anjumbai - Tumblr blog

[anjumbai]

দেয়াল - হুমায়ূন আহমেদ

হুমায়ূন আহমেদ এর শেষ উপন্যাস। শুনতে এখনো আজব লাগে। সমাপ্তি শুনতেই হয়তো একটু অন্য রকম লাগে। যাইহোক, বইটা বেশ মনোযোগ দিয়ে পড়েছি। বিজিএস বই এর কতোগুলো চেনা নাম এই বইয়ে পেলাম এবং তা আমার আগ্রহ আরো বাড়িয়ে নিলো।

১৯৭৫ পরবর্তী ইতিহাস নিয়ে এটি লেখা। এই বইটি কীভাবে ছাপতে দেয়া হলো তা বুঝিনি তবে মিসকে জিজ্ঞেস করার পর জানলাম এর আসল পাণ্ডুলিপি আসলেই ছাপতে দেয়া হয়নি। আসল পাণ্ডুলিপি এখনো লেখকের স্ত্রীর কাছে পড়ে আছে। বইটি পরিমার্জিত করে বিশেষ কিছু লোকের সন্তুষ্টি অর্জনের পরেই ছাপতে দেয়া হয়েছে। বিশেষ কিছু লোকদের সন্তুষ্টি হয়তো পাঠকদের অসন্তুষ্ট করবে, তাও বইটি পড়ে দেখা উচিৎ। অনেক কিছু জানার আছে।

১৯৭৫ সাল পরবর্তি ইতিহাসে হুমায়ূন আহমেদ এর আজগুবি লেখার ছাপ এক বিস্ময়সূচক কাহিনির জন্ম দেয়। কেন কিছু চরিত্র এখানে আছে বুঝা মুশকিল। তবে বইটি অসমাপ্ত দেখেই এই অবস্থা বুঝা যায়।

এই বই নিয়ে বেশি কিছু বলার নেই। বইটি শেষ করার পর আমার নিজের knowledge নিয়ে একটা নতুন আত্মবিশ্বাস চলে আসলেও কেমন একটা অসম্পূর্ণ অনুভূতি নিয়ে বইটা আবার বুকশেলফে ঢুকিয়ে রাখি। নিজের দেশের ইতিহাস মনটা খারাপ করে দেয়। কেমন করে দেশে এত কিছু হয়ে যায়, তবুও সাধারণ মানুষ যেন নিজের জীবন সামলাতে গিয়েই হিমশিম খায়। এই সাধারণ মানুষ আর রাষ্ট্র ব্যবস্থা নিয়ে জড়িয়ে পড়া মানুষের সমন্বয় করে গড়ে উঠা হুমায়ূন আহমেদ এর 'দেয়াল' মানুষকে ভাবাতে পারে বলে আমার বিশ্বাস।

আহমদ ছফাকে নিয়ে আমার সম্মান আরেকটু বেড়ে গেল। হুমায়ূন আহমেদ এর পরিবারকে রক্ষীবাহিনীর লোকেরা তাদের ঘর থেকে বের করে দিলে আহমদ ছফা নিজেকে পুড়িয়ে এর প্রতিবাদ করার প্রস্তুতি নেন। তিনি যেভাবে কোনো লাভ-ক্ষতি বিবেচনা না করে লেখকের সাহায্য করতে এগিয়ে আসে তা আমাকে আরো একটি আহমদ ছফার বই কিনতে রেডি করছে। লেখক তাদের বাড়ি ফেরতও পায় শুনে মনে শান্তি পেয়েছিলাম।

বেশি কিছু বলার নেই। বইটি নিজে পড়ে দেখার মতো। অনেক কিছু জানার রয়েছে। সাথে আছে অনেক অনেক রেফারেন্স। আমার মতে, একটি বই পড়ে আরো ১০ টি বই এর সন্ধান পাওয়া একটা ভালো ডিল। ৮/১০

[anjumbai]

The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi - Thoughts

" 'a clever hawk hides its talons,' I had modestly kept my good sense and talents hidden so no one would find them, but I did such a good job that I hadn't been able to locate them myself for the past few years." "Rather than speaking grammatically bankrupt English, I would choose the glory of silence. I am a man who looks before he leaps." "When you fall in love, you realize how pathetic you are."

A spectacular comedy and a well presented view on life. I love Tatami Galaxy. Back when I first watched the anime without even knowing its source material was a novel, I was absolutely astounded by how bizarre yet beautiful it was. Masaaki Yuasa had brought this book to life, put his own style and story in it and presented the opportunity for this beautiful book cover. The seemingly obvious differences in the anime and novel can't really throw you off if there's a huge gap in terms of when you consumed each form of the story. The differences are massive, and in a good way. I didn't know I could enjoy the same story in so many different ways. The novel only had four chapters in total, while the anime had 10 episodes, extending the storyline with the characters and events hinted in the novel and chose to go with a different ending which I can't even remember anymore.

I watched the anime in around 2021 and it's still one of my most favorite anime. I'm really glad that the book is less repetitive. You can just stroll through the repeated dialogues without much attention. The similarity in both pieces of media is that they both flesh out the main character, whose name we never find out in an accomplished and fulfilling way. While novels like these heavily rely on witty monologues, most adaptations can't use monologues like this since you are adapting the same story to portray it in a different way. A same-to-same adaptation never really holds well except for maybe the relationships anime and manga have. But even anime find ways to spectacularize bland manga panels with stunning animation. An example of monologues making adaptations difficult is Classroom of the Elite. It's an old light novel I used to keep up with after watching the anime. And reading the light novel made me realize how bland the anime actually is since the light novel depended solely on the protagonists internal monologue while the anime chose to adapt none of that, while also not giving us any other medium that fleshes out his character (interactions, conversations etc). It just left out the monologue part and adapted the rest of it, making the anime void of any creativity whatsoever. Tatami Galaxy, however, adapted most of the monologue. Not only that, the voice actor practically rapped out the monologue making you change the speed setting to .5 just to keep up with what he's saying. This is creativity in varying mediums.

The novel chose to use repeated dialogues in four different chapters to flesh out our main character in the final one. I love how the novel ended, and its worth talking about again once I re-watch the anime ( I might one day, you never know ).

Tatami Galaxy is hilarious. So many fun interactions and interesting characters, absolutely amazing monologue and bizarre events you just can't make up take place in the novel. I haven't highlighted this many dialogues for their comedic value instead of emotional depth since American Psycho. And it doesn't even have any blood involved. How amazing is that. One thing the translator added to her notes was the love of Tomihiko Morimi for Kyoto, Japan. It really shows in the novel, this love of his. Both the anime and novel have amalgamated a hearty image of Kyoto in my mind, making me put Kyoto in the bucket list of the places I want to visit. I also wanna sit down and talk for hours with my wife next to the Kamo River while some bastards blow firecrackers around us cause they are single and mad and will obstruct other people's love affairs cause they can't make one of their own. Sounds fun.

I have also decided to say "idiocy doesn't discriminate between sexes" to sound like some sort of 90 year old man trapped inside a 19 year-old's body. The book really takes narrating to a whole different level. It has changed my views on reading books. Books don't have to always be serious, deep or emotional. It can just be a comedy, bizarre and chaotic. Books like Clockwork Orange and Master and Margarita may have provided me with these before but the overall difficult language barrier just made it difficult to fully enjoy those books in the first try. Salute to Morimi and sending my heart out to the gifter of this book, you are amazing. I will pick up more and more titles from Morimi since I love his narrative structure and witty remarks and references.

The book plays out in a chaotic fashion while also hinting out important life lessons. Our nameless protagonist has wasted two years of his university life and has been loveless and achievement-less. He has regretted his decisions and kept on saying stuff like "If only I had made that decision instead of this" without really taking initiative to change things now. The first three chapters mock his ideas, showing three different decisions in his life that play out the same way. The final chapter felt more like a self-searching kind of chapter. The narrator getting trapped in an endless four and half mat tatami universe, finally deciding to appreciate people and moments. His devious friend Ozu, who he wished he never met, he starts missing. The four and a half mat tatami room he isolated himself in, he starts hating. The seemingly annoying and chaotic moments of his life seem fun and when he finally frees himself from the tatami universe, the world seems full of life. He gets out a newer man. Making changes now and overlooking his past decisions instead of wallowing over them.

It also has a really cute, I don't know the word, romantic aspect to it? Okay maybe not romance. Akashi and the nameless narrators interactions were my favourite and the chapters always ended after hinting a possible relationship between the two. Because, you know what they say- "There's nothing so worthless to speak of as a love mature."

9/10. Enjoyed, laughed and closed the book with a huge smile on my face. Here's a cute picture of the Mochigumen Rangers.

"Your life hasn't even started yet and you're already lost?"

[anjumbai]

"I know we'll never grow old together, cause you'll never grow old to me" is perhaps the best thing I could hear from this show.

[anjumbai]

ADVENTURE TIME - Raise The Sword

"Changing is our normal state. Even if we're not changing on the outside we're changing on the inside constantly. There's some stuff about me that I've been ignoring for a long time. I'm afraid of that stuff. But it's part of who I am. As long as I know the shape of my soul, I'll be alright."

I'm glad this show was a part of my life. It really felt like I finished an unfinished chapter of my childhood. The show felt so surreal to little me. People made out of fire falling in love with people with flesh and bones, stretchy dog, talking computers, candy people, vampires, surreal magic, princess kidnappers- how was this show even allowed to be made. Cartoon Network never followed a proper sequence, little me thought. But I'm sure I couldn't even tell in my late teens which episode comes after the other. The show is absolutely banging with creativity, chaos and absolute mind bogglers. That's Adventure Time. A story of change and acceptance through hilarious mind bogglers and moments of absolute chaos.

I'm still heartbroken knowing that the show got cancelled and they had to rush the ending- leaving so many plotholes unexplored. They had this amazing setup, amazing build up that I'm absolutely sure they'd wrap up in a satisfying way but yes, acceptance. Happens. 10 whole seasons. Love poured in animation and story writing. The heart put in some of these episodes make you emotional. Episodes like The Bucket, Escape from Citadel, Breezy are absolute peaks of character development and story telling.

You can't forget these characters. Characters who got a millisecond worth of screen time are brought back, implemented into the story and wrapped up beautifully. James Backster comes to mind immediately when I say this. My favorite character turned out to be BMO and Finn after all.

I loved every second of Finn's character arc. Starting as an ingenuous hero of 13, beating up monsters with his best friend and brother, Jake- going on adventures with not a thought of the world. "I'll kill it, if it's evil." It was naive and fun to watch. But I love that the show went down a path to actually convince the viewers that childlike creativity isn't the only thing they have. One after another Finn is thrown into difficulties in life. How does our child hero react? He reacts in a very human way, like all of us. He's heartbroken, sometimes disheartened, hopeless and even obsessive. But in the end, he has a good heart. A really kind heart, capable of making bad decisions too. He's Finn the Human. What he solved with fists now he solves with understanding and care. The whole arc with FP, finding out his Father doesn't care for him anymore, losing his arm, fighting his abandonment issues head on, Fern- all of it is just absolutely beautiful. Who knew I'd get fond of a cartoon character whose face you can draw with 5 pencil strokes.

Finn and Jake's brotherly bond is something that brings me peace. This show put something so important yet neglected as a centerpiece of the show - platonic love. How beautiful is it to just care for a person and cherishing the bond you have. I love how happy this show has made me feel. I'm smiling even when I'm writing this. I'm sad that the show was over. I'm sad that it wasn't wrapped up properly the way it deserved to be and instead they just had to work with the constraints some higher up official put on them. But, I'm happy.

I was just watching old clips of Adventure Time, and I was in awe how much Finn's voice had changed. He's 13 when the show airs and 17 by the time it ends. The show really let him grow with the people around him instead of keeping him stuck in a certain age to please some part of the major audience. I'm glad they chose to tell a story.

Marceline's songs, Time Adventure, Come along with me will ring something in me every time I hear a glimpse of them. The old Tree House art in my desk will remind me of all the memories it holds. I still find it absurd how fictional characters can affect you in such a surreal way. Like they don't even exist. Why do you guys even have a long lasting effect?

When I was watching AT, I made a list of all the episodes I loved. I finished an amazing episode and I noted it down. I looked back on that list and I'm glad I can't remember what half of them portrayed. I can dive right back in with hopes and excitement. I hope it stays right where I left it.

[anjumbai]

Mentally preparing myself for the last 3 episodes. Am not ready.

[anjumbai]

Chess has made me sit on my ass for 12 hours a day and I'm concerned.

[anjumbai]

This is not you. You have to trust me. I know you've spent more time with your past self than you have with me,but you do like me better, don't you? I know it's hard to not go back to what was once familiar. It was almost like a part of you. Well,it was indeed a part of you,and it still is,and i know it keeps calling you back. But don't you see the greater part of yourself that is trying to pull you from the opposite side? I know you feel like you're putting up a facade, you feel like a hypocrite, you want to believe you can never do better. But trust me,all you need is time. Spend more time with me. Remember the peace I brought to you? Wasn’t that the most secure you had ever felt? This is just not you. Believe me. Giving up on making your parents proud,crying over being misunderstood, holding grudges against the people you love–is not you. You always knew where to go at times like these. And it's okay to forget those familiar roads. Just start the journey again and your body will take you there. Even when everything is going wrong,even when nothing is the same, you will stay right here. In peace. I know you want to be in my place. And I know that seems impossible to you right now. But nothing is impossible when you and I are the same person.

[anjumbai]

Music Hole

One of my favorite episodes ever. Just a grief-ridden Fin getting all the love and support from his friends. And the whole interaction with Fin and Music Hole just made me really emotional for some reason. I love this show. I wish I wasn't on my way to watch the last two seasons.

“I’ve always wanted to be heard by everyone. That’s what friends are, right? Just people to observe you”

[anjumbai]

Why is Marceline singing Francis Forever? Is she the Mitski of Ooo.

[anjumbai]

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - Thoughts

“…but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

 Fahrenheit 451: the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns. The book was first published in 1954 and that’s the thing about classics: they are timeless. They can be applied over and over as the years pass and still hold true to a huge extent. Ray Bradbury starts off the book with a fireman, not the life-savers of our generation but it’s someone named Montag, whose job is to burn things. That’s what firemen are in the distant future the book is set in. What do they burn exactly? Mostly books, since books are illegal and you cannot own them or read them and wherever they are, they must be burned and their owners must be taken into custody, unless of course they choose to burn with their books. In a seemingly over-saturated with distractions sort of life, our protagonist Montag, is asked about happiness by a girl who amused him. Montag, who thought himself to be a happy man, now wallowed in despair and asking himself was he really ever happy. “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”

“How do you get so empty? He wondered. Who takes it out of you?” Montag saw the people around him, distracted by all the modern amenities the future world had to appear. Nobody had any time for anybody. Nobody cares to ask. Even his wife shows an apathy towards him and it seems like he never noticed. You ask why too many times to too many things and you do end up very unhappy, indeed.

Throughout all his discoveries, there have been countless ‘wake up’ moments. Countless moments where he hit a standstill and now he finally thought that books were indeed his refuge. Books will make the world think. Books will make the world wake up again. But in a society oversaturated with the best sort of distractions, how could you convince one to read books? Doesn’t sound very distant future huh?

The book goes on a journey of courage, curiosity, and love for learning. Learning about people, learning about when Montag and his wife first met, learning about being present. It’s a predictable story, to be very honest, but you can still appreciate for what it is. Ray Bradbury appears to be very thoughtful with his words, knowing where exactly it can hit. From the very moment of Montag getting his hands on the books, his curiosity burning a fire inside him, you could feel excited with him. You knew shit was about to go down and shit did go down, with a deserving ending that one could even call anticlimactic.

Overall, a solid 7/10 for this book. My ratings don’t really matter and they don’t have anything to offer to the public. If a book title interests you, you just ought to read it from the get-go.

You can tell Ray Bradbury loved reading books from the afterword section. He loved books, and he started reading them very early in age. His love for books brought Montag to life, an amazing character whose world seems to open up through the sheer discovery of wanting to learn about it. Learn about people, learn about history and learn about everything that intrigues you. And who else to learn from but people who’ve attained a vast amount of knowledge from observing the world and putting them into words? Books, people. Read some books. There’s a lot to learn from them and lot to take in. Sure, fantasy is a good escape from real world but I think a writer would attain true success by not giving an escape from the world to the reader but a path opening up to it. A book that inspired you to face the world for what it is. How lovely.

And when you die, let the people not cry for what you were but for what you did. Let the absence of the things you did for them draw out tears from their eyes.

[anjumbai]

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis – Thoughts

“… and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”

First of all, this is one huge book. I was skeptical of whether I should really even pick this up, will this put me in another reading slump and yada yada. Surprisingly, I managed to finish it in a very short time. The narration style and dialogues are something I found to be absolutely hilarious. Bret Easton is very crafty with the dialogues he constructs and I don’t understand how he comes up with such elaborate and funny conversations. Honestly, I’d research a little bit more about the book and the writer but there is no network in my country as I’m writing this. So yeah, giving it to you raw.

Can I talk about the movie first? I’ll talk about the movie first. I love Christian Bale. He’s one of my favorite actors, a master at his craft and worthy of respect for his diverse set of roles. His dedication to play a role is unmatched. He starred as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and I’m glad I watched the movie first. The book is written in first person narrated by our P&P executive, working in murders and executions, Patrick Bateman. And every time I imagine a scenery with this guy, pop, it’s Christian Bale’s goofy ass acting popping up in my head and I absolutely love it. Somebody said while working with Bale that during the shoot of the film, he thought that Bale was deliberately acting horrible. He couldn’t understand why and when the movie came out, his doubts were gone. He seemed like the perfect sociopath, trying his best to fit in while being absolutely horrible at it. His deliberate bad acting just made the character Bateman come to life. It was bad acting to the point it was amazing acting. I don’t know, 10/10 for Christian Bale.

Let’s start off with the contents of the book. The book is a series of narration of the events happening in Bateman’s life and his mind by Bateman himself. There are often whole chapters dedicated to Bateman naming designer and luxury brands, describing popular music bands and their history and what their songs mean, there was even a whole chapter dedicated to his panic attacks; considering he is always high on Xanax, Velium or some other drug. Pages and pages worth of creative and witty dialogue, callbacks or just the total unhinged way of how Patrick treats everyone else when he is on bloodthirst mode. So much to highlight. So much to highlight, cause all of it is just so funny. Something like- “What is this continuing inability you have to evaluate this situation rationally?” when Patrick is being harassed by his fellow gay co-worker(who thinks Patrick loves him cause that one time he was trying to strangle him but dude thought wow Patricks in love with me) is just comedic. Or something like – “Patrick, why aren’t you looking at me?” “I’m ignoring you, Luis.” Just makes me laugh out loud. And of course, the movie. Lines from the movie written out in the book and you’re just sitting there Leonardo DiCaprio-ing all over. “He said the thing.”

All jokes aside, it was also a very clever critique of the free market. All the characters are extremely self-centered to the point of obsessive narcissism, where Pat just takes it up a notch. I don’t need to describe some of the scenes from the movie or the book because I can’t. It’s just not possible, the things Bret writes in the book, to put in a review. If you do wanna see an uncensored review, do pull up your Platinum AmEx card and sign up for my patron, where you’ll find exclusive content. Seriously, if you don’t have a Platinum AmEx card you might as well just be gutter garbage. Did I tell you that Patrick just gave me a face care routine that’ll set me back thousands of dollars but it’ll make me feel, quote, “I feel like shit but look great”?

Overall, my thoughts are all over the place and there’s nothing in particular I want to say about this book. It’s just the day to day life of a psychopath who commits heinous and gorey acts of crime, murder and what not. The book is basically him trying to fit in society while also maintaining his bloodlust. The lines “My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage” sums up the book pretty well. He doesn’t necessarily leave the city all the time but rather he leaves his “I work in finance” façade behind and goes full on Ted Bundy all over the city. Graphic and gorey descriptions of his murder, torture, assault is just horrifying to even imagine. The very fact that someone thought all of this and put it in a book is gut-wrenching alone but let’s just say that the book tries to put some heartfelt moments too. Sentences like “I just want to be loved” are spoken out loud by Patrick after he, pretty graphically, cooks a part of a human body for his dinner. Words are written but not said out loud when Patrick feels love from someone. Genuine, heartfelt love that doesn’t want fame or money or anything else from Patrick, unlike every other girl he has slept with. “yet she weakens me, it’s almost as if she’s making the decision about who I am, and in my own stubborn, willful way I can admit to feeling a pang, something tightening inside, and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love.” A slight attempt at humanizing a monster, I’d say. Not very successful. And I found it funny that even until the end of the book, I couldn’t tell most characters apart from one another. Just like in the movie, and I think the movie captured that essence pretty well.

Most of what you can know about the story is summed up pretty well in the movie, except that the book delves into much more comedy and, of course, gore. The movie ends at a better note in my opinion, simply because the part where the movie ends is just one of the few final chapters of the book. The movie couldn’t have done well with what the book offered as its ending and well done to the script writers for that. The book is hilarious, graphic and just a really funny mockery of materialism. It’s definitely worth a read but it does drag on without a proper goal or anything. But did I still enjoy it a lot? Yes, I did. 8/10. Hilarious and witty.

Now you know what to do when life is getting you down. Just tell yourself “You’ve got a negative attitude. That’s what’s stopping you. You need to get your act together.” Wise words, honestly.

Big ideas, guy stuff, boy meets the world, boy gets it.

[anjumbai]

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

“I was so absorbed in things I couldn’t change, I forgot about the most important thing.”

I read this in Sylhet and I forgot to take a highlighter for this one, I guess. I couldn’t highlight any of the lines that resonated with me or any that I found to be very cool. Which is pretty odd since I will go as far as stop reading if I don’t have a highlighter to highlight an amazing line. Who knows what I did in Sylhet except drown in my thoughts and drown in the flood.

There’s not much to say about this book except that I read the sequel to this one first and I’m glad the writer keeps finding more creative and fun situations for the characters to be in. That’s what fiction is all about I guess. Create some characters and put them in situations and see how they react. That’s how life is too I suppose. Find yourself in situations, react, and repeat until you’ve found a better version of yourself that you can be at peace with.

“If you could go back in time, who would you meet?” I really love this question. It’s right at the start of the book, and it makes you wonder. I’ll just answer it. I’ll go back in time and meet my friend named Hamim. He was my best friend from playgroup to class 2 and I still think about how he is doing. I’ve found most of my friends from my childhood school yet I couldn’t find a glimpse of him no matter how hard I looked. I hope you’re doing well, Hamim. Are you still fat? I miss walking and chatting with our arms on each other’s shoulders. I miss you, man. Hope you’re doing well.

This book is a really good introductory step for our main characters. I loved the short stories with different characters. The first chapter, ‘The Lovers’, was a bit underwhelming in my opinion and I don’t find it to be a good opener for a book like this. But that’s only because I read the sequel first and a lot of people might disagree, those who understand order. The second chapter, ‘Husband and Wife’, is probably my favorite of the book. It’s simply such a heavy subject matter. Dementia is crazy scary and I can’t imagine forgetting the people I love. Even though life gets hazy and you forget people you once would give the world for- there’s always that one corner in your mind that remembers them. It’s like losing that corner. The very corners that are like the pillars of the foundation your mind has made over the years. It’s basically losing yourself. And how dreadful must it be to witness your loved ones go through that. Imagine your mother forgot you

The third chapter on the other hand felt very personal. It was a story about two sisters, one running away to live her life and the other chasing after her, also her dream. Is freedom really in running away? Or maybe it’s in facing what you are running away. You go against the tide known as fear and uncertainty and you choose things for yourself. How beautiful is that? Yeah it hit home because I have a brother of my own. I can never understand him and vice versa. But I think if we did something together, we’d get along despite our differences and maybe he’s always just one car crash away. Anyways, good chapter. Memorable.

‘Mother and Child’ was spoiled for me simply because I read the sequel first. There’s this one part of the book where someone from the future, a teenage girl, is found sitting on the time travel chair. And I could just tell it was Miki. I think that ruined so much of the anticipation and the hope and the beauty of that moment. I can’t imagine how significant this moment would be for me if I had just read the book in order. But as the start of this review or whatever goes, can’t focus on things I can’t change.

If you couldn’t change the present, would you still travel back to it? Would you? I know I wouldn’t. Probably because nostalgia is a double-edged sword, and wallowing in my sorrows makes me an uncivilized human being. I don’t want to live in that state, but I believe my answer would change along with some time. I’ll let myself marinade for the time being.

It’s been so long since I’ve actually written something. Honestly, I enjoy writing. I’m just living an unhealthy life and let’s just say my country isn’t in the best state either. I always use these books to talk about my thoughts and how I’m doing. That’s a little bit self-centered and I think that’s okay. It’ll be a while before I read the next release, I just have so many amazing books to finish. But yeah, I think it’s an amazing read-through-your-journey book. A great travelling companion because I read half of it in a train on my way to Sylhet. A solid 6.5/10. I enjoyed the sequel too, and I think the book will keep getting better over time. I’d like to see how it ends, because the main characters of the book constantly evolve.

Books are amazing. Also, I’m re-reading Oyasumi Punpun. Anticipate a long post for it. Or not, it’ll just be my thoughts.

Thank you.

[anjumbai]

অনেক দিন পর আজ হেঁটে হেঁটে ইকবাল রোড থেকে বাসায় ফেরত আসলাম। কি অপরিচিত লাগল আজ এই চিরচেনা রাস্তাটাকে। ভেবে দেখলাম যে এখন আগারগাও থেকে শিয়া মসজিদ এর রাস্তাটাই বেশি ব্যাবহার করা হয়। অথচ শ্যামলী বললেই আগে মনে হতো যে কার তেজ আছে ঐদিক যাওয়ার। তবু এখন বাসআলাদের বিফ এর মধ্যে মরার ভয় নিয়েই এই রাস্তাগুলোতেই সব যাওয়া আসা। হেঁটে আসলে অনেক কিছু ভাবা যায়। বাসে বসে মাথায় কোনো চিন্তা আনতে পারি না তবে হাঁটলেই চিন্তার আনাগোনা। আমার অবশ্য একটা স্বভাব আছে। আমি বেশির ভাগ সময় ভ্রু কুঁচকে হাঁটি। এর সাথে মোটেও নিজেকে ডেঞ্জারাস মানুষ হিসেবে উপস্থাপন করার কোনো ইন্টেনশন জড়িত নেই। ছিন্তাই খাওয়ারও কোনো সম্বন্ধ নেই। এ স্বভাব যেন চিন্তাগুলোর সাথে একটু রাগ আর অভিমান জুড়ে দেয়। যেমন এই রাস্তায় কতদিন আসি না ভাবতে ভাবতেই যেন আমার কুঁচকানো ভ্রু আমাকে বলে যে "এরা তোকে ভুলে গেছে"। কত বড় সাহস। আমাকে ভুলল কি করে। ১ বছর আগেও তো এই রাস্তায় দিয়েই সাইকেল নিয়ে ছুটে যেতাম, সাইকেলে জং ধরেছে দেখে কি এদের মনেও জং ধরবে? এই ভেবে ভেবেই রাস্তার পথ পাড়ি দিয়ে দেই। আরো ভাবছিলাম যে, বন্ধু থাকলে রাস্তাগুলো আগে কত ছোট মনে হতো। এখন যেন এই একই বন্ধুগুলোর সাথে হাঁটলেই গন্তব্য কেবল আরো দূরে মনে হতে থাকে। নিজের সাথে থাকতে থাকতে যেন এখন কোনো পথ-ই আর লম্বা মনে হয়। সঙ্গী আছে তো, এই যে আমার কুচকানো ভ্রু। কত কি ভাবায় আমাকে।

[anjumbai]

অতঃপর কবি মঞ্চে উঠিলেন - মনোয়ারুল ইসলাম

ক্লাসে একজন সহপাঠীকে অরওয়েলের এনিমাল ফার্ম বইটি ধার দেয়াই সে অনেক উৎসাহ নিয়ে আমাকে বইটি ধার দেয়। বন্ধু-বান্ধবের এম্নিতেই অভাব, তার উপর বই পড়ে এমন বন্ধু নেই বললেই চলে। তার দেয়া বইটি তাই আগে আগেই পড়লাম এবং সে আমাকে বলেছিল যে বইটি আমার ভালো লাগবে। মানুষের সাজেস্ট করা জিনিস পচাতে আমি ব্যস্ত নই, আর আসলেই বইটি আমার ভালো লেগেছে। জীবনে এর আগে কখনো আমি শখ করে থ্রিলার বই পড়ি নাই, তবে এই বইটি আমি অনেক আগ্রহের সাথে শেষ করতে পেরেছি।

বইটি মূলত কবিতা প্রেমিক এক খুনিকে নিয়ে, নাম কবির, যাকে দেখেই বুঝা যায় তার মাথা ঠিক নেই। সে মেয়েদের ধরে এনে তাদের মানসিক যন্ত্রণা দিয়ে শেষে তাদের হেক্সাব্লেড দিয়ে খুন করে। তবে তার মতে কবি একজন শিল্পী, আর আমাদের এই কবি তার খুনের সাথে শিল্প জুড়ে দিতে প্রতিটি দেহের সাথে চিরকুটে জীবনানন্দের কবিতা লিখে রাখে। সে না ধরা খেয়ে কীভাবে এত খুন করে, তার অনেক যৌক্তিক বিশ্লেষণ লেখক আমাদের প্রদান করেন। পিবিআই অফিসার, শাকিল, আসিফ রহমান, এবং বেশ কিছু অপ্রয়োজনীয় বলে মনে হলেও পরবর্তীতে চরিত্রগুলোর বিচক্ষন ব্যাবহার লেখকের এই জানরা নিয়ে তার পারদর্শিতা ফুটিয়ে তোলে।

লেখকের সবচেয়ে যে বিষয়টি আমার ভালো লাগে তা হলো তার কথোপকথন তুলে ধরার ভঙ্গি। চরিত্র ফুটে তোলাতে সংলাপের ভুমিকা অনেক, আর লেখকের সংলাপ রচনার ভাব আমার একান্ত আপন মনে হয়, কবিরের গুলো ছাড়া।

থ্রিলার এর প্রতি আমার তেমন আগ্রহ নেই। এই বই পড়েও আমার আগ্রহ একই রয়ে গেছে। তবে অন্তত এখন আমি বুঝি মানুষের থ্রিলার কেন এত মজা লাগে। আমি নিজেই ২৫০ পৃষ্ঠার এই বই মাত্র ৩ দিনে শেষ করতে পেরেছি। খুনিকে সামনে এভাবে তুলে ধরার সাথেও লেখক আমাদের আরেকটা খুনির রহস্য প্রদান করেন যা নিয়ে মাথা ঘাটিয়ে আমার বেশ ভালোই লেগেছে। শেষের ফয়সালা নিয়ে আমি সন্তুষ্ট, এবং নিজের ধারনার সাথে লেখকের উপসংহারের তুলনা করতে অনেক মজা লেগেছে। "এর পরে কী হবে?" প্রশ্ন করতে করতেই বইটা শেষ হয়ে যায়, এবং শেষমেষ কবি মঞ্চে উঠলেও আরেক কবির আবির্ভাব সম্পর্কে পাঠকদের টিযার দিয়ে যান লেখক।

বই নিয়ে বিতৃষ্ণা সৃষ্টি হলে অবশ্যই একটা থ্রিলার উঠিয়ে আনব। ইংরেজি থ্রিলার যেমন একঘেয়ে মনে হয় ( যত সিরিয়াল কিলার চিনি সবই বিদেশি ), বাংলায় যেন এই একই বিষয়ে একটি সুপ্ত সম্ভাবনা রয়েছে আমার কাছে। নিশ্চয়ই অনেক ভালো ভালো বাংলা থ্রিলার আমার জিবনেও পড়া হবে না, তবে সবকিছুর-ই একটা শুরু রয়েছে।

বইটা ধার পেয়েছি দেখে বেঁচে গিয়েছি। এর দাম ৫০০ টাকার মতো। আমি জানি বই কিনে কেউ দেউলিয়া হয় না, তবে এটি কিনলে আমার নিজের দেউলিয়াত্ত ঠিকই ঘোষণা করা লাগত। ২৫০ পৃষ্ঠার জন্য আমি কখনোই এত সহজে ৫০০ টাকা ঢেলে দিতাম না। তবে বইটি পড়তে পেরে আমি খুশি। ধন্যবাদ, বন্ধু। যে আমার নামও হয়তো ঠিক মতো জানে না, তবে আমাকে এত দামী একটি বই ধার দিতে পারে, সে বন্ধু নয়তো কি?

৭/১০, আরো পড়তে ইচ্ছুক। অন্তত কিনে বাসায় রেখে দেই।

[anjumbai]

Hollow Knight: A Masterpiece

"No cost too great. No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. You are the Vessel. You are the Hollow Knight." Steam Rating: 10/10

Just a random video of "what gaming is like to non gamers" on YouTube lead me to this game. A cute small bug looking creature, wearing a white helmet of some sort seemed as appealing as it seemed cute. A die hard fan of platform fighters made me wanna get into this 2D game.

From the very start, Hollow Knight hooks you with its beautiful art-style, the slow and soothing music, the joy of discovery. The world of Hallownest seemed like a mystery that the child in me couldn't wait to discover.

The knight, the lil bug looking creature we see in the poster is who we control the entire game. The knight is an entity, not a bug, but a being made of void and darkness, found out later in the game. Or at least that's when my dumb brain found that out. He is a vessel born of the abyss, and he has come to Hallownest to fulfill his calling.

I don't write about games I play, nor have I played a lot of games in my lifetime as passionately as I have played Hollow Knight. It's all the little things that makes this game awesome. Like at the very beginning we start the game with no direction. Our Knight enters the fading town of Dirthmouth with no map, no direction or aim. The game doesn't even provide us with a goal, and we're just here exploring the ruins of once a great kingdom. We are stuck in different places of the mouth, but the game not even providing us with signposts of where to go tells us that there has to be some other way. And of course, we are blessed with this passionate cartographer.

Meet Cornifer, the passionate map-maker of Dirthmouth who explores the ruins of Hallownest and provides us with half-done, sketchy maps. You can somewhat get by with his maps, but the real fun starts when you buy a quilt from his wife's shop in Dirthmouth to kickstart your own cartography career, inking out new and secret locations. The joy of exploration is found in finding out a new place, having no idea where it leads to and finally finding a bench so you can sit and ink out your own little updated map. The game could've gone for a typical style map, providing us with all our locations. But it didn't, and we can make our own way through the game. For instance, this is what Cornifers maps look like compared to what we expand:

We wander around the vast kingdom of Hallownest, looking for maps, new places, new bosses to fight. The boss-fights are amazing and they add so much to the lore that you find yourself intrigued with this mysterious world. The game loved to challenge your platforming skills and I'm here for it, despite the raging endeavors or the alt+f4's. And when you've played this game long enough, the kingdom of Hallownest opens up right infront of your eyes. Here is a vast animated map of Hallownest:

Whether it be the creeping weavers of Deepnest, the infected bugs of the Crossroads, the overgrown trees of Greenpath or the overly aggressive buzzy bees of the Hive, the game has always something new and creative to offer.

I cannot go on without talking about its beautiful soundtrack. City of Tears, the theme named after the capital city of Hallownest, is a beautiful soundtrack to preserve some peace in your mind. Or the emotionally exciting music that plays when we fight the Hollow Knight, named "Sealed Vessel", which is a personal favorite.

I want to write and talk so much about this. The lore is my favorite part of this whole game. The fights, the mechanics, or the osts are all amazing additions to the game. But a good game is basically how well you can tell an interactive story, combining and refining all of these things along the way.

I'm still at awe when I remember the emotions fighting the Hollow Knight made me feel. He is the vessel of the infection that plagues Hallownest, who has been deemed not strong enough to contain it anymore. Our Knight approaches and fights the Hollow Knight, but we are hit with the realization that its not us against him, but its the 2 of us against the infection. Throughout the fight, the Hollow Knight stabs himself repeatedly with the one hand that's left of him. He is made of the abyss, pure darkness, he has no voice to cry, no mind to think or no will to break. Yet he fights, his will almost shattered and having no voice to ask for help, it keeps on stabbing itself until we finish him with out final blow and become the next vessel. Which is just the first of 5 different endings we can have. 3 of them showing the actual final boss, The Radiance, the plague, the infection itself.

Very cute how lil the knight looks infront of it. But that's just another part of the lore, which deserves a whole post dedicated to it.

Another one of my personal favorites is when I find the Pale King, the king who ran away and abandoned his kingdom, hiding inside the White Palace, and dying of some unknown reason yet for us to fully understand. The knight finds him sitting on his throne, withered away leaving his kingdom to die in the hands of the infection.

I'd love to talk about the full lore someday, even though we don't even fully know the whole story. Thanks to Team Cherry, the only 3 man developer team that made this game possible. They are from Australia, which verifies that indeed, this whole game took place in some Australians backyard. They are a passionate bunch. You can simply tell by the game. The amount of hidden rooms laying waste behind a breakable wall is unnecessary. Makes you wonder if you missed a major character who was probably just laying dead behind a breakable wall. They added so many unnecessary details, not because it was crucial to the gameplay mechanics, but it was just some detail they wanted the players to find out. And Hollow Knight players have made them proud.

Hollow Knight is a game where we learn to take our own routes. The game doesn't lead us by the hand at all and we can just choose our own paths, finding different things in different orders, skipping things as we choose and feeling the sense of accomplishment found through discovery, making our journey that much worthwhile. Hollow Knight has went down as my favorite game of all time, standing with another, GoW.

10/10. Highly recommended.

[anjumbai]

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

"We can never truly see into the hearts of others. When people get lost in their own worries, they can be blind to the feelings of those most important to them."

I picked up the second book. Unintentionally. Not my fault, ok. I was just picking up book from Islamia Library and I thought I do need a short story book so I picked this one up. Without realizing that the first book was right next to it. Silly me, but anyways.

Funiculi Funicula, a coffee shop in Tokyo, one can travel back in time once served coffee by one of the girls of the Tokita family. There are a few rules including: 1. the person you're about to meet should've visited the cafe at least once, 2. you cannot change the present no matter how you try or what you try, 3. you must sit in the one chair assigned to travelers and you cannot leave it once you're in the past or future and 4. you must finish the coffee before it gets cold. Forgive me if I missed any.

The following rules bring up a lot of questions and the most significant one in my mind was that "can I simply not take something like a heater to keep it warm?" and the book simply replies no you cannot. Which is fine, because it's a magical realism book and I do not wanna question the laws of time travel behind it. The rules provide us with a beautiful sequence of short stories that probably can be read as standalones. I'm not saying this because I bought the second book first don't look at me.

While it can be read as standalones, the cast of the cafe owners and workers remain the same and I think they are a good addition to this long series of books. It provides you with a familiarity, that each time you pick a new book, there are people you can recognize, there are people to return to. Which is why book series work so great, that feeling of familiarity. The recurring faces of the cafe are Nagare, his daughter, the absolutely adorable Miki and the heavy hearted Kazu, who we sympathize greatly at the end of this book.

I'll take this moment to talk about my favourite character, Miki. The six year old girl turning seven in the final half of the book, who made me smile tremendously every time she entered the room. She sometimes becomes French, changes her attitude towards other in a way a child would when they learn new things, and she is filled with impatience and hope to be the next pourer of the coffee, to let people go to the past. She probably just wants to feel important and that's just so innocently childlike that I cannot help the urge to just be in her company. Here is a series of dialogues between her and her father, Nagare, regarding the first time she pours coffee. She thrives in the at her moment of "my time has come". I found it so funny so I cannot help but share it:

"Is it you, monsieur, who wants to return to the past?" "Miki, please, speak proper Japanese," said Nagare, aghast at her attitude. But Miki tsk-tsked him with a wave of her finger. "That is not possible, moi (nobody knows why she calls herself moi) is not Japanese," she retorted. Nagare gave an exaggerated frown as if he had been expecting such a response. "Oh, what a shame! It is a rule of the cafe that the person who pours the coffee must be Japanese." "ONLY KIDDING. I'm Japanese."

I laughed out loud at a moment in a book, and it's just great how my imagination could make this scene so funny to me. And Toshikazu Kawaguchi surprised me with his remarks about the contrast of Miki and the seemingly cold Kazu. The line was: "If people had auras whose colors were somehow visible, there is no doubt that Kazu would be surrounded by pale aqua, while Miki's would be orange."

A flutter of emotions and memories grasp my mind and I'm reminded of how much I love the color orange.

Will buy the rest of the books cause I love having something casual to read and just enjoy myself. Short stories are great in the busy world I created for myself. 7/10, I'll probably look for the first and third book soon.

[anjumbai]

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in The West by Cormac McCarthy

"Is that why war endures?" "No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not." *Trigger Warning*

After nearly 3 months with this book, and my ups and downs of not giving up on it, I'm glad to say that I have finished my first Cormac McCarthy novel. While I'm not sure if Blood Meridian should've been the first McCarthy novel I should've read, but at least I finished it. The book is classified as being one of the anti-western genre, which is something that has changed my view on the typical heroic tropes of the old wild west to say the very least.

Blood Meridian is a gruesome portrayal of American expansion in the late 1800s. The book starts with a motherless runaway in Tennessee, who finds himself entangled with actual, historically existing people. The books main inspiration is the Glanton Gang, a group of notorious scalp hunters who take the kid in and through impeccable paragraphs of describing the violence and weather in the Texas-Mexico border, the story unfolds in front of our eyes.

Now, I take this book as an introduction to McCarthy. And one of the key takeaways from this book is that McCarthy does not care about punctuation marks. Throughout the full 400 page book, there was not a single apostrophe. Dialogues began abruptly and ended as abruptly and double checking who's talking to who and if it's the narrator speaking was not uncommon in the past three months. Of course, that's not a complain at all since you can still tell when dialogues start quite easily because the dialogue is fully American without any thous and thy shalls. Compared to the archaic English, or Biblical English used to describe everything else in the book.

McCarthy excels in visual story-telling yet you find yourself asking why any of this is happening or is there even an actual plot. You read a whole paragraph of sentences connected without a single full stop, describing violent massacres, heads getting chopped off, Apache villages getting destroyed, and none of these were ever really the star of the book. In fact, nothing was. Everything described in the book felt undermined by McCarthy, he describes everything like "it was supposed to happen, let's not make a big deal out of it." Anything and everything was possible in this book, and I'm just trying to understand what is happening. I was confused with my journey half way through, but it gave me hope that a lot of people felt the very same when they first read this book.

Now for the actual trigger warning topic, Judge Holden. He is also a historical character who traveled with the Glanton Gang and let's just say he is a man of philosophy, languages, arts, science, geology, arms proficiency, a skilled dancer and every single town he visits and stays in, a child goes missing. He is the ultimate villain of "evil for the sake of evil", a follower of war and the antagonist of "literally me" videos. I read in a comment that "when Judge Holden becomes a literally me character, the world will be over." Truly so. Such truer words have never been said because people like Patrick Batemen are one of the few notorious faces of literally me.

Holden is definitely the biggest highlight of the whole book. While the wild western America was filled with violence, natives were being killed mercilessly and the government was even paying to collect their "scalps" (Google scalphunting if you please, I do not want to get into that topic), Holden had an exquisite taste for violence even among them. The rest of the Glanton gang were just morally gray characters, including our pseudo-protagonist 'the kid'. But Judge Holden, he was on the dark side. He is the dark side. I don't even want to describe his crimes, but he is often found wandering around naked in his hairless body and his famous quote is "whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." Or a line that represents his worship of war- " As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?"

The final shift, or the final phase of the book is something I portrayed as war against peace I guess. After the Western lifestyle was getting worse, people finally moving on from this bloodied path, or blood meridian, we find the kid trying on his part too. The Glanton gang is gone, their scary ass leader dead. Only a few survive throughout the last pages, and then only two. The judge and the kid. Years later, when the kid is finally trying to turn his life around, living day by day, not massacring villages on command, turning into 'the man' now by our narrator, the judge comes upon him again, and the man shows no fear now but you can't tell what he's thinking. You can't tell what will happen and before you know it, McCarthy, after providing us with violent details of gore and blood, closes his book abruptly on us after the kid is definitely killed by the judge.

Man of war stay man of war. The judge wanted to destroy a defect; the kid who showed sympathy to people and never completely giving into war, completing his dance and completing the book for us.

The book was a solid 7 out of 10 for me. I do not understand most of it, and it's an extremely difficult book for someone like me. The concepts are not hard to visualize, the sceneries stay stuck in your head and the horrifying visualizations definitely find a room to stay in your brain, yet I found myself confusing over why anything is happening or what's the whole point of it. And it seems that violent really does need no point and as hard as this ride was, I'm glad to have read a book like this. Sleep, eat, kill and repeat really showed how desolate and abject all of this was.

The best part of the book is when the judge enters and starts judging everyone, including the reader.