Random Reading : Nobel for Literature 2026

Friends Yesterday, when my daughter Reshmy was at home, I pointed to the shelf in which I had dumped my recent accumulation of books and told her : "If you are interested in reading any of them, you can finish reading and return later" From half a dozen books she scanned through in next 20 minutes, picked up one for reading and asked me : "Do you really read all these books?" I didn't tell a lie. Last week, we mentioned about the announcement of this year's Nobel for literature. And briefly discussed about the work of Anne Carson. Today, we will try to know more about her. M G Warrier A Yesterday's The Hindu literaryreview carries an interesting article captioned "Reading Anne Carson" by Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta (who is in IAS). I loved reading the write-up which will give the reader sufficient inspiration to dig out the original sources from which the quotes and anecdotes have been carefully picked up by the writer. B Famous and striking quotes from the poetry and verse-novels of Anne Carson* : From Autobiography of Red "He / thought of women. / What is it like to be a woman / listening in the dark? Black mantle of silence / stretches between them like geothermal pressure." "Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as / lava. She listens / to the blank space where / his consciousness is, moving towards her." From The Beauty of the Husband "You used to say the body is the beginning of everything. I don't believe that anymore." From Individual Poems ("Lines") "While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone. Paper clips in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the desk." "Out the window snow is falling straight down in lines. To my mother, love of my life, I describe what I had for brunch." "How long will it feel like burning, said the child trying to be kind." From Decreation / Essays & Poetry "We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves." "What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone else's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away." "We're talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language." *Source : Websites C Bonus Focus on your target Arjuna's focus on the bird's eye is a famous lesson from the Mahabharata about singular concentration and priority. The Story The Test : Guru Dronacharya placed a small wooden bird on a tree branch and asked his royal students (the Pandavas and Kauravas) to take aim. The Question : Before letting them shoot, Dronacharya asked each prince what they saw in their field of vision. The Distractions : Princes like Yudhisthira and Bhima reported seeing the sky, forest, tree, branches, or the bird's body. Dronacharya told them to step aside because their minds were cluttered. Arjuna's Answer : When Arjuna stepped up, he stated he saw only the bird's eye and nothing else. The Result : Dronacharya allowed him to shoot, and Arjuna's arrow struck the target dead center. Key Takeaway Single-Pointed Focus (Ekagrata) : Success comes when you block out background noise, distractions, and peripheral details to concentrate entirely on your core objective. In day to day life also, application of this takeaway lesson makes immense sense. Always there will be challenging distractions.