The Egyptologist

So, what has kept me alive and busy the last few days? First off, I cant really claim to be busy body the last few days. The July 4th break and an extended Sun Microsystems forced summer siesta has given me plenty of free time to enchance my spirit - albeit sending my sleep pattern out of control yet again! For a change, I'm in town (Pleasanton, CA) during the break and not working. The last six months have been busy and I have much to catch up on - books and magazines that I subscribe to.

Last Friday, a perfect summer's day, I wandered around and found myself in Keplers Book Store in Menlo Park. While browsing for some easy reads for the next few days, I picked these 3 titles.

Prague - Arthur Phillips
The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips
The Unfolding of Languages - Guy Duetscher

Now, moving on to the choices of books - well, I have a fascination for far away places - anything that inspires travel, learning about new places, history etc. is inspiring. Yes, looking for some new energy. So, Egyptologist and Prague fall under the travel section for me - fiction, but interplayed nicely with destinations of my choice? - brilliant!

The book on Languages was surely for kicks - Recently, I had a prolonged argument with one of my volunteer collegues (My current favorite volunteer organization : Upakriti) about language. For me, language is pretty basic - its to facilitate me to communicate with the world, period. As long as I can effectively accomplish that, it doesnt matter what language I speak. Yes, English is my language of choice - atleast for now, even though Tamil is my mother tongue and I speak passable Hindi. Mind you, English has served me well. I wouldnt mind learning Spanish or French. But, thats about it - I would much rather spend my energy on something more interesting and useful. Ofcourse, I wont mind dabbling in other languages when the need arises.

Anyways, back to Eyptologist...
It is an interesting narrative. The style of writing is pretty unique - a potpouri of active journals, letters and authors edit. For the first time, I saw different fonts being used different characters - to some extent, the soliloquy of few pages of a certain character at a time allowed the use of this style. It would have been awkward, if it was a dramatic, conversational writing.

Kept me in it for the journey for sure. The clever mingling of fact and fiction is another aspect that really makes it a worthwhile reading. The story of the main character (Ralph Trilipush) intertwined with the story of the famous curator, Howard Carter, of the King Tut fame was fascinating. Now, I'm looking for a real biography of this dude - Howard Carter.

As it so happened, as I was reading this book, I had a National Geographic (June 2005) edition with "The new face of King Tut" staring at me all the time. A pharaonic invitation to visit Egypt? A round trip ticket and a red carpet would be even better:) Not that I dont want to go to Egypt - I absolutely would love to visit the mummies and dig some dirt in the Valley of the Dead.

Is this a new age of "novelism" or what?

• Both the books, Egyptologist and Prague, seem to contain atleast a 2-page list of endorsements for the book even before the book begins
  
• Another sort of outlandish marketing idea is to include a list of "Book Club Topics for discussion"
• Websites for individual books (hmm...why not make a movie at the same time too?) - well, since there is a website, atleast make it a little bit more interesting please (a la Dan Brown/da vinci code contests would be a first step)
  
• Book Tour Schedule - well, atleast someone is having fun!

I would rather have the quality of the books speak for itself rather than these gimmicks to increase readership - seems very Hollywoody... I would much rather prefer and live with Amazon.com providing me with a list of books based on my past/current interests/purchases.

Anyways, despite all my rumblings about the marketing ingenuity of these new age books, I still liked The Egyptologist - if not for its content, atleast as a light hearted eye opener to Eygpt, its treasures, the treasure hunters and the greed that binds them all (from the kings who hope to carry a whole lot of gold to their grave to robbers who loot them)

Now, I'm all set to read Prague... if only, the accolades were hidden somewhere towards the back of the book...