Many summers ago, we read A Doll’s House (by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen).
Although we can’t remember the details of the play now except for Nora, for some reason Ibsen has lingered on in the dark recesses of our mind. Maybe, because Nora was a bold, unconventional woman for her time.
A short while ago, we were reading a piece about Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in the latest issue of New Yorker when we came across this interesting sentence:
Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves.
 – Henrik Ibsen, quoted in the New Yorker (February 9 & 16, 2009) P.110
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I’ve heard of A Doll’s House, but dint make an attempt to read it. I dont know why, when I hear an exotic title, I get nervous about reading it; I feel afraid that I might not be able to do justice to the book. Take The Fountainhead, for example… I stopped readin it after about a 100 pages, just because of the reason that I was not able to read it non-stop, and I felt the book deserved more respect than that.
Am I crazy? 🙁
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Ayn Rand is not an M&B or a Barbara Cartland (have you read any of those).
Gets progressively tougher…as you move from We the Living to Fountainhead to John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged.
Ibsen is a walk in the park compared to Ayn Rand.
Oh! Naw, Barbara Cartland, never, and coming to classics, I think it is more due to the fact that I’m busier now, what with a job and all the distractions of living in a city; I also have my own internet connection, so my reading has gone all downhill. Earlier, when I used to be at home(with family), I was a fresh passout from college, and I used to gobble up books like crazy. It was then that I read Atlas Shrugged; loved it. I also read Gone with the wind in about 3 to 4 days. Well, Jane Austen, I used to complete within 2 days, but now, woe betide, I have unread books lying around me, which was an unimaginable situation earlier. I used to read classics, too… not like I’m jus an MNB reader. Now, when I take about a week to complete an Agatha Christie, I feel like those books deserve more.
If someone asks me about the negatives of living in a city, this would be a prime example…
My lil bro prefers to savour books slowly, so much so, when he’s reading a book and comes across a passage he likes, he puts away the book for a while and strolls around, mulling and absorbing. Then he resumes reading. I bet you think we’re a bunch of crazies 🙂
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Not sure anymore who are the crazies or whackos.