Reading on a Rainy Day

I don't typically do any special reading over the summer. I love the idea of it but there is nothing that makes summer an extra special reading season for me. Nor is it a worse reading season, for that matter. So I wasn't going to make any special reading lists when it's hard enough to follow a list. Still, there's been one project I've been hoping to undertake for a while and whether it's the summer or not, I'd like to jump right into it. I have a giant list of authors I wish I had already read by now. But their immense popularity among readers means that their name is now associated with a feeling of intimidation - what if I don't 'get' this author? Or what if I did, but didn't like the author's writing at all? Since I do really want to like this author's writing so much, I end up not reading any of the authors' books preferring instead to continue admiring this author without worrying about ruining that sentiment. But I...

So, BBAW happened this week. Although it was a 5-day event, I only posted for two of the days. I had intended to post on Friday as well, but well, it was just fitting that I didn't have time to post about blogger burnout. Still, this week was fun. I discovered a ton of new bloggers and my Feedly is going to curse me for it. It's not like I am great about commenting at the ones I follow but I'll worry about that later. But, I also discovered a ton of new books that I wanted to read - something I wasn't expecting. Not often have books been such a huge part of a blogger event, even though we all blog about books and these events are a result of that love affair with reading. I have been keeping my TBR under control lately because you know, short life, slow reader, life happening, and baby, but I still managed to pile on more books to it. The below are just some of them. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell This is one of those books that many of you raved about. I a...

This is where I am going to ignore the fact that it's been a month since we got back from India. Because I am still working on my posts about that trip. You know how that goes when you don't have time to even get the camera out and gather the photos. Butttttt, I've been working on this post for a while, if not by actually writing it, then by composing it mentally. One of my plans for the trip even before leaving was to visit a certain bookstore when we were in the husband's town and grab books written by Indian authors. I had been to that store (DC books) four years ago and had a vague memory of seeing many shelves of such books. However, when we went this time, we didn't see as many books by Indian authors as I had imagined there would be. That was a bummer but we still got some good books there. A week later, we were in Chennai when we decided to go to another bookstore (Starmark) at a mall. This wasn't in the plans so I am glad this happened because t...

Nonfiction has been something that I didn't think readable for a long time. By the time I started blogging, I may have read enough nonfiction to  count on just one hand. It was mostly due to a combination of not wanting to deal with reality and not wanting to be bored with nonfiction. Over the years since, I have added a lot more nonfiction to my read list - first due to blogger reviews, then through some review requests, and finally thanks to audiobooks. I guess I can state definitively that if it were not for blogging, I would not have attempted to explore the nonfiction genre. Isn't it interesting how your reading tastes can change just by talking or writing more about books and reading or listening to fellow readers' opinions on books? For the most part, I stick to narrative nonfiction and graphic memoirs. Occasionally, a book of essays will find its way into my hands, but not too often. Narrative nonfiction still remains one of my favorite categories of books. I...

One thing I was worried about while pregnant was how much my reading was going to suffer after baby arrived. It may seem like the least significant thing to worry about (and some have told me so); and post-baby, I did (and do) have bigger things to worry about, such as SIDS, weight gain, head shape (my mom has made me paranoid about this one), nanny or daycare?, why is she spitting up?, how will I leave her and go to work?, and countless others that any mom could probably relate to. To even mention books or reading when there is a new baby in town seems somewhat selfish. Heck, there is even an expectation that you shouldn't be entertaining yourself (reading, phone browsing, watching TV) while caring for a newborn. But I wanted to continue reading as well as I could after having a kid. The best way to pass on a love for reading to your kid is by you reading. Read with her, but also read for yourself when you can. I found that there was not much I could do while...

I've been up since 6 am (not that early for me nowadays) and reading Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In . It's been a while since I've read anything in bed in the morning - a time when the world around you is still asleep and only the dog is also awake (but then she's awake whenever any human is awake so that she can demand that they pet her). I started off the morning with reading a little about superheroes and their origins - part of an online course I signed up for on edX . I love watching superhero movies, I wish I were introduced to them earlier. Every time, I watch a superhero movie, I find myself wishing that I understood the canon better - how it originated, how the characters are related to each other, what their back-stories are, how old these stories are, whether they are based on or inspired by real people, and so on. After each of these movies, I ride a high where I'm obsessed with these stories and wonder how amazing it would be if they were real, mi...

Hello again from Toronto! We have been here for about a week now and will leave the city in a couple of days to head to Quebec City, a trip I am schoolgirl-excitedly looking forward to. We will be in Canada another week or so before heading back home to routine, work, and hopefully warm weather. Picture credit I spent a good chunk of this week in bookstores. Shopping for books was not even something I planned for this trip but after discovering that Toronto is home to so many amazing bookstores, I had to squeeze them into my trip plans. I've been to a total of 7 bookstores in the city, one on Sunday, one on Tuesday, two on Thursday, and three yesterday. Honestly, I'm shocked. I haven't done bookshop hopping ever, much less spend so much time over a few days in bookstores. To me, Toronto downtown is certainly a much easier place to drive in than most other big city downtowns I've been to, which isn't many. I guess it helped having one of those tourist maps...

I've had a great reading week. I finished Calling Dr. Laura early in the week and Anatomy of a Disappearance mid-week. I'm also almost done with Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things , which is turning out to be one of the best research-oriented nonfiction books I've read lately. Yesterday, I figured I could start another book, Family by J. California Cooper, and before I knew it, I was done with that book as well. From my excitement, you can probably guess that this doesn't happen often. I think this past week being a snow week helped - we had to skip the gym (not cool), our dinners have been mostly soup (yum), there was nothing of importance trying to get my attention (yay), and so books got read. And they have all been good books. Family was beautiful to read, though not as striking as several other books I've read on slavery by African American authors. Anatomy of a Disappearance was mostly poetic to read, but the plot wasn't too imp...

Happy New Year, everyone!! I say this every year, and maybe every month and almost every season, but I am always frightened by how fast time goes. Gone are the days when I measured time by when my next birthday would come, and now it only gives me pleasure when there is still a lot of time left before the next one. Nevertheless, January 1st is always a beautiful day - it's the day of new promises, new hopes, new dreams and wishes, and at least in theory, the end of all the bad habits we have. Of course, January 2nd puts an end to most of that. 2014 has been a tricky year for me and also at this blog. That is the year I finally understood why many leave blogging after a few or several years of continued posting. The face of blogging has changed so much since I first started posting about books, but more importantly, what I wanted to talk about has also changed. There were days when I didn't have any interest to blog, and then days when I just wanted to holler out loud. ...

I started reading A Game of Thrones a couple of days ago. This is after watching and loving four seasons of this crazy TV show , and attempting to listen to this audiobook in the car, months ago. I gave up on the audiobook after four hours of painful realization that the book was very slow, compared to the TV show. 4 hours of audiobook just about covered one episode in the show. When you like a series a lot, whether it is a TV show or a book series, you will remember many details from that series for a long time. This makes it impossibly hard to read or reread it later. That feeling is especially strong with A Game of Thrones because as I read the book this week, I started to wonder whether the pictures in my head were from the TV show or from listening to the audiobook six months back. But once I am past the point where I stopped the audiobook, it should be smoother riding. Honestly, I am not sure if I want to be on top of the books before the next season starts next year...

One of the traditions I have never had is to read something spooky or scary for Halloween. The idea has always enamored me, and why not? Reading ghostly books during Halloween, Christmas books in December, and romance books around the Valentine's day season simply enhances the holiday experience. Sure, there's nothing spooky about Halloween in the real world, but if the make-believe worlds in books and movies and TV shows are to be believed, then ghouls and ghosts are just waiting for a reason to rise from the dead and send the still-alive people running for their lives. ( Original photo here ) It's not that I haven't ever wanted to read horror fiction. It's just that I have had very little success with this genre. When I was a kid, my family used to watch all kinds of horror movies and TV shows, and I would watch with them. They would cover my eyes every time something nasty (or sexy) would happen on screen. Of course, that only made the genre scarier than ...

Yesterday at work, I was trying to multi-task. Or rather, not really multi-task, but use the time between writing my code and waiting for it to run, to browse through my phone. I usually use these small intervals at work to check Facebook. My weakness is my local pet shelter because they post such cute cuddly photos of the pets they have, but that is neither here nor there. I had once tried to read a book during such a break, but I struggled with putting the book down and read too hurriedly. However, I had recently uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone, seeing as how it is such a useless distraction. So then, I started browsing through my feeds in Feedly, which is usually my second stop after Facebook, and that was when I saw this article at Salon by Michael Harris in which he journaled his struggle with reading War and Peace . That's not a journey I can relate to since I have never felt the urge to read this humongous title, but I have tried to read big books in the past ...

Good morning, Saloners! It's a beautiful morning here, with the sun nowhere in sight. I'm currently perched on my deck, writing this post, and thinking that rain would be a good idea today. We've been getting a lot of it lately, and the last 2-3 days have been sunny and almost perfect for heading out and doing some outdoors thing, if only it didn't feel as if the sun was right on your shoulders. It is kind of scary how wet and not warm enough the last two summers have been. During the year I moved to Lynchburg, it was very insanely hot and humid here. It felt even worse than it actually was because I had spent the previous two summers in Blacksburg, which is up in the mountains and had a mostly cool and wet climate through the summer. As you probably know, cool and wet is the way I like my days to be. (There's a reason my blog has 'Rainy' in its title.) But I can't deny that it feels as if we had some unseasonable weather this whole season. I've ...