E-Paper
Essay: The book is going everywhere
People will never stop reading books. Indeed, good books now have many additional ways, including podcasts and video, to reach the reader
I listen to a podcast every day. From time to time I dip into The New York Times’ ‘The Daily’. On April 27, I am glad I did. I was walking up and down the 400-metre road in front of my house at 5:30 AM, the only time I could sneak out without feeling guilty of breaking lockdown rules. I was slightly disappointed that this episode of ‘The Daily’ was not one of their investigative pieces. Instead, someone was reading out an article written by a chef about shutting down her restaurant. I thought I’d give it a few minutes before going back to my podcast library. Four minutes in, I looked down at my phone screen to know more about whose words I was listening to. A chef? I mean no chef writes likes this? I was in rapture for the next 43 minutes. I came home and told my husband. He had lived in New York for 10 years at some point in his life and had been to this restaurant. Next, I looked up the piece online. Despite having listened to the entire article, I wanted to experience it again. This time I wanted to read it. It was that good. The article had already gone viral. Not being very familiar with New York, I hadn’t heard of Gabrielle Hamilton or Prune. But I would get to know her very well over the next few days.
I’ve been told I am obsessive. The summer I learnt how to swim I would drive 40 minutes in a non-AC car in Delhi’s blistering June to swim for an hour every day. If I like a song, I’ll listen to it on repeat until I tire of it. I have used the same soap for as long as I can remember. And the list goes on.
I watched all the videos I could find on Gabrielle – Mind of a Chef, the one where she cooks for her sons; the short Vanity Fair video clip and even the 24-minute speech she gave at The Welcome Conference.
I shared the article online and some friends said I had to read her book, Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. After all Anthony Bourdain had called it ‘Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.’ I messaged every bookshop I know in town. Unfortunately, not a single copy was available (It’s a frustration I experience often. I’m all for supporting brick and mortar bookshops and I even help run a few, but we all have to do better – however, that’s for another piece). But Kindle did. I could download it and start reading it immediately. However, as obsessed as I was with her story, I just couldn’t. For someone who has to work in front of a screen for eight hours every day, I couldn’t get myself to do it. As tempting as it was, I knew I would abandon the book within pages. It would rob me the joy of turning a page, of reading a book while I ate, lay down, snatched minutes while I waited for yet another Zoom call to begin. So I waited. And soon, as Amazon began delivering books, I ordered a copy and finished reading it in four days. I could have read it in three, but I stretched the end for as long as I could. I noted down a list of food terms (magret entrée, capon, clafoutis, manti etc.) that the author mentions in the book. I would look them up at the end of each day. The brutal honesty, self-deprecation, introspection, emphasis on dogged hard work was something I identified with – I was left both in awe of Hamilton but also angry at her. Read the book. I’d love to discuss it with you.
In the meantime, you may ask, “What is the point of writing this piece?” For a while, people have feared that books are not going to survive the onslaught of, well, just about everything: the smart phone, Netflix, waning attention spans, even tweets have turned into fleets! But I discovered a book, which is going to be in my list of top five memoirs for a very long time via a podcast, then an article I read online, then through videos I saw of the author on YouTube. It’s a book that stays with me. My dog-eared, much-thumbed-through copy has a pride of place on our bookshelf. The one I shove into my husband’s hand every day, urging him to read so we can talk about it. The book is going nowhere. But what’s changed is that it now has so many friends to help it reach its readers. Isn’t that something?
I continue to be obsessed with Gabrielle’s writing and story. In one of her interviews she spoke about a sequel to Blood, Bones and Butter. Kind Regards is to be published this year. I cannot wait.
Priya Kapoor is Editorial Director, Roli Books.
