Month: December 2022

Coping with Fake News and Disinformation – Devlin Smith | Book Review

Pandian Ramaiah Leave a comment

Everybody needs information. After the dot-com discovery, there is a massive inflow of information in the world. Every stakeholder wants to meddle and control this flow. They do not hesitate to sugar-coat, malign or even spread rumours. Fake news wave flows across all tiers of the society.

I know someone in a village, who killed and cooked all his pet chickens. Because somebody told him that world will be no more in 2000. After media is run for profit by private players, journolists starts targeted bullying to bring down their opponents. Governments wants to control the press as much as they can. If not, it tries to adjust the flow of news using its moles inside. On this background, I would like to write about a book, I borrowed recently from library as part of #TBRChallenge by Blogchatter.

The pouring of news in dailies/TVs/social media are all poured by different parties based on their own interest. When it is in aligned with our view, we believe it is true. In addition, we starts sharing with our circle without verifying.

Fact-verifying is another jiggery-pokery. It can’t be 100% right always. On the other side, fact-checking all news is not practically not possible at all.

In this case, making juveniles aware of the news process, news consumption becomes important. That is what this book tries to do. ‘Coping with Fake news and Disinformation’ written by Devlin Smith.

This book has 6 chapters.
A Free Press
Making the news
Faking the news
Finding the truth
Information overload
Consuming the news.

It starts approaching the false news behaviour from the historical background. The book ends where it tries to create awareness of how to consume the news. Author tries to target the teens to create media awareness. So the book is pleasingly stitched with bigger fonts, colourful typesetting and interesting pictures. I liked the chapter that describes the fake news that provocated America and Spain to burst into a war.

I think this book will be of interest of socially-aware teens.

To write about the author, Devlin Smith, writes across different genres for the past 2 decades. She studies English with Journalism as specialization.

Name of the book: Coping with fake news and disinformation
Author: Devlin Smith
Publisher: New York : Rosen Publishing,2020.
Genre: Juvenile Literature – Media literacy. Fake news.
ISBN: 9781725341203
NLB | Amazon

I’m participating in the #TBRChallenge by Blogchatter. With this, I wrap up this challenge as well as 2022. See you in 2023.

Stories of the true – Jeyamohan | Book Review

Pandian Ramaiah 1 Comment
Top post on Blogchatter

The society is not fit for innocents. It is as dark as we can’t even imagine sometimes. It is the land where charities were made out of business money. What forces someone to pay back to society? It is dharma – aram in Tamil. The victory of Mahabharata war is justified based on aram. Duryodhana has his own justifications where as Yudhishthira has his own. The injustice and humiliations of Draupadi made the Yadava chief choose Yudhishthira’s side – accepted aram!

Aram was the theme of Singapore Writer Festival 2017, where writers from different parts of the world persuaded this topic. Everybody has their own interpretation of aram to justify their stand. There comes the deadlock. We believe, the one which benefits the victim, is the right aram or righteousness.

I write about the one of the finest short story collections of Jeyamohan – Stories of the True, as part of #TBRChallenge by Blogchatter. This is the translation of his Tamil collection Aram. It talks about different personalities, who are real persons in the writer’s known circle and their attempts to ensure justice or righteousness.

This collection contains the iconic stories Elephant Doctor and A hundred arm chairs. Many of the stories would disturb the readers as it has a concentrated extract of painful hearts of our society.

I read A hundred arm chairs in Tamil a few years ago and blogged here. Still, I can’t resist reading it once again. I can totally absorb the mental agony of a son, a mother, a society, and the conflict around them. The agony of the mother became paradoxical with her son. The struggle between them pierced the reader inch by inch.

Elephant Doctor is something to be kept as a compulsory school read. Liquor has been made a fast-moving consumer good by the companies and the Government. Having money to travel to forests and waterfalls, consume liquor, break the glasses, create a ruckus is wrongly perceived as a ‘status building’ or ‘socialization’. But the pain created by desperadoes is something no one acknowledges.

I was moved by ‘Aram – The Song of Righteousness‘ and ‘The meal tally‘. Such stories show the gems out of a stereotypical society. ‘One world’ reminds me of Jayakanthan’s Tamil novel ‘oru manithan – oru veedu – oru ulagam‘.

‘Nutcase‘ was so closer to my heart because those who struggled for Indian freedom and those who got benefit out of it are different. The regents of Indian democracy showed an overt act of suppression on the whistle-blowers.

I recommend this book to get the a memorable reading experience. It will help us to reevaluate ourselves.

About the author and the translator:

Apart from what is written in Wikipedia, he is one of the best writers of Tamil literature. Apart from his writings, he engages his readers on a daily basis. He used to take a stand, clearly justifying the reasons behind it. He spent an enormous amount of days writing a full-fledged Mahabharata as a novel series called venmurasu, which was released on a daily basis for free. I was one of the readers who followed this novel till the end.

Translating Jeyamohan’s language is a challenge for any translator. In that way, Priyamvada Ramkumar had done her best.





Name of the book: Stories of the true.
Author: Jeyamohan B
Translator: Priyamvada
Publisher: Juggernaut Publication
Genre: Short story collection
ISBN: 9393986177
Amazon

The Illustrated Mahabharata – Book Review

Pandian Ramaiah Leave a comment

Mahabharata does not need an introduction. When we see the scenes with naked eyes, offer our minds a solvency from the monetary outfit of modern day society. Mahabharata admires every one of us. It looked to me like a story of the ramparts when I was a kid. When the read the latest version of Mahabharata novel series in Tamil – Writer Jeyamohan’s Venmurasu, the scourge of mass destruction, ego and humiliation stench all over the journey.

I saw this book in Chennai airport one day. That was the time Venmurasu was being released every day. I was one of the proud followers. On seeing this book on display, I had no other thoughts.

Name of the book: The Illustrated Mahabharata, The definitive guide to India’s greatest epic.
Editors: Bushra Ahmed, Rajrupa Das, Medha Gupta, Hina Jain, Seetha Natesh, Rupa Rao
Genre: Epic/Paintings
Buy from Amazon
ISBN : ‎ 978-0-2412-9972-2

Picture (c) amazon.

This post is written as part of #TBRChallenge

About the book

But it took me a month to read the whole book, because of the proximity of the characters brought by those illustrations. It has a collection of paintings from different sources.

One tale in every 2 pages generally. The pages are ornamented with paintings. The books starts at the Adiparva with the snake sacrifice (Sarpa sastra). The illustration from Razmnama stupors the reader.

There are 18 chapters to take the reader across all parva-s.

The book quotes the verses from the epic; it shows the family tree. It brings us paintings, carvings, and other art forms across the world.

Why I recommend this book?

  • This book is a nice story teller. You can leave it in the hands of kids of age 10+. They will get a memorable exposure to the Mahabharata stories starting all the way from Budh, Pururavas, Dushyanta etc.
  • To enjoy Krishna’s stories from Harivamsha.
  • We understand how Mahabharata is being admired by different part of the globe.
  • It is an excellent coffee table book to engage your guests.