HAVE YOU READ THESE BOOKS?

Books! Books! Books! There is no end to knowledge. All youneed to do is flip through the pages to get that extra dose ofinfotainment. So simply read on...

■ SCIENCE OF STUPID, NATIONAL GE-OGRAPHIC CHANNEL, 3.00 PM: Thehost presents videos of people get-ting injured or humiliated while us-ing gadgets and then explains the

1910: Blanche S Scott became the first womanto make a public solo airplane flight in theUnited States.

1940: Brazilian footballer Pele was born inTrês Corações, Brazil.

1946: The United Nations GeneralAssembly convened in New York forthe first time.

1958: Russian novelist BorisPasternak was awarded the NobelPrize for literature. He was forced torefuse the honour due to negative Sovietreaction. Pasternak won the award for writing

‘Dr Zhivago’.

1974: Indian author and journalist Aravind Adigawas born.

1986: Artist Keith Haring was commis-sioned to paint a mural on the Berlin

wall by Checkpoint Charlie Museum300 metres long.

1992: Japanese Emperor Akihitobecame the first Japanese emperor

to stand on Chinese soil.

2018: World's longest sea-crossingbridge, the Hong Kong Macau Zhuhai bridge wasopened by Chinese president Xi Jinping.

science behind the bizarre acci-dents.

■ BRAVE WILDERNESS, ANIMAL PLAN-ET, 5.00 PM: Adventurer and animalexpert Coyote Peterson and his crewgo on a wild world of adventure asthey encounter various animals upclose and learn new things aboutthem.

■ YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, DISCOV-ERY CHANNEL, 7.00 PM: People on theInternet perform great feats of sci-ence, which include a brave sports-man skiing behind a supercar andpeople pulling cars with their teeth.

■ FIRST MAN, SONY PIX SD, 3.47 PM:Neil Armstrong, an AmericanNASA test pilot, and his fellowApollo Program team-members zipthemselves into insulated suits andset out on a mission to land on themoon.

■ G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, HBO,4.44 PM: Duke and Ripcord join anelite military unit, the G.I.JOE, af-ter they are attacked by an evil or-ganisation, Cobra. The two along

MOVIES ON TVTELEVISION

THISDAY THAT

YEAR

MUST DOMUST SEEOCTOBER23, 2019

with G.I.JOE use next-generationtechnology to defeat the threat.

■ CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, &FLIX,6.00 PM: Friction arises betweensuperheroes when one group sup-ports the government's decision toimplement a law to control theirpowers while the other opposes it.

ANSWERS1. ‘Gone with the Wind’ by Margaret Mitchell2. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee3. ‘Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel4. ‘The House At Pooh Corner’ by A A Milne 5. ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by E B White

Which book ends with line? 1. “After all, tomorrow is anotherday.”

2. “He turned out the light and wentinto Jem’s room. He would be thereall night, and he would be therewhen Jem waked up in the morning.”

3. “Very few castaways can claim tohave survived so long at sea as MrPatel, and none in the company of anadult Bengal tiger.”

4. “But wherever they go, and what-ever happens to them on the way, inthat enchanted place on the top ofthe Forest a little boy and his Bearwill always be playing.”

5. “It is not often that someonecomes along who is a true friend anda good writer. Charlotte was both.”

BOOKS

VISWANATHAN ANAND PENS AN INSPIRATIONAL BOOKChess legend Viswanathan Anand hasauthored an inspirational book where helooks back on his experience and shareslessons on how to navigate life. In ‘MindMaster: Winning Lessons from aChampion’s Life’ (as told to journalistSusan Ninan), Anand revisits his great-est games and worst losses, his uniqueexperiences of playing against the bestminds, and the methods he employs toprepare for wins, cope with disappoint-ments, and stay in the game.

THE BOOKSHITTING

IN THE NEWS

1

STEPHEN KING’SMANSION TOBECOME A WRITERS’RETREAT:The author’s homein Bagnor, Maine(US), is being turnedinto a writer’s

retreat after the author and his wife,Tabitha, were granted permission torezone the mansion as a non-profit. Thebuilding will now become an archive ofKing’s work and host up to five writersat a time. AGENCIES

2A book for every reader, age notwithstanding

The SecretCommonwealth: The Book of DustVolume Twoby Philip Pullman We meet the fearless LyraSilvertongue,as a 20-year-old Oxford stu-dent, whoseadventuresbegin again asshe searchesfor a refugefor separated daemons.

Children of Blood andBoneby Tomi Adeyemi A young adult West Africanfantasy about a girl, Zélie,who must fight againstmonarchy tobring magicback to herpeople. Thebook has con-sistently fea-tured on thebest-sellinglists ever since it wasreleased. NYT/AGENCIES

Grand Unionby Zadie SmithThe celebrat-ed author of‘White Teeth’and othernovelsreturns tothe publish-ing scenewith her first collection of19 short stories.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Unexpectedfactors thatexplain whysome peoplesucceed – rea-sons includeupbringing, tim-ing, and 10,000hours of deliberate practice.

Grit by AngelaDuckworth TheMacArthurFellow arguesthat passionand persever-ance aremore impor-tant thaninnate talent in creatingsuccess. A must read.

How to write the next BLOCKBUSTER

03

Sympathy is an odd thing: youlose friends and respect whenyou seek it for yourself, butseeking it for someone else canmake you rich and famous.

Successful storytellers — both writersand filmmakers — know this. That’swhy almost all famous stories acrossthe world have sympathetic plots. ‘TheRamayana’ and ‘The Mahabharata’ areamong the best examples of sympatheticplots. At every twist in the tale, theyforce you to take sides sympathetically.

Fast-forward to our age and you getHarry Potter. In fact, 16 of this year’s 20top-grossing Hollywood films are “com-plete sympathetic tales,” writes Man-vir Singh in ‘Aeon’. Singh is a PhD can-didate at Harvard University’s depart-ment of human evolution biology. If youare planning to write a blockbuster, youcould use these hints from Singh’s es-say, ‘Orphans and Their Quests’.

1. Protagonists muststand outIf your hero/heroine is not attractive or

people with great personality, people willnot like them. For example protagonistslike Achilles, Arjuna, Krishna, Sita,Draupadi, David Copperfield, are almostalways attractive.

An analysis of 568 popular literaryheroines found that only 8 of them (1.4per cent) were described as unattrac-tive. Besides good looks, they can alsohave special skills or powers. And theyshould be morally attractive too.

2. Add some misery...“The quickest way to an audience’s heartis to kill off one or both of your char-acter’s parents,” says Singh. Rama los-es his father, so do the Pandavas. OliverTwist is a street urchin; Harry Potter isa ‘doorstep baby’. The audience shouldfeel a strong urge to help your hero/heroine. So, make them needy. Pile mis-fortune because people love it. For ex-ample, Peter Parker (‘Spider Man’) is anorphan, and then loses Uncle Ben too.Orphaned protagonists are so commonthat an online encyclopaedia of narra-tive tropes has more than 25 pages onorphan-related themes.

3. Put hurdles in their wayIt could be demons, monsters, cruel step-parents, difficult bosses. “If you need some-one to pay attention, tell them about a per-son who has difficulty getting what theywant,” says Singh. Why do problems elicitsympathy? Perhaps, because we are a prob-lem-solving species, and we’re always curi-ous about how others solve their problems.

4. Use your discretionYour protagonist’s adventures are the gluethat holds your story together. Let them runinto hurdles but not endlessly. The audienceexpects them to succeed eventually. That’swhy they are keen to help. Reward them fortheir sympathy with a taste of success.

To sum up: start with a character whois talented, honourable, attractive and pur-sues goals the audience can relate with. Tor-ture them like a tyrant, and then finish witha happy ending. TNN/AEON

A four-step guide to the

most successfulstorytelling

style of all time

1 Overcoming the monster (Dracula,Theseus and the Minotaur)

2 Rags to riches (‘Aladdin and theEnchanted Lamp’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’)

3 The quest (‘Aeneid’, ‘The Lord of the Rings’)

4 Voyage and return (‘Alice inWonderland’, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’)

5 Comedy/romance (‘Emma’, ‘Some Like It Hot’)

6 Tragedy (‘Faust, A Tragedy’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’)

7 Rebirth (‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘The Frog Prince’)

The late British jour-nalist ChristopherBooker reviewed 450stories, spanningfilms, plays, novels,ancient epics and fairy tales andorganised them into his book ‘TheSeven Basic Plots’ which are:

INSPIRATION

The magic of an opening lineThe first sentence of any piece of writing isarguably the most important — both in terms ofhooking the reader in and of doing justice to thebody of work that it is introducing. From J KRowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’sStone’ to JD Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ ,here are some of the best opening lines in books...

HARRY POTTER AND THEPHILOSOPHER’S STONE by J K Rowling

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four,Privet Drive, were proud to say thatthey were perfectly normal, thankyou very much.”

METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morn-ing from uneasy dreams he foundhimself transformed in his bed into amonstrous vermin.”

WILDWOOD by Colin Meloy

“How five crows managed to lift atwenty-pound baby boy into the airwas beyond Prue, but that was cer-tainly the least of her worries.”

THE CATCHER IN THE RYEby JD Salinger

“If you really want to hear about it,the first thing you’ll probably want toknow is where I was born, and what

my lousy childhood was like, andhow my parents were occupied

and all before they had me, and all that DavidCopperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel

like going into it, if you want to knowthe truth.”

KNOW THE 7 BASIC PLOTS

Close to two decades sincethe 9/11 attacks, the sur-veillance system built bythe US spy agencies hasbecome so sophisticated

that they can access every single de-tail about you, irrespective of yourlocation, says whistleblower EdwardSnowden in his much-awaited mem-oir ‘Permanent Record’.

Snowden, who served as an offi-cer of the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) and worked as a contractor forthe National Security Agency (NSA),rocked the world in 2013 after he re-vealed that the US was secretly build-ing a way to collect the data of everyperson in the world, including phonecalls, text messages and email.

“No matter the place, no matterthe time, and no matter what you do,your life has now become an openbook,” Snowden writes in his mem-oir. The 339-page book details how thechange in the American espionagesystem — from targeted surveillanceof individuals to mass surveillance— took effect.

The intelligence community inthe US sought to take advantage ofthe fact that about 20 years ago hard-ly any online communications wereencrypted. And what prompted themto exploit this vulnerability was thefailure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

The book is as much about theunethical practices of spy agencies,as it is about Snowden’s meteoric rise

within the CIA and NSA, and thestruggles with his conscience. It isalso about his greatest regrets andthe final triumphs.

It was the love for his country thatled Snowden to join the CIA and itwas again ‘apolitical patriotism’, theprinciples enshrined in the US Con-stitution, that guided him to makethe shocking disclosure a year beforehe turned 30.

And he believes that six yearssince then, the Internet has becomemuch more secure, thanks to the glob-al recognition of the need for en-crypted tools and apps. Snowden hasbeen involved with the design andcreation of some of these through hiswork heading the Freedom of thePress Foundation, a non-profit or-ganisation dedicated to protectingand empowering public-interest jour-nalism.

Six years since he had made thedisclosure, knowing fully well thetrouble he and all those connected tohim would face, Snowden is now liv-ing in exile in Moscow. IANS

Your life is now an open book: Snowden

A still from the film ‘Oliver Twist’, based on Charles Dickens’ famous book