipkart and Indiatimes. I have been left with a mess twice, out of those three times, which considering the maniacal efficiency and customer satisfaction (?) levels claimed by sites like Flipkart, seems to be an error, an outlier in the undoubtedly vast data set which online bookstores must have, of customers served and customers satisfied. However, in my own personal universe, two glitches out three, three books undelivered out of a collective ten ordered do assume a relatively large proportion.

I used to be reading fiend; this party stemmed from the fact that when in school (as in in the lower classes like 5^th and 6^th), I was one of the shortest and youngest kids in my class (which trend continued till I crossed tenth- despite a change of school, and as anyone who has stayed in a boarding will tell you, when you are vertically handicapped that way, your best friends turn out to be mostly either books or other vertically handicapped, or horizontally overendowed kids your age. Being a smartass know it all does not help. So I zipped through library cards, blazing a trail through the brilliant and engaging world of Enid Bloyton and Noddy, graduated to the Hardy Boys and *shudder* a few Nancy Drew novels, Aesop’s fables and Hindi literature, so that by the time my boards neared, I was running through Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum and Arthur Hailey *shudder again* and had developed a taste for Frederick Forsyth which I retain to this day, despite having read all of his novels many times over. My understanding of novel writing as a form of art, and my appreciation of novels as art ran so deep that I was profoundly affected my Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and thought it was a great novel. I remember reading it several times in one year. (My perceptions changed later, rather radically, but that is another story).

Anyway, the point of this whole rather boring catalogue of mostly bad books is that with college, one grew out of it. The other point is that they were all paper books, you went to the library, you picked one up, the librarian took the index card out, made a double entry (one on your card, indicating the book you were issuing, and one the book, indicating you as the issue), and you got to take the book to your hostel, for you read as you pleased-lying on your bed, sitting on a cricket ground, in the open air theatre, in back benches in boring classes or sprawled on the common room sofa after lights out.

Then, came college, and the proud ownership of a laptop (yes, of course), and a rather depleted library which was mostly full of dull books on accounting and marketing theory and human resource management (?) tomes, and a joke of a fiction section, in a town which acquired a Spencer’s bookstore just a couple months before I was due to leave it. And a fiendish affair with ebooks-I read a lot of ebooks there-Foundation, Narnia, the entire Alistair Maclean collection (at least thrice- and still reading again and again), and so on (plus quite a few books downloaded and read on the office desktop during the long, empty hours of the first month of the summers project). It was not until I joined a real job (which involved facing a computer monitor for a large part of the day trying to fit formulae in cells, colour boxes and draw attractive lines- in terms of aesthetics and otherwise) that the idea of coming home and trying to derive pleasure from reading which involved facing the screen again became repulsive. Also, immersing yourself in your laptop screen hardly sounds so pleasing to the ear, does it.

So, I bought a book reader, and as stated above, it did not quite work for me, not for lack of trying. But probably because of that vague reason which we mostly state in life as ‘it did not click for me.’ And yet, weirdly, I am looking forward eagerly to the release of the Kindle Fire, which I am most certainly going to buy. This is a paradox I cannot explain. As far as the reading ebooks on reader experience goes, I own an Infibeam Pi, and have always found it very convenient, easy on the eye, and never minded the slightly clunky interface (more so considering two and a half years ago, the alternatives were not all that thick on the ground). All the clichés about the feel of the book, the smell of printing ink, the pleasure of hearing the crackle of a page as you turn it I will leave away from this, except for making a brief note that yes, these are important to me, they make the reading more pleasurable, but a shitty book is as shitty in any format, and a very very good book, while denied these physical pleasures when read on a device, still remains very, very good. And carrying an ebook reader which weighs maybe 180-200gms around is definitely more comfortable than having a 5lb Infinite Jest sharing space in your laptop bag with your 6lb laptop, making it essentially a donkey’s load.

The most talked about point about the ebook readers convenience which is touted by the companies selling these devices, of course, is the connectivity. The almost ‘point-and-shoot’ kind of purchasing ability they offer, an infinite freedom from the confines of the brick and mortar book store. No hassle of negotiating traffic, dealing with bad ATMs, non-connected card swipe machines, bad public transport, no crunch of actual, physical space to keep the books, no lag between desire and its fulfillment. You want a book, here, order it on your device, and download it from our servers. Instant. And related to this, these store’s other cousin, the online bookstore which can offer you both ebooks and actual, real hardcopy, paper books. Delivered to your own personal doorstep, without any shipping charges, withing 48 hours of your order by express courier. Tired of looking for a book in a bookstore? Order with us.

A bricks and mortar shop will never have the wherewithal to fulfill all your book-search needs. Because they have a limited few hundred square feet of space, a few thousand square feet of shelf space. They have kids playing in their alleys, noisy brats who will ruin your experience. They are poorly indexed, our search is customized. Go on, type in your keywords- ISBN is best, if not try the book’s name, if you don’t even remember that, key in the first or last names of the author, and we will still find it for you. Go on, try our shiny new algorithm. What do they have? Shelves upon shelves of poorly catalogued books, see- there is a crime novel you were looking for, skulking in the science fiction shelf. No such glitches with us. And to top it all, we offer you lower prices. Come, love us. To which all, I say a mildly scornful ‘FINE!’

Because, there still exists a thing called the book shopping experience. Beset by bad traffic, irritated by pesky, untethered kids, my nerves jangling with miscatalogued books, I would still prefer to go to a brick and mortar bookstore to buy my books. This gives me the liberty of actually looking at the book, physically touching it, maybe reading the introduction or the foreword, reading a page instead of just reading the blurb of a few hundred anal retentive reviews on a website, if intrigued enough but not convinced, maybe sitting there on one of the stools now-a-days bookstores so thoughtfully provide, and reading through a chapter to make my mind, look at the last page to see how many pages (yes, that is a must, preferably between 300-600), looking at the typeset, the font used, calligraphy, coverart- all these things that is neutered in the sterile environment of the web.

But one thing more than anything else, one thing which strikes me every time I go to a bookstore is the sheer pleasure of finding something I did know I wanted, but wanted nevertheless. An online retail site a good and convenient way of finding and ordering a book I know I want. But the whole point of going to a bookstore, at least to me, if finding out books I did not know existed. One of the best books I read in 2010 was one such happy accident. One of the best this year was another such. And there have been a few more such in between. That one thing even the best search algorithm cannot give me, if I go to shop online for books. Because, Mr. Algorithm, you can only make a successful search for me if you know what I want. How can you search me what even I do not know I want? So, here is to the joys of shopping for books in actual, physical bookstores. May they last long.

PS: The 2010 novel was one called Wizard of The Crow by a Kenyan author named Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The stumbled and found novel for 2011 was Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Both are positively brilliant novels, and highly recommended, if you care for my opinion. Here is a review of Wizard of The Crow in Salon.

Update/Apology: One of the hazards of writing a blogpost while drinking beer is that the brain is often more nimble than the fingers, leading to a lot of missing conjunctions, inappropriate punctuation, and a lot of missed/unobserved muddle-ups with autocorrect. This post is embarrassingly full of them, most of which will be corrected tonight. Till then, I apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that you still get the point I am trying to convey.

Update 2: Since writing this post, I tweeted to @flipkart, the Twitter presence of Flipkart, that I did not want store credits, I wanted my books. Since then, I have recieved a mail confirming that my book has been shipped, an email confirming that my book is our for delivery, another informing me that the actual price of the book is slightly less than what I was charged for it, that some store credits still remain in my account, even after me getting my book. Today, I recieved calls from Flipkart's Mumbai and Bangalore offices confirming the same, the Mumbai office also calling to confirm that they had tried to deliver the book, but since my office was closed, they will be back on Monday. This is exceptional fair play, and speaks volumes about Flipkart's committment to customer satifaction. Thank you, it feels good to be cared for as a customer. While a website still does not, for me, meet the challenge of discovering unknown books, I am at the same time pretty sure that I will shopping with Flipkart more and more often in the future.