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...

This has been quite an interesting week for the US. First, the Confederate flags have started coming down and then the pride flags went up. I had taken the day off from work on Friday when the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage . Honestly, I didn't see that one coming. I did believe that some day in the future, same-sex marriage was not going to be a big deal at all, like it is now. But to me, that future appeared to be way out there. After all, (loosely condensing several decades of US history) slavery was abolished in 1865, there was still racial segregation and discrimination in the 1960s when the Civil Rights movement gained traction, and we are still seeing racially motivated attacks today. The Stonewall riots happened in 1969 and same-sex marriage got legalized only this week. Women won the right to vote in 1920, and even today, they are often passed up for promotions or raises in favor of men, they don't get decent maternity leave, and god forbid if a woman...

Yesterday morning, I finished reading Blindness by José Saramago and since then, I've been wondering what it would be like if an apocalyptic event truly happened. Maybe it's a plague as it is in Blindness , or an uprising that collapses the capital ( The Hunger Games ), or an invasion by extra-terrestrial beings ( Mars Attacks! ), or a pending asteroid strike ( The Last Policeman ), or maybe it's the weather finally punishing us for our don't-care attitude around it, or a Third World War begins and never ends. Whichever it is, which of these dystopian worlds we are too familiar with, will get it right? Picture credit Some of these dystopian books, like The Hunger Games , are pure fun. Others are horrific to read; fun isn't a word used in the same line as the book. That's what reading Blindness was like. Some -  The Walking Dead  - toe the thin line between the two. There is enough seriousness in this show that we are horrified by a lot of what we s...

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 ...

Remember my review from six months ago about Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild ? No? Don't worry, I didn't expect you to. Although if you did, I'm super flattered. Without going into a re-review, Into the Wild is about a young man named Chris McCandless who was so enamored by living in the wild, without any of the modern conveniences that we all take for granted, that he left his family after school and went to live on his own. Within a span of a year and a half, he had been places but Alaska was always the territory he wanted to conquer. He finally got there, made his own living by hiking, hunting, reading and simply, living in the wild. He knew his botany well, but unfortunately, he ate something that disagreed horribly with him, eventually causing him to die of starvation. In my review, I whined quite a bit about how McCandless had scant regard for his own family. To me, he was one of those who gave a lot of interest in other people, but wouldn't give any respec...

This post was totally unplanned. But I was ranting so much today and could hardly focus that I wanted to pen it down. Once I did that, I wanted to put it up and see what you guys think. If you have been following the latest goings-on in the literary world, you would have heard about this. You know we are close to the Banned Books week (Sep 25 to Oct 2) . And every year, we keep hearing of more and more titles on the list for sundry reasons like sexual content, profanity, violence, and many others. The only reasoning I can strive to understand is "unsuited to age group", but even then, there are so many books I think the age group in question has to read from the banned lists. This is very subjective - why not let parents and teachers be the best guide here? As readers, we try to do the very opposite - read the books that are banned and get the word out. I mean, if you look at the list , there are so many books that you loved and probably cannot understand why they had ...

Let me put this question to you - what is your best part of reading a blog? Is it the memes or the reviews or the bookish topics? Or is it the anticipation of discovering a new book that you hadn't heard of, so that you can go add it to your wishlist? I'm sure it is a combination of all those features, but how often do we go pick up a book the moment you hear of it? Or if not the moment, then the very day itself or the next day? Of course, I'm assuming here that you had not heard of that book before. Now what if that book is out of that comfy zone you are in? Are you willing to get off the lazy couch and read something that's not your cup of tea? You got to be kidding me, right? With all the mountains of books to read - at your home, in your library hold list and in your virtual TBR (wherever it is that you catalog your reads) - each new book we add inevitably goes to the bottom of the list, but to the list it goes for sure! So, although I have an Mt. Eve...

My physical bookshelves are overflowing with books. (Whose isn't?) Each time I get a new book, I squeal with excitement, exchange or rather I would give the book loving glances, probably read a couple of pages and then go put it in my bookshelf. Aah, then the guilt steps in - when I look at every other book that went through the same treatment, only to languish there for quite some time. There's nothing much I did to fix that. I probably encouraged it. And then, I got a nook for my birthday. So you know how it is when you get a credit card for the first time? Or when you look at some exciting product online and feel your fingers itching to buy it? You never see the cash leaving your hands, so you feel bliss when swiping the card or clicking that "Submit Order" button. What matters is you have the product in hand. Having an ereader feels similar. For once, I can't "see" the books I own anymore. Unless of course, I keep looking at my library, which ...

Lately, a lot of books I've been reading feature characters who love books.I'm not sure if I'm noticing this just now, or if I'm just coming across this by plain chance, but it's quite fascinating to read books having such characters. I enjoy comparing my reading tastes with those characters. But most often, these characters mention the well-known classics to be their favorite, and if someone had to write me into a book, I doubt I will name a classic. Not because I don't like them, but I don't feel I need to express my love for them to let the other person know that I love reading. Do authors deliberately introduce such characters? Sometimes, I notice that the book-loving characteristic of that character has no bearing on the story. The plot would have worked either way. So why do you think we have authors mentioning such characters? Sometimes, it almost feels like a teaser. Let me list the five most fascinating bookish characters I've come across ...

Welcome to the third day of Armchair BEA ! This four-day event is organized to coincide with the BookExpo America in NY that ended yesterday and the Book Blogger Convention , that is being held today Those of us unlucky enough not to be in the most happening place this week are instead a part of BEA from the cozy comforts of our home. (I know it's not much, but at least one can claim that feeling of participation!). Today, I'm doing a panel post on "Writing and Building Content". Why do we blog? More specifically, why do we blog about books? Not all readers blog, nor do they review books by habit. There must be something more than a desire to talk about books that makes us sit late nights sometimes, tired after a long day but still finding the energy and the enthusiasm to write up posts. Blogging needs passion. It is easy to blog for a month and then succumb to burnout. In addition to loving books, one needs to love to blog or to write. Of course, we do...

Welcome to the third day of Armchair BEA ! This four-day event is organized to coincide with the BookExpo America in NY that ends today. Tomorrow is the Book Blogger Convention . Those of us unlucky enough not to be in the most happening place this week are instead going to be a part of BEA from the cozy comforts of our home. (I know it's not much, but at least one can claim that feeling of participation!). Today, for my third post for the Armchair BEA, I'm going to step back a bit and look at us - bloggers - and the little-known books. How do you decide which books to read or add to your always growing TBR? If you're like me, you probably heed recommendations from bloggers, members in your favorite online communities or book clubs , and friends or family members. Have you ever looked to see if most of the books you read (barring review copies) are the "hyped up" books? And I don't been that in a bad way, but more in an objective way. Let me t...

Welcome to the second day of Armchair BEA ! This four-day event is organized to coincide with the BookExpo America that is in full swing in NY. Those of us unlucky enough not to be in the most happening place this week are instead going to be a part of BEA from the cozy comforts of our home. (I know it's not much, but at least one can claim that feeling of participation!). Today, for my second post for the Armchair BEA, I'm going to analyze one of the biggest phenomena we noticed yesterday. If you are like me, you must have stayed glued to your Twitter platform yesterday, following the #BEA10 and the #ArmchairBEA tweets. I was hoping to find out what was happening at BEA, while I wrote my thesis in parallel. What I didn't count on was that I would end up focusing almost entirely on the BEA tweets, while not getting even an iota of my work done! Did you know that Amazon is on its way to be a full-fledged publisher within 6 months? You knew? Did you know...

Welcome to the Armchair BEA ! Today's the first day of this four-day event, organized to coincide with the BookExpo America that is in full swing in NY. Those of us unlucky enough not to be in the most happening place this week are instead going to be a part of BEA from the cozy comforts of our home. (I know it's not much, but at least one can claim that feeling of participation!). Today, for my first post for the Armchair BEA, I'm going to talk, sing and glorify online reader communities. How many online reading communities are you currently a member of? One? Two? Five? Countless? Don't-know? Don't-track? Rather-not-track? For a long time, there have been book clubs. I mean the real physical book clubs, where usually, a bunch of avid readers sit in cozy couches or chairs (I like the couches better) around a table, and have an intellectual discussion about the many nuances of a book's plot. Lately, we have been having online book clubs and commu...

Sarah McCarry's post about women faking niceness in the blogosphere has definitely raised a lot of eyebrows and severely thinned a lot of the reading lips. I can't say I was impressed either, and really, just for how long will we bring gender into every picture? Anyways, the point of this post isn't Sarah McCarry's questionable and disputable analysis about 'faking niceness' = women. Rather, it is about a tangential thought that slipped into my mind as I was reading her post. How do you write a negative review? When I read a book, my reactions are, well, very sharp. If I am reading a WTH scene, I will respond exactly like that. I will even have conversations with the bookish characters, questioning their actions or decisions. In fact, an alternate storyline will already be forming in my mind, where I am part of the book and talking to the characters. Be it a great plotline or a ridiculous one, my reactions can be very emphatic. If I didn't like the ...

Many times, I have had this discussion with other bloggers and book lovers. Each time I was fascinated by the choices they mention and by their descriptions of how the book(s) affected them. I, however, drew a blank, because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out a book that had so much of an impact on me that I could call it life-changing. Sure, there are lots of books that got me thinking deeply about the subject matter. Some of the recent ones are The Help , Glorious , White Oleander and The Bell Jar . But I wouldn't really call them life-changing. Sure, they inflated the deep-routed beliefs I had and made me wish things had been different. I've even been motivated to be more civic-minded than I am, but I can't say my life changed because of that, because some of those books only echoed what I had always believed, but in a very thought-provoking way. But over the past couple of weeks, when I thought about this, I realized that there is a book that although mi...