February ’19 Clubber of the Month

Hello all and welcome to this month’s post honoring Cirtnecce from Mockingbirds, Looking Glasses & Prejudices. As part of the festivities, Cirtnecce has answered some questions and shared some posts with us. For more information or If you have a nomination for future Clubbers of the month, you can nominate them on the clubber page. Nominations for March will be taken until 3/9/2019.

---

The Interview

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How long have you been blogging? What made you start a blog in the first place? Favorite authors/genres?

I was born, raised and still live in India. The only child of working parents, in the words of Lee Harper, I did not love reading, because, you do not love breathing; its just something you do! Between reading and traveling (inheritance from a wander lusting father), I managed to get an Honours degree in English and followed it up with a double Masters, International Relations and Political Economy. Currently, I work as a project leader for a financial conglomerate and when trying “not” to love my job, I cook, listen to a host of Indian and Western Classical music, write and socialize like no tomorrow. I have been blogging for 7 years now; it all started on a whim on 14th February, 2012, when in a fit of absolute outrage at abundance of everything red and white and fluffy, I took to writing a blog post sharing my disdain at the circus called Valentine’s Day! My favourite authors? Well, I may as well count the stars in the sky but here are some markers – Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, John Steinbeck, Terry Pratchet, Poetry of Boris Pasternak, Rabindranath Tagore, William Dalrymple, Margaret Kennedy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, Georgette Heyer, Sunil Gangopadhyay, MM Kaye, LM Montgomery, JK Rowling…I think, you may realise by now, this list is not ending! Genres – really again too long but classics, historical fiction, history, to start with!

2. Tell us a little about your involvement in The Classics Club. When did you join? What made you want to join?

I joined way back in 2013, after seeing some posts about the club on friends/ fellow bloggers websites. It dawned on me that this may be a good way to read some of those classics that I did not usually venture into and I signed up. My first post with Classic Club was in response to its March 2013 Meme on Jane Austen. My first Classic Club reading adventure was the Classic Club Spin (one of my most favourite activity!) where I read Madam Bovary by Gustav Flubert.

3. What is your goal for your participation in The Classics Club? How did you come up with your list? What is your favorite part about the club?

My goal was like I wrote above was to read those books, which I am not usually comfortable reading, but which need to be read atleast once so I can find out whether I will like them or not. I discovered great many favourites this way and I think the Classic Club Spin is one of the best activities to help some of us read those tomes, that are gathering dust and need a push to get started on!

4. How many books have you read so far? What are you currently reading? What books will you be starting soon?

I lost my old list sometime last year, when inadvertently, many of my pages got deleted/archived due to a laptop crash. My ball park figure is somewhere about 30+ from the old one. Due to forces not in my control (like laptops crashing) I start afresh again and I now have a brand new list. Currently from the list I am reading Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope and Tevye The Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem.

5. Top 3 favorite classic books of all time. Your favorites and Least favorites? Are you looking forward to a particular book on your list?

This is a HARD one – too many favourites, but instead of going with the usual Austen, Dickens etc (whom I worship by the way) I am picking 3 “relatively” lesser known favourites in random order –

•The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki
•Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
•The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore

Least Favourite – Madam Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (I don’t get it, I just don’t why this one is cried up!) and I know I am completely violating popular opinion by Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

6. Anything else you’d like to share with Club Members? (It can be a personal story about a book, something else to do with the Club, etc).

The thing is if you let me ramble, you are opening up to a deluge, so I think, its better, folks just come over to my weblink and read my non-stop ramble!

Cirtnecce’s Classic Club List

Revolution in 19th Century Bengal

The Shadow of Moon Read Along – A Brief History of the “Company Raj”

Losing & Finding During The Great War

The Eternal Question

Of Seasons, Longings & Despair in Soviet Russia

---

Yay! Thank you so much to Cirtnecce for participating and congrats again!