Preface...The First Step

"Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too, that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence."
~ Jan Morris ~

It is with trepidation and loads of apprehension that I pen this post which is supposed to introduce our spanking new blog . When the idea first struck, the immediate responses that our collective minds generated was, in sequential order--
a) Great Idea!! But what are we going to do exactly?
b) Mmmm..all right! But would we be able to sustain it?

The answers were prompt to come
a) We will blog about our greatest passion , a love that we share in equal measure- books
b) We cant know till we start

But still apprehensions kept nagging at our minds regarding feasibility. None of us are professional writers and though yours truly has a blog of his own (which is updated with increasingly erratic frequency), but its a general platform for ranting and raving about everything under the sun( fittingly titled--"Ships and Shoes and Sealing Wax). But the new blog is to be devoted exclusively about our literary pursuits. None of us have any experience of that-- while each of us are quite proficient in our reading prowess, writing was something none of us ever took too seriously, especially book reviews and stuff!! We always thought reviewing books is an art best left to the artists who reveled in it.

However, as further thought was given , full 5 minutes of deep rumination, following conclusions were drawn-
a) A blog is our personal platform and as such we are not accountable to any one other than us , no editors breathing down our neck, no expectant mob of readers ready to pounce on every shred of wisdom(or banality) that we unship on them.
b)We have been reading since our childhood and the love for this quaint habit grows on us with each passing day and season. Surely we will have something to say? Surely we wont be stuck for words while describing something we know intimately? I certainly cant be total strangers to that volume of book that I took to my bed, caressed, loved and explored into till the wee hours ??
c)Who is going to judge the quality of our discussions/reviews/insights into our favourite book? Who is going to turn his nose when we reveal that we loved "The Da Vinci Code" as much as the latest offering from Amitav Ghosh? We own the blog and speak about what we like, dislike-- we can tell exactly why we thought a particular book is a gross waste of precious wood pulp even if the whole world thought it was the best afterlife possible for the forest . This is the space where we speak our minds..

So anybody reading this post must remember that everything written here is merely our thoughts , opinions and expressions. We would love to have as many as we can get of them as well. So if you feel there is something you want to talk about , or want to voice your disagreement or add more to what we speak about , or even start a new topic of your own, please mail us or leave your thoughts on the comments section and we will be delighted to hear from you as well.

Also, for the benefit of the readership( that we may hopefully gather in near future) let me warn again that none of the contributors to this blog are adept at writing and especially so on the topics they will be writing about. They may appear childish, immature, muddle-headed or even at time pose challenge to civilisation as we know it by comparing Shobha De to Salman Rushdie( not that we do, but we just might) . Readers discretion and occasional parental guidance highly recommended.

Best Wishes---
Sid