Samanth Subramanian - Livemint.com
ABOUT RECENT POSTS
Member since 09-04-2008
Last visited 09-19-2009
Timezone 5.00 GMT
Total Posts 113
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  • Monday, September 14, 2009
    Posted at 2:27:00 PM
    As I'd mentioned in my last post, Bookends has moved to a spanking new location: http://blog.livemint.com/boookends . Please do visit -- two new posts today, including on the first review of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol -- and bookmark the new URL. All future posts will be put up there.
  • Thursday, September 10, 2009
    Posted at 4:46:00 PM
    ... is actually available here . This is a new WordPress platform that Mint will be gradually adopting for its blogs, over the next few days. It should be a lot more flexible as far as what we're posting, and most importantly, it is a lot more orange. So please, ladies and gents, head over to the new Bookends and send in your answers to this week's quiz.
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  • Monday, September 07, 2009
    Posted at 1:46:00 PM
    New York magazine goes at least part of the distance towards answering that question, in a very entertaining interview with Dan Burstein, editor of Secrets of The Widow’s Son , a book that tries to figure out what Brown's The Lost Symbol is about. Go read. I particularly loved this exchange: "Q. Why did it take him so long to write this one? "I’ve met Dan Brown once, and it’s presumptuous to say I understand him, but I think there’s a set of personal issues. He always wanted to be a writer. If you go back to his days at Amherst—he.
  • Friday, September 04, 2009
    Posted at 5:28:00 PM
    An absolute deluge of attempts on this quiz -- thank you all for your replies. Akshat Kumar, Anandhi Ramesh, Amrita, Siddharth Raman, and Anil Kothuri just missed getting a perfect seven. Here are the answers: 1. @ rbutl Wht do u mean u dnt giv a damn? Hell! Shd just hav stuck with @ AshleyW A. Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind . (The reference being to her two lovers, Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes) 2. Enormous amt of attitude from the manservant re. new mauve spats. Wht do u guys do 2 keep em in their place? Suggstns welcum. A. Bertie.
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  • Thursday, September 03, 2009
    Posted at 2:22:00 PM
    Here's a horrific thought: What if many of our favourite literary characters tweeted? Given the (entirely made up, by me, right now) Twitter post, give me the fictional character who might have tweeted it: 1. @ rbutl Wht do u mean u dnt giv a damn? Hell! Shd just hav stuck with @ AshleyW 2. Enormous amt of attitude from the manservant re. new mauve spats. Wht do u guys do 2 keep em in their place? Suggstns welcum. 3. Pic of my former workplace: http://bit.ly/l5cbC 4. Playing arnd w. the new 9000 computer before liftoff. Wht a cool gadget! @.
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  • Wednesday, September 02, 2009
    Posted at 2:24:00 PM
    No, not "firetruck." A new book, The F-Word by Jesse Sheidlower, promises to forever change the way we look at our swearing. Sheidlower, an editor-at-large for the Oxford English Dictionary, apparently "combed vast numbers of books, magazines, films, and other works for references to the most beloved, least printable word in the English language and all its variations." These variations are often more interesting than the word itself. For instance: 1. "MILF" -- which finds a place in this book, and which I first remember.
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  • Friday, August 28, 2009
    Posted at 9:39:00 AM
    Forget the fracas . There are plenty of other reasons to dislike Jaswant Singh's Jinnah , which bears a curious and completely inexplicable triple-barrelled subtitle: "India - Partition - Independence." Here are a few; you may choose from these, or read the book and choose from many more. 1. The most misleading blurb in history: On the back of the book (Rupa, Rs600 or thereabouts, very heavy), we have this blurb: "Jinnah is an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity," by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Now, granted that this was Singh's.
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  • Friday, August 21, 2009
    Posted at 4:04:00 PM
    A thickly populated honour roll today, with a number of people also cracking the theme. Divya Anand mistook Roald Dahl for Kerouac; Prasanna Walimbe mistook him for Lewis Carroll. A couple of others got two out of four answers right. 1. Which famous literary character was probably as crazed as his name suggests because of the fumes from the mercury that he used in his millinery trade? A. The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland 2. Name this author: A. Roald Dahl 3. The ____ Fist, shown below, was used by a certain gentleman in 1970 during his campaign.
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