itiuvacha: Tuesday Treasury

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Tuesday Treasury

Today the sub-theme is International. You will find, in the course of the week, a Chinese, a Russian and an African slice of literature about love. This Tuesday tenders both colourful variety of region as well as a deeper reflection on this diversity.

Read

S.i. kishor's Appointment with Love is much discussed online. I stumbled upon it in the hunt for a really good short story about love.

You can, of course, find many 'romantic' stories on and off the Net. The time and effort Writer Rites invests is to unearth the carefully worded and crafted work. On the Page you will find this short story and Margaret Atwood's Variations on the Word Love.

I've yet to see this popular contemporary author's The Handmaid's Tale or read it. That's just because I have this quirk of not going in for anything that's much talked about in terms of books. Perhaps I should see the film? Anyway, that is mostly how Writer Rites swings - off the trodden path.

Many classics are freely available on and off the Web. I try keep that portion low to allow room for new and skilled voices; voices from around the world.

Much that is good remains unencountered simply because it is from a region that is not very popular to the business interests that govern media. Such minds want quick returns from local consumers. It is this same narrow and Philistine outlook that has begun to defeat the glorious enterprise of using the Net to offer good reading to all. In the hope of making money, Google now buries some classics or gives in to the bullying of the tradesman to keep a great work hostage to payment.

While Pay-and-Read may benefit living authors I do not see why we should feed the descendents or relatives of, for example, an Anthony Burgess or a Graham Greene. Why has a whole site devoted to Giovannino Guareschi disappeared? Who will look for these names and why and how?

We are now in an age where quality is dictated by 'likes' and followers. Such a trend will definitely produce something of worth in time. However, it is never good to deny the populace the blessing of the great works of our species.

An apology: I'm muddling along with Writer Rites and now the task of relating the page to this blog. I had hoped to schedule a week's entries based on the daily output on the Page. It has been a Herculean task of learning what not to do and what to do on the run and I'm very late for today's post already. Today's challenge is to offer you as many as I can of the hundred books reviewed on the link below to preview. And, who knows, to buy!

Admittedly, the below set and the word 'quality' are hard to match. However, this is an attempt to shrug off the snob's attitude towards the 'commoners' at least in so far as reading is concerned.