Hey, wondering why this has gone all quiet suddenly?
Thinking about Angstien's Prizes and Glory post in light of the current award season. Haven't always picked up books following the author winning the nobel, (i sometimes wonder how some of my favourite authors who possibly meet the description from Angstien's post- wordy, heavy and the like, never got the prize. kundera, ben okerie, murakami. many have languished on the long list for ages) but its funny how Indian book shops, including the ones that are ubiqutous and are particularly badly stocked (no Tagore! our only Nobel laureate! Poetry section- 2 shelves! loads of robin sharma! i could go on forever!) are suddenly flooded with books of the nobel laurete of the year. I suppose one exception is VS Naipul, which oddly they had some of even before the nobel. But that's cause of his partly Indian connection and our obession with *claiming* or *appropriating* nobel winners is another thing not worth getting into in this post! But was refreshing to have sooo much of doris lessing (another long lister for a long time- that was not meant to be alliterative or anything. just rather inarticulate right now. am not reading a nobel laurete, therefore do not have a theasaurus around, as Angstien said! ;) ), including her non fiction, science fiction and some of her essays stocked, cheek-by-jowl with shobaa de and chetan bhagat. Also manged to pick up some great bargains on Elfriede Jelinek (2004 winner) in a sale coupla years ago - they'd obviously overestimated a lot when ordering!

So but anyway, have not read any of herta muller, this year's winner. But am a sucker for good speeches (my dad collects books of inspiring speeches. these are prob among the first few serious books i read after enid blyton et al.) , so make it a point to lap up the nobel speeches. Yes even the science ones. :) And i really enjoyed hers. Her take on the vicious circle of words is deeply personal, with shades of post modernism. go figure. ;)
Here's a link.
http://http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/muller-lecture_en.html

Really hoping the nieghbourhood black and yellow shop stocks up on her soon!

Note to Angstien: The orange prize typically throws up some great if lesser known (at the time) jewels. Two of my favourites- half of a yellow sun and a short history of ukranian tractors.

Note to NOT: Owe you a proper reply on your GOST post...

Note to the absentee fourth blogger- where ARE you!! :)