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Aumkaar

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Aumkaar’s Bookshelves

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Aumkaar is Currently Reading

Aumkaar is currently reading

Of Human Bondage

by W. Somerset Maugham

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Oct 17, 2026 12:12AM

Aumkaar is currently reading

A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

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"It reads so easily. Like an evening boat ride on the calm currents of Ganga." — Aug 26, 2026 07:15AM

Aug 26, 2026 07:13AM

Aumkaar is currently reading

The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

by Mark Forsyth (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: writing, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

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Aumkaar said: " The book is replete with chapters on literary devices such as alliterations and assonance (citing only the popular ones, because the rest sound like latin incantations). But more importantly, it is replete with clever humour. I scanned through the fi The book is replete with chapters on literary devices such as alliterations and assonance (citing only the popular ones, because the rest sound like latin incantations). But more importantly, it is replete with clever humour. I scanned through the first few chapters, and already decided to rate it five.

However, I have also thought of trying something new through this book. Which is a chapter-wise, read-along commentary (idea borrowed from a popular GR user), trying to incorporate the literary device discussed in the chapter.

Chapter 1 (Alliteration): We witness why curiosity killed the cat and the baby was thrown with the bathwater. And, thereafter, why they would be dead as a doornail. Plus a picturing of Shakespeare's plunder.

Chapter 2 (Polyptoton): A friend complains that Monday is Monday-ing too hard, and their brain isn't braining enough. And you wonder how you can help. Well, like a true friend will, let them know that it's polyptoton they are using to express their misery.

Chapter 3 (Antithesis): Polyptoton was in talking the talk, antithesis is in walking the walk. And if that failed to convey what antithesis is, it's fine. Because to err is human, to forgive is divine.

Chapter 4 (Merism): The author has given pretty neat examples in the chapter, but he was bound to miss the best one, which comes from the Hindu mythology. Merism is what gave birth to the lore of Vishnu's Narasimha avatar. It is what Hiranyakashyapu thought would do the trick when denied a direct boon of immortality. To be killed by neither god, human, nor animal, neither indoors nor outdoors, neither on the ground nor in the sky, and so on and so on. But as the chapter concludes, "Merism searches for wholes, and leave holes", and into that very hole sank a scammed Hiranya-K.

Chapter 5 (Blazon): This one was quite specific. It gives name to what I thought was the forte of bollywood lyricists, but turns out to be an ancient, universal practice. Where poets feel compelled to hack the subject of their romance into parts (metaphorically, not criminally), in order to appreciate those parts using the most impossible similes. I am not going to try it here.

Chapter 6 (Synaesthesia): When senses and their respective adjectives join a swingers club, and result in a trippy imagery. A pungent noise, a honey-like voice, a loud colour, a taste duller. While the permutations and combinations are many, the chapter explores their varying acceptance in literature.

(to be continued, or perhaps not) ...more "

Aug 07, 2026 09:23AM · see review

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Aumkaar’s Quotes

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
― Montaigne, The Complete Essays

tags: gods, humor, madness, superstition

330 likes

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
― C.S. Lewis

tags: books-reading

7340 likes

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis: The Pilgrim's Regress, Christian Reflections, God in the Dock

tags: interruptions, life

248 likes

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

tags: lies, love, respect, self-deception, truth

12162 likes

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. ”
― Rabindranath Tagore

286 likes

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