The Sunday Salon: Summer Reading Plans (and scrapping the current quarter project)

I wasn't planning to do one of these, but since everyone else is posting their summer reading lists, I couldn't resist. Blame it on peer pressure.

Couple of months back, I planned to spend the second quarter reading science fiction and dystopian titles. And while I did read a few books from that category (Divergent, Battle Royale, Fahrenheit 451, The Knife of Never Letting Go, currently reading Unwind), I didn't quite get to as many as I had hoped to read. But mostly, none of the books I read so far have wowed me - they all fell far short of expectations. I will probably continue with more science fiction books (I still have Insurgent to read and maybe continue with the Chaos Walking series), but they may not exactly be on top of my pile. For now, I'm looking for something else to focus on.

I know that whenever I make a reading list, I never get to most of the books on that list. Reading lists, to me, are for ogling pleasure. I have no doubt, that history will repeat yet again, but lists are so much fun to make that I don't mind enjoying the whole process and patting myself for coming up with a final result. So rather than make a traditional list, I'm going for more of a project list. Moreover, summer hours are starting in a month, and I'm looking forward to using some of those weekends for reading whole chunks.

NetGalley

One of the first things I want to do is clean up my NetGalley list. I suffer from the out-of-sight-out-of-mind syndrome, so half the time I forget there are a bunch of egalleys waiting to be read. Last I checked, many have expired, but luckily, I usually download the galley files soon as I get the approval notification from NetGalley. Right now I have 12 ebooks waiting to be read or declined, and while I know that some of those don't appeal to me anymore, I know there are many there that I do want to read. I've decided not to request more titles from them until I clear off the pending ones (Ha, right!). In case, you are interested, these are some of the titles I'm looking forward to reading

1. A Hundred Flowers by Gail Tsukiyama
2. Between Gears by Natalie Nourigat
3. The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel
4. Smuggled by Christina Shea
5. White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

I do realize that some of them are past the galley stage and on to the bookstore shelves stage. :)

Personal Library

There are quite a few books on my shelves that I keep glancing at every other minute, wondering when to get to them. I only read one book this year that was already on my shelf - all other books were acquired or borrowed. I don't want to ever reach a stage where I've read 90% of the books I own - I like knowing that I will always have plenty of options to choose from on a blizzard-like evening or in an apocalyptic/zombie/non-'Fahrenheit 451' world. But for now, these are the books I hope to get to this summer:

1. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (I'm really wondering what the whole deal over this writer is...)
2. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (And this writer...)
3. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay (And this book...)

Chunksters

I haven't read a chunkster that wasn't fast-paced or a thriller in a long time. Mostly because I usually read in sporadic bursts, which are not suited to reading books like War and Peace or Ulysses. Not that either are on my bucket list. Just saying. Last year, I tried to read Shantaram during a readalong I hosted. That became an epic failure for many reasons. (I love readalongs! I just don't seem to be reading along.) I'm still reeling from that knowledge but that doesn't stop me from choosing the Big Read for this summer.

1. One of my top choices is Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, which although huge, may still fall in the fast-paced category. Maybe.
2. It's more likely though that I will read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. That ought to be challenging - last I checked the book, I saw plenty of verse in there that pretty much scared me.
3. My third option is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace that I am adding here just for jest.
4. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - the saga-esque book that's been on my wishlist for ever!
5. And the much popular A Game of Thrones by George Martin.

I was also thinking of reading a book or two from my PIE list. My personal goal is to read five books from the PIE list every year. I've already read four so far (The Yellow Wallpaper, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Fahrenheit 451, The Knife of Never Letting Go) and I'm going through the fifth one right now (Unwind), so looks like for the first time in three years I'll actually complete one of my personal goals. I've also been itching to reread some of my old favorites (To Kill a Mockingbird, A Christmas Carol, Harry Potter), but the Fall season seems to be the season for rereads. So for now, this is my summer reading list.

Making random conversation

It's been about a week since I blogged, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'm feeling inspired enough to post yet. It's one of those slow phases, you know, when neither reading nor blogging seems to rejuvenate me. Like softdrink, I figured it might just be better to make a stab at a return and then things should probably just look up. There's just been some crazy stuff going on, as always, and on top of that, work isn't slowing down either. I always knew things were going to heat up at the money-churning place this year, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

This year, I slowed down on the review copies I accepted (I haven't had an ARC turn up at my door in at least a month) and it feels really good. I guess part of the reason is because of how much more impulsive my reading has become that it feels nicer not to look at the calendar and mourn about all the books I haven't read. That said, I still have quite a few books I accepted earlier, which are yet to be read, and there are the NetGalley copies as well, which because I can't see them, seem to be absent from my memory as well. And worse, I have a tour date next week, but I haven't got the book yet (I fear it may have gone to my old address). I had been looking forward to reading this one so much that I'm hoping it will turn up somehow.

In the meantime, I have been picking up dystopian / apocalyptic / science fiction books that I had been meaning to read for months. Since I had hoped to read more of such books this second quarter, I have been looking for recommendations as well (sound one below if there's a particular one you liked). It's weird because just this morning I dreamt that I was in an apocalyptic world where people got infected by a strange something and that turned them purplish and murderous, and obviously yours truly was a heroine in the setting and trying to save the world from certain destruction. At some point I did wake up but I found the dream pretty fascinating and started to manufacture my own plot points for it. If only I didn't have to leave for work. Maybe I should write a book, capitalize on the whole dystopian craze, ya know?

Right now, I'm reading Fahrenheit 451, one of those classics that have some really thought-provoking stuff, but also some really crazy passages that are making me roll my eyes. What is it with half these scifi writers who preach too much and write terrible similes? Subtlety, folks, subtlety. Anyways, the concept of the book is making for fascinating reading, although I can't quite imagine such a world (where people just choose to stop reading? Really? Let's see what the news industry or the internet world have to say about that) but in 1953, it was definitely something you could easily imagine.

Some crazy stuff have happened while I was away though. Thu Pulitzers didn't choose a winner for Fiction and J.K. Rowling's releasing The Casual Vacancy this year (and generating too much nasty controversy, as only hype can.)

The return of the Blogger Recommends (March list)

Every month, I bookmark some of the strongest book recommendations that I come across. Most are books I hear about for the first time, others are books I've previously not been interested in, but this particular blogger has managed to convince me otherwise. Then, I choose one title from the list to read that month.

My Top Five Finds

 1.  Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is not a new-to-me title. When I first heard of it years ago, I was staying in India, where there are plenty of fast food chains, but I rarely ever went to one (there were always other better options pulling me). Fast forward many years, and I'm now staying in the US. Although I still don't haunt fast food places, and am very careful about what I order if I do end up at one (no chips or drinks for me please!), I know that I've been visiting these chains with far less abandon than before. So there - my motivation for being pulled into Marie's review of this book was because 1) her review is awesome, 2) it's time I read this one and 3) I want to scare myself away from these unhealthy places.

 2.  Having just finished a book by a Japanese author, I'm in mood for more. So when I came across JoV's review of The Devotion of Suspect X, I quickly checked for it at my library. Unfortunately, it's not there, so I'll just have to find some other way to get it. This Keigo Higashino book sounds to be quite a thriller where you already know the whodunnit. I can't say I'm pulled in my the comparison of this author to Stieg Larsson (see cover below), but I'm intrigued enough to want to try it.

 3.  The Iguana Tree by Michel Stone has an interesting story about illegal immigration. I had seen a few reviews around recently, but Kathy's review was the first I read about this book. Being quite a sensitive topic, I'm very intrigued by books on illegal immigration.

 4.  I'm not sure what I missed, but last month should probably be called John Green's month. Every blog I visited had a post on one of his books up, especially The Fault in our Stars. I know many who are still reading this one, but I may just wait for you all to forget about it, before I pick it up. Amidst that deluge, I came across Jill's review of An Abundance of Katherines, and I quite liked the premise of the book. I especially like this cover of the book.

 5.  Helen has been reading Chris Crutcher for quite awhile now and each time she raves about his books, I promise myself to read one of them. Unfortunately, I've never got to any yet. Last month she reviewed Deadline and that's another Crutcher I'm thinking of reading. I'm not much into sports, which is a predominant theme in his books, but I like the sound of the emotional and human side of his stories.

My choice

I'm actually not sure about which one I want to read, so it might be a matter of which one is most accessible to me right now. I do want to read Fast Food Nation, but I tend to take a long time reading through certain nonfiction books. I'm already very curious about John Green and Chris Crutcher, and then there's Suspect X, which is what I'm leaning towards the most, right now, but that's the least accessible one, of course! Iguana Tree's topic happens to be very intriguing. So maybe I'll sleep on this a bit or pick one based on mood.

Which one would you go for?

The Sunday Salon: Thoughts on the first quarter (and plans for the next)

Considering how busy January was, and how much of February I spent on finding a balance between work, reading and blogging, I didn't really have a good first quarter - I just managed to read a month's worth in three months. The silver lining is that I did have a much better March but I'm hoping that there will be more books in the next few months. Here are the highlights:

Best Books of the Quarter

Other Reads
The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar
The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn
Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Cross Currents by John Shors
I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
Divergent by Veronica Roth
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde

On Reading Goals
Rather than plan challenges or reading projects for a whole year, this year, I decided to do something different - I decided to plan for a quarter. This helped because my interests change so quickly that I hate to be tied to something I decided several months ago. This past quarter, my plan was to read one short story a week. I started this in the fourth week of January, and since then have managed to stick to the goal more or less. These are the short stories I read:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Loved)
Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Moment of Wrong Thinking by Lawrence Block
The Shawl by Louise Erdrich (Loved)
Bohemia by V.S. Naipaul
In the South by Salman Rushdie
A Village after Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro (Loved)
In the Bed Department by Anne Enright
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (Loved)

My Reading in Numbers
Male authors (short stories included): 9
Female authors (short stories included): 12
New-to-me authors (short stories included): 18 / 21 (really?)
Number of pages: 3648
eBooks: 5 / 12
Review copies: 8 / 12
Personal Collection: 2 /12
Library: 2 / 12

Plans for the next quarter
- I plan to keep reading more short stories in the next quarter (I'm really enjoying standalone stories), but I won't be reviewing them as frequently, unless the story moved me so much that I want to discuss it. Or I may just do a single post with mini-reviews.

- I've been craving some science fiction / speculative fiction / dystopia lately. I have several books from these categories wishlisted and rather than shelve them for eternity, I'd love to spend the next few months exploring them.

- I hope to read at least one book from my PIE list, which I've neglected so far this year.


View Traveling with my books (2012) in a larger map

Indie Lit Awards winners

On Monday, the winners of the 2011 Indie Lit Awards were announced. Finally, I can discuss the books with you! In the Fiction category, Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones took the cake while Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney was the runner-up, both books I enjoyed tremendously. Another nominee, The Night Circus, was also a huge favorite of mine.

I did have a really tough time deciding between these three. Night Circus was beautiful - the imagery was vivid, the magic was clever, the plot was thrilling. But the characters aren't part of its strengths at all. Still, when I closed the book finally, I knew it was going to be one of my favorite books, even with its faults.

Silver Sparrow was more grounded in reality. The first thought that comes to mind when I think of this book is its strong characters. They were flawed, yet very human, and not at all stereotypical. Even the plot was intriguing. Unfortunately, the ending tripped for me. It was somewhat unsatisfying.

Dance Lessons is what I would like to call the underdog of this competition. I had heard of all the other books in the shortlist before they were nominated. Dance Lessons was the lone stranger, and its synopsis, cover and title didn't interest me at all. But the book was wonderful. Most of the characters were well-etched (there were still a couple that bugged me), the plot was interesting, but here again, I found some things not making sense.

In the end, it was Silver Sparrow's literary merit that won out for me, and I was glad when it won the award in Fiction category. There were two other books in the shortlist that didn't leave me feeling enthusiastic. Cross Currents by John Shors started off well, but the pacing really disappointed me. None of the characters left an impression on me and the ending felt more filmy that realistic. The biggest disappointment, however, was The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene. It took me a long time and some dedicated scheduling to read this book - it might do better as a movie, because it had some aspects that would make it great for the screen but the book didn't appeal to me.

Now that the winners have been announced, I'm eager to read the top books in the other categories. I haven't read any of them, except for one book.

Biography/Memoir
Winner: Little Princes by Conor Grennan
Runner-Up: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

GLBTQ
Winner: Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Krieger
Runner-Up: Huntress by Malinda Lo

Mystery
Winner: A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
Runner-Up: Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski

Non-Fiction
Winner: Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
Runner-Up: Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe

Poetry
Winner: Catalina by Laurie Soriano
Runner-Up: What Looks Like an Elephant by Edward Nudelman

Speculative Fiction
Winner: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (one of my favorites from last year!)
Runner-Up: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

What the rest of February looks like

Happy Valentines Day, readers (if you celebrate it)! The darling husband surprised me this morning with clues in the house, leading to the much coveted Maus and Metamaus pack. I had been pining for these books for a while now, but had given up on them because of the scary price tags, so I'm all the more excited to have my own copies of the books! I had already read Maus last year, but never reviewed it because it was so much bigger than I could do it justice. Now, I'm hoping to reread it and check out Metamaus - and hopefully talk about them in my blog.

Yesterday, halfway through my day, at a time when bookish thoughts tend to invade my work-hammered brain, I realized that we have just two more weeks to go before the end of February (whoever decided that February could do with just 28/29 days? It's messing with my reading schedules). The very next minute, I remembered that I had four more books to read this month, in addition to the one that's in progress (The Face Thief). It will be interesting to see how I end this month.

These are the four books that I have to read:

The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn: I started reading this one last night. A few months back, I read Jahn's Good Neighbors, which was one of my favorite reads from last year. That's about the only reason why I accepted Dispatcher for review (due for Wednesday next week). Unfortunately, I decided to go for the ebook, which is pretty badly constructed. (This is turning out to be the umpteenth consecutive ebook I'm having trouble with - at this rate, this medium is going to take forever to get my vote.) The story is intriguing though, but I could have done with a little less cursing.

Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney: This is the book that's intriguing me the most. As an ILA shortlisted title, I have heard a lot of good buzz around this book, but I've never really read a review. Thanks to that, I don't know much about this book - that makes me more eager to check it out!

Cross Currents by John Shors: Another of the ILA candidates, I had read a couple of chapters of this book last year, and I did enjoy the book then. Unfortunately, I never got back to it, so I'm definitely looking forward to continuing this one, set against the backdrop of the 2004 tsunami.

First you Try Everything by Jane McCafferty: Saving the most anticipated for the last, this book is also for review. First you Try Everything tells the story of a woman determined to do anything and go to any lengths to save her marriage. I seem to get misplaced tones of humor from the book cover, but I know it's more deep and psychological.


Which one would be your first choice?

The Sunday Salon: Some literary tidbits

It has been a pleasantly bookish week for me, amidst all the work and the daily chores - the kind of week that's usually very rare. Of course, that also means I'm going through three very different books right now, but barring one, the other two are wonderful. I think I've also now been blogging for four days in a row, which I believe I have never done since November 2010, so it's refreshing to be back to an old familiar routine.

All "winter", I had been whining about how warm it has been. So right after the groundhog decided that we'll have six more weeks of winter, it has chilled out considerably. I am loving it! Sure, I now have to spend five minutes every morning, cursing and removing the ice from my car, but it's relieving to see something of a normal winter day and not be reminded of the changing climate every day. Are we someday going to see the winter-summer cycles swap between the Northern and Southern hemisphere? (Trying to imagine wearing gloves and mufflers in June - I know this happens in the Southern hemisphere, but it's still a very fascinating thing for me, who has never gone below the equator.

Did you read the Judgy McJudgerson post over at Picky Girl's blog? I recommend that you do - she has put up a great post about judging someone's taste in books. Personally, I have never felt judged. I read what I want, whether someone likes it or not. I have read romance books, and been judged by people close to me, I have read devoured the terrible Twilight books, and been questioned about it. Heck, I have even raved about the Harry Potter books since I first read them ages ago, and been called a crazy dimwit! Yawn! Whenever my Hemmingway and dead-old-guys'-literature reading cousin pokes fun at the reading tastes of the lesser mortals, I just tell him that at least they aren't wasting away as a couch potato or being too busy to even turn a page.

I've found a new site to go gaga over. Ever since I started reading more short stories this year, I've begun to enjoy them. I don't know when I'll pick up a collection to read and actually hope to enjoy the book, but that prospect is looking to be nearer, which is a good thing. During my browsing though, here's a website I came across - Byliner. This site lists the short stories and essays written by many authors and writers (there are quite a few familiar names here), along with links to the stories. To me that's a big bonus because now I can look for stories by authors I've always wanted to read but am not sure if I will enjoy them. I'm also hoping these stories will introduce me to new collections and make me want to read more stories by the author.

Looks like there will be lesser choices in Overdrive now that even Penguin has decided to cut its ties. I'm sort of fuming about this, because after all the ways these ebook promoters try to say that reading an ebook is just like reading a print book (which I disagree with), they then come up with excuses to bow out of avenues that try to use ebooks just like print books. And one of the arguments I read is about "friction" - how a patron has to make two trips to the library per book - one to borrow it and the other to lend it; and the easy downloading of an ebook cuts down on profits. The reasons people come up with! As if any book lover whines about those drives to the library (unless of course, there isn't one in the neighborhood)! On a related note, I hope this serves as an opportunity for small-press publishers to share more of their works with readers!

How's the Sunday going?

This stuff is so disturbing!

I've been reading a book over the past couple of days, which has a theme that I had pretty much sworn never to read about. Religion. Or to be more specific - blind religious faith involving glorification of one's religion, belief that people of other faiths are unbelievers and therefore less deserving of being alive, insensitive discussions of the 'my god' vs 'your god' and 'my faith' vs 'your faith' kind, and spreading ill-propaganda about other kinds of people. I didn't really know what the book was about before starting it, but in a strange way, I'm glad that I didn't, because I might not have dared read it otherwise.

This is pretty much how my reading experience went:
Session 1: Uff, all this religion mumbo-jumbo is alienating me!
Session 2: What a sick weirdo! Why am I even reading about it? Where are the parents when they are most needed?
Session 3: Really? You leave your child's religious education to someone else? Even if that someone is your best friend?
Session 4: Okay, I'm giving up.
Session 5: But this stuff happens. Haven't I read about worse things?
Session 6: Okay, let me rein in my prejudices and just try to understand this character.

Trust me, it was a battle. I didn't really realize that I had a topic that would make me squirm in my chair. And this is after having read about maniacal psychopaths, incestuous relationships, horrendous killings, etc. It helped that the book is just a confession by a character whose knowledge about religion was based on what he was taught by his aunt and what he heard from people having a societal leadership status. It also helped that this book isn't a propaganda book or a glorification of one way or the other. And the more I read it, the more I understood how someone came to possess that blind or twisted faith. I have to credit the author for setting the stage well.

But enough about that. All this introspecting basically made me wonder about the challenges or taboos in reading. My reading policy is usually that the more challenging the subject of a book to the reader, the better the reading experience. Comfort reads are great too and I need them as well. But I learn more from characters I hate, characters who do things I can never forgive, characters whose real-life counterparts literally agonize me. When I read books about such characters, I never find myself eventually agreeing or sympathizing with them, but I find that once I turn the last page, my whole understanding of the character (and people like them) has shifted a great deal. The picture no longer looks black or white to me, but has immense shades of gray.

But does it always work like that? For instance, does reading about a disturbed person, say, psychopath, proselytizers, propagandizers (yeah, I made up that word) or any kind of person you usually cannot relate to, make you any more comfortable with the idea of such a person? Do you become more tolerant of the person only in the book-world and not in real-life? Or maybe also from your living room couch but not actually in the presence of such a person? I don't really think that my personal boundaries have moved much in any direction, nor do I like these characters any more than I did before. I just know that I won't be so quick to judge or dismiss them because I feel I have seen a thread of their complex thoughts.

Do you have a topic that you find yourself very reluctant to read about? Have you tried to change that, and if yes, did it work?

The Sunday Salon: A potpourri of random thoughts

I woke up today morning to the thought that I'm finally going to post my first Sunday Salon of the year. Then I remembered that it's Jan 22nd today. Where did this month go? After the very hectic weeks that I had over the last month, I have the sensation of time having stopped for everyone while things settle down for me. It's strange realizing that not only have I gone many days without reading much, rather the first month of 2012 is almost over as well. Weird!

Anyways, since I have a month's worth of Sunday Salon-ish thoughts, I'm going to simply write down whatever comes to my mind.

• I completed my two years of blogging a month ago! I've missed my blogiversary twice already now - since it always comes during the winter vacation, I seem to always be missing it.
• My google reader is beginning to look tamed. One of the last things I did before I disappeared on my vacation was to really organize my reader according to how it makes sense to me. I'm glad I did that because catching up on blogs was far easier and much less overwhelming now than it usually used to be even after a week off. After two years of blogging, it feels great to have a balance on this front.
• During my month lurking around blogs (yes, I admit to still having been reading blogs when I was busy, but no, I didn't have the time or feel the compulsion to leave comments simply because it was busy), something I noticed was how many of you were trying to kick in the new year with that one special read. If I remember correctly, it was Sheila at Book Journey who introduced the idea, and I so wanted to do the same, preferably start with a reread of the Harry Potter series, but that didn't happen. Instead, I started 2012 with a book about a mentally ill woman, who was seeing things in wallpaper patterns, and whose secluded life in an upstairs room in a mansion was no fun, and whose actions in the climax left me feeling very disturbed. I wonder what my book choice tells about me?
• My husband and I are still in India - my visa ran into some administrative roadblock that typically takes its own sweet time to get resolved. Although, we're relishing the extra unplanned time at home that this has brought me, being away from life as I know it for this long is no fun either. Worse, all my books are in the US - horrors! I just hope all my mail (especially any books) are being kept safely at the leasing office or the post office.
• I just started reading Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow today. I had been yearning to read this one since it was released last year, and was glad to see it on the Indie Lit Awards shortlist. My physical copy is in the US, so I had to borrow an ebook from my library to get started on the awards reading.
• Kim @ Sophisticated Darkness  recently shared an essay she read at The Bygone Bureau, called In the Land of the Non-Reader, which I liked. I particularly enjoyed this quote in the book, because it spoke for me.

...when I was a reader, it often troubled me when friends claimed that they had no time to read. Was it possible that their lives were so full of wonders that they could not spend five minutes here or there to read? How was it that my life, in comparison, seemed to offer so many chunks of reading time throughout the day? A train ride, a late-night break, and an office wait. Through marriage, babies, graduate schools, and new jobs, I always found time to read for pleasure.

• Anyone planning to read the books listed in the 2012 Tournament of Books? There are a number of them there that I want to read and Ann Patchett's State of Wonder is the only one I've read. I'm tempted to read some others before the tournament, but I don't really need another reading project or plan. Still, last year, I would never have entertained the idea of doing such a reading, since by now, I would already have lists of books that needed to be read. I'm really relishing my affair with serendipity.

Back with some updates

Whew! A whirlwind two weeks later, I'm finally somewhat less busy. I'm still in India, but slowly getting back to some form of a routine. After two weeks off the grid, I find myself even reluctant to get back online, because of everything that's pending and needs attention.

The wedding went great! It was very tiring by the end of the day, but still fun. I still haven't uploaded the photos yet, but I have one photo available on PhotoBucket (click the link).

A few things that happened during my absence from the blog.

- I had guest-posted over at Alyce's blog, At Home with Books, on the Best and Worst of Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi's Persepolis was my introduction to the graphic novel medium, and it's still one of my favorite graphic books.

- The shortlist for the Indie Lit Awards is up! Since I'm judging in the Fiction category, I can't wait to read the titles! These are the books shortlisted for the Fiction category:

Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Cross Currents by John Shors
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene

- I had already posted my favorite reads of 2011 and plans for 2012 before I took my blogging break.

- I haven't read anything so far this year, save for a short story - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The short story medium is still a challenging one for me, and I hope to change that this year. I just started reading Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake today, and so far I'm enjoying it.

I still have a few reviews from last year pending, so I'll post them over the next few weeks as I get my posts written. I don't plan to be OCD about reviewing all of them, because I want to get started on my 2012 reading. What have I missed over the last two weeks?

A Year in Reading (Challenges and Reading Plans)

Happy New Year, all! It feels really weird saying 'last year' to mean the last 12 months rather than 2009. Time sure does fly like crazy! One of the best parts of any new year is starting on a fresh slate and making plans for the next 12 months. I tend to make a lot of far-fetched and ambitious plans, that all fizzle out within a month. This year, I'm going to try not making any plans, except to listen to serendipity more often.

Challenges

At the beginning of this year, I signed up for a few challenges, but eventually got rid of all but one. The Graphic Novels Challenge is possibly the only challenge I ever finished in my two years of blogging. I don't plan to do the challenge again in 2012, because I've been automatically reading more graphic books lately and know that I will be reading a lot more in future. I had signed up to read 10 graphic books this year, and eventually read 20. I have my full list of graphic books I read here, in case you are interested in checking it out.

So far, I've signed up for two challenges in 2012. At the moment, I plan to stay with just the two - I've realized that I genuinely suck at challenges. For some reason, once a book makes a to-read list, it loses all its pull and motivation, making me not want to read it anymore. Serendipity is still my favorite source for books, and I've found some truly wonderful books that way last year.

The first challenge I joined is The League of Extraordinary Gentle- Men of la - Book Challenge, which Zohar @ Man of la Book is hosting. I've already read a couple of the books, so all I need now is an incentive to read a book from a list. The other challenge is the Middle East Reading Challenge, hosted by Helen of Helen's Book Blog for the second time. I only read one book towards this challenge the first time round, but this time, I'm hoping to do better.

Reading Plans

At the beginning of last year, I started keeping a PIE list, in which I mention all the titles that I keep hoping to read someday, but the someday never really comes. I had hoped to read at least 5 books from the list, but I only managed 4. I did start the fifth one a few days before the end of 2011, but have not finished it yet. This year, I'm again hoping to read 5 from the list. Here's the four I read:

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

This year, I've decided not to plan for the whole year. I know perfectly well how seasonal my interests are, and I hate making plans and not feeling up to seeing them through. I'd rather make quarterly plans - that way I can easily make and break lists and choose something different to focus on every few months. I'm still not sure yet what I want to do for the first quarter, since right now I'm reading sporadically based on which book is nearest to me. It will be a while before I get back to routine, so I'll wait until then before I decide what I want to do this year. Still, chances are it'll be one of these - read some of the much-awaited 2012 ARCs waiting in my shelves back in Virginia, read a few of the 2011 releases that I didn't get to read last year, or get a head-start on Helen's Middle East Challenge! We'll see which one will pull me more when I get back.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to being less planned and more impulsive about choosing the books I read. I've found that most of the books I loved have been what I picked without planning to. I do want some structure and will be planning my reads a bit (it would be hard to get a book from the library without some advance list-making), but I don't want to stress out looking at a list.

I've been happy with the ARCs I accepted last year. I made a decision a year ago to be more picky, and so far, it's been easy deciding what books I was willing to accept. Moreover, if I didn't get to a book, it didn't worry me like it did earlier.

So that's pretty much my plan, or rather a lack of it, for this year. Let's see how it goes!

A Year in Reading (Favorite reads of 2011)

Like any other year, 2011 was a mixed bag of sorts for me. I read about 85 books this year (15 short of my original target) - but many were books that I enjoyed at so many levels that I'm not too fussed by the number. There were a few I could have done without, but overall, it's been a good year in reading.

Of the 85 books I read, 36 were 2011 releases. I'm quite impressed with that because I imagined I read far less 2011 books. Depending on which side of the bed I wake up from each day, I either like reading more current books or not. It's a fluctuating thing - sometimes I wish I read more classics, but the very next day, I'm all into the new releases.

Still, 36 isn't a huge number, so I'm going to list the books that made an impression on me, without looking at their publication dates. I read a total of 62 fiction titles, so I'm listing 10 titles that I would gladly recommend to you.

Favorite fiction reads

1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
2. Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn
3. Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb by George Rabasa
4. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
5. Far to go by Alison Pick
6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
7. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
8. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
9. The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton
10. Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile

Favorite nonfiction reads

1. A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
2. Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford
3. The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik
4. The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke
5. The Freedom Writers' Diary by Erin Gruwell

The first four titles above were all ARCs. I was intrigued that most of the nonfiction titles I read are those offered as review copies. Lately though, I've been looking out for more nonfiction titles, so I hope the stats change next year.

Favorite graphic books

1. Maus 1 & 2 by Art Speigelman
2. Anne Frank by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
3. Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen
4. Vietnamerica by GB Tran
5. Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme

I read about 20 graphic books this year and loved most of them. I hope to continue reading more of them next year.

Some of the books I loved when I first read them no longer seem to hold me in the same awe now, so I did change a few ratings today, but on the whole, I remember most of the books to be just as good as I first wrote about them. Have you read any of these?

My favorite 2011 books .... that I haven't read yet!

Between now (seriously, people, it's actually too early now) and the middle of February (sometimes, even that late), we'll be seeing a ton of Best-Of lists jumping out at us from every corner of the book industry. In fact, didn't Amazon decide to have an early year-end party a month ago when it released its Best Books of 2011 list? Now that's something I can understand if this were 2012, because the world might be ending soon and everyone wants to get the word out already. So, while being forced to reckon with deciding the books that made the most impact on me this year, I keep getting distracted by the books that I didn't get to.

The one book I wish I had stood in lines for on its release date and hunkered down in my bedroom for hours with is Murakami's 1Q84. This book has been receiving a lot of buzz since months earlier, and while that had made me very curious, I didn't exactly share that fascination then because I hadn't read any of his books. Until Kafka on the Shore, which I read couple of months back, and which I admit quite abashedly that I didn't fully understand, but the brilliance of the book and Murakami's indifference to the rules of fiction simply stood out. Since then, I've been looking forward to reading more of his books, and 1Q84 quickly climbed to the top of my must-read list. Sadly, it has stayed there since, because I can't quite churn out the time to read this monster of a book at close to 1000 pages!

One of the books that was much talked about during BEA 2011 was Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Said to be about baseball to baseball-fans and not about baseball to the non-fans, it is a book that I've heard had a lot of good stuff packaged for both camps. To a non-sports fan like me, the word 'baseball' in the blurb alone turned me off, but then when I read glowing reviews from others who also didn't much like baseball, I was intrigued. I still have my big fat ARC copy sitting in my ARC shelf, waiting for me to someday pick it up.

By now, some of you may know about my love for Craig Thompson. His previous book, Blankets, is one of the best graphic books I've ever read, and I have been waiting for his next one ever since. I actually read a few pages of Habibi when I went to B&N once, and much as I wanted to walk with the book to the cashier, grinning as if Christmas came too early, the price tag scared me away. Firstly, the artwork on this book is just so beautiful. And secondly, can I just say how much I love the font of the title on the book's cover? - how well it mixes the Arabic alphabet with the English! (The 'b' in the title are actually Arabic characters - since they have the dots below them).

Orientation by Daniel Orozco was another book that I wish I had already read by now. I'm not exactly sure why I'm drawn to this book - I guess the colorful cover has something to do with that. It has enough diversity, quirks and uniqueness that makes me feel that this is a book worth spending some time with. Orientation is a book of short stories about the hidden lives of a cast of characters who are as different as can be. And since characters are the make-or-break-deals of a book for me, and since I love books with multiple protagonists, this book held enough of a fascination for me to want to read it.

I have a big appetite for immigrant stories - probably because I identify with them best - the culture clash, the feeling that you don't belong anywhere, the frequent questioning by people on both sides about where home is. My Korean Deli wasn't so much about immigrants, but about the author's experience managing a store that his wife buys as a gift for her immigrant parents. I read a chapter of this book at my bookstore (I really should stop just reading and go ahead and buy the books too), and found it laugh-out-loud funny.

Something about the mind and the way it works engages the intellectual in me. I very nearly considered doing a part-time 'fun' major in brain science, but I'll stick to books like The Psychopath Test instead (I don't think I can go through another hormonal intensive graduate course). I usually feel that psychopathic tragedies are preventable, but they are also the hardest to stop once started, since psychopaths don't feel remorse nor are their scales of right/wrong the same as the rest of the sane world's. Although I came close to reading this book many times, I never really got to it.

And finally (finally, just so that I can end this post somewhere, not for a lack of books I wish I had read), Reamde by Neal Stephenson was the last book to make that list. My brother loves Stephenson so much, that I won't be surprised if he has a secret man crush on him. But for some reason, I had never read this guy yet. I probably wouldn't have been too eager about it, if not for falling head over heels in love with Ready Player One. Cyberpunk is becoming my new favorite. At close to a thousand pages, this is another book that will just have to wait awhile before I can get to it.

So these are some of the books that I wish I had read and possibly rave about (assuming I would enjoy them). Maybe they should be my first picks for the next year, when I can finally get some reading downtime, but until then, I'll resort to living vicariously through some of you.

So which book(s) do you wish you had read by now? 

The Sunday Salon: 'Tis the season of challenges

It's been an unusually good week of reading so far at my end, having thumbed through two books, being three-quarters through a third and just starting off with a fourth. And I still have been busy with stuff, so it's nice to know that I have been reading a lot too. Now that it's close to the end of the year, we all know what that means. The challenge-and-list-making season! Although, mind you, I had perfectly good intentions this time. Yeah, you did notice the "had"?

Couple of mornings ago, I had typed up a post, scheduled for one of those days in December when no one's around reading blogs, and hence one can make any lofty promise and rest assured that no one's going to remind us about those posts. In that post I was making a promise not to join too many challenges for 2012, barring the one Helen has up on her blog (What? You haven't checked it out yet? You better go look it up. I'll be here, waiting till you get back), and the many reading projects I do on my own (which don't have any better success rate than the challenges I sign up for, but then at least I can quietly retire them). And what do you know, the very same day someone comes up with a challenge that I really cannot refuse.

Zohar @ Man of la book is hosting a perpetual (thank goodness for that) challenge to read all the books whose protagonists make up the main cast in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Many of those titles are on my PIE list too, and I had been meaning to read Alan Moore's comic book for many bookish eras, so when you combine an impressive collection of classics with a comic book based on famous literary characters, underline these books with science fiction and add a touch of perpetuality to the mix, you get a reader who cannot say No.

So these are the books that make up the challenge:

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker: I listened to this one two years back, expecting to not like it but instead loving it. I believe it's time for a reread to catch all those details I missed while I was gasping or OMGing or dreaming as I listened.
2. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: I have only read Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne which is still one of my favorite classics ever, but I never had the chance time to read Twenty Thousand Leagues.
3. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: This is probably the first classic I ever read, when I was 12 or 13. I still remember a good chunk of this book, because I actually read it twice or thrice back-to-back. To think about all the time for reading I had then!
4. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: I read this shortly after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and remember not being too impressed by it. We'll see if a reread changes my opinion.
5. The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells
6. Any Fu Manchu novel
7. Any Sherlock Holmes novel: All the Sherlock Holmes books I've read have been huge disappointments for me, because that guy solves mysteries before I've even started piecing the clues together, and sometimes apparently from nothing.
8. Any Allan Quatermain novel
9. Any James Bond novel
10. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel

So that's some fabulous list of books to read, and am pretty much tempted to start right away, which I may. My main pull to this challenge is the science fiction kick that I have been on ever since I read the cyberpunk novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One. Since then, I've been meaning to read more such works and been on the lookout for books of that genre. Since I'm still more of a literary fiction reader, and a capricious reader of most other genres, I decided to move all my science fiction ramblings to my Tumblr account - SCIdora. If you're on Tumblr too, feel free to add me or leave your tumblelog in the comments below.

The Sunday Salon: Shelving a read book (and fretting about it)

I am one of those nuts who have to categorize a book. I don't need to find 10 possible categories for a book, just one is enough. One is necessary. So, every time I finish a book, one of the first things I do is figure out which shelf it goes to. To me, this is about as exciting as even reading a book, because deciding a shelf is the ultimate way to find which concept of a book made the most impact on me. Was it its fantasy elements or the women power? Or was it its young adult focus or its literary style of writing? Most often, it's an easy task, almost intuitive and requires no pondering for longer than 2 seconds. But sometimes, a book comes along that can easily fit into 3 or 4 categories and none of those individually describe the book well.

I had one of those moments last week. I had just finished A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres, which is about the Jonestown murder 33 years ago. Many of you are probably familiar with the event behind the book - how 900+ adults and children committed suicide (some willingly, some unwillingly or without a say) because their pastor was paranoid and obsessed with the idea of taking a thousand people with him when he died. There's more to it and I'll talk about that when I review it this week. At the core, there are three main elements:

- 1. religion, the people who joined Jones' temple were looking for a church that accepted them, irrespective of their color, past history and financial status. They wanted to be accepted and Jones represented that sense of utopia that they were looking for. There are shades of blind faith but there are also shades of valid reasoning beneath all the murky implausible beliefs.

- 2. communism, Jones was a communist and he used his beliefs to get a large wing of people under him. In this case, I found the events of Jonestown mirror George Orwell's Animal Farm. And that's funny, because Animal Farm was also based on communism but it was written almost 30 years before the Jonestown events were set in motion.

- 3. crime, ultimately the book is about the largest mass murder in the US before 9/11 took away that credit. How is it possible to make 900+ people consume poison?

I eventually shelved the book under crime, because I don't like to have a religion shelf, and also because communism as a shelf doesn't make sense to me. I typically define my shelves based on categories that I read. So political ideas maybe, communism, no way. And almost all times, I've had a single dominant theme to describe the book by, but this one title defied me on all counts. Sure, it's about a major crime, but the whole events weren't a case of meticulous planning typically involved in crimes of this magnitude. There was some planning, but the book didn't focus so much on that as on the people who constituted Jonestown. Which brings me to the people themselves - they were clearly looking for a faith to define themselves by, but this book isn't about different kinds of faith or what faith means to people. That's all covered, but they aren't the standout elements of the book. The same goes for communism as well. It made some great appearances through the book, but the book wasn't about the practice of communism at all.

Ultimately, this was a book more about the people than anything they stood for. It was about how they started out as vivid enthusiasts of Jones' methods, how they willingly left their homes and moved with their church and how they took that eventual macabre step of branding their names in history. Should I create a people shelf for these kind of books? But that covers all the books ever written, except those about animals. *Hair pulling moments ensue*

When I can't categorize a book, sometimes I take the easy route and look at how goodreads users categorized the book. Sometimes that helps me, but other times, there are shelves I never use at all, like contemporary or chicklit. I shelve a book based on what it meant to me and not on how it would be shelved in a library or a bookstore. I approach it the same way I approach writing a review - I look for my experience in reading the book, instead of its merit in professional or academic circuits. I also keep my shelves at a minimal number but that doesn't help when you have so many possible baskets to drop a book in. Eventually, when I've spent enough time on the shelving process, I dump it where it makes most sense, even if it makes only 30% sense.