Skip to main content

Reading List - February (or is it ?)

I love February. It was nearly three years ago,a round this time, I remember venturing for the MyLibrary facility of British Council. I had first come across this concept of home-delivered library books, at the interval of some movie I had been watching at PVR. My mother had been a member of the British Council in her days, and secretly, I so wanted to be a part of it too, though why, I cannot say.  So I gathered some pluck, and asked for a membership in February. And boy oh boy ! Am I pleased ! I got my first two two books from the library - Brilliant Careers - The Virago Book of 20th Century Fiction and The Bottom Line: Business Finance - Your Questions Answered.  I ended up reading neither. I don't think I even touched the second one. It took me some time to navigate my way through their wonderful stock of books and figure out where to go to with regard to my interest.

These last few months however, what with this thing and that, my dependence on British Council has bated a bit - I think that is mostly because I found a well-stocked bookshop close by, and I am too greedy to stop myself from buying books. Nevertheless, its that time of the year; I renewed my account with the BCL yesterday and right now I am rocking back and forth with the potential goodies in store for me.

Anyway, back to my reading lists. Here, I need to make a confession. I am discovering that maintaining a list not only doesn't work for me, but is also a tad too disciplined for my taste. A good friend of mine - whom I had brainwashed against the concept of making lists and targets - pointed out that I was, put bluntly, being a hypocrite. He, being a few years older to me, was very much in favour of setting a whole timetable of sorts, and I had thrown up my hands and said WHY??? Isn't reading all about fun? Isn't it a spontaneous respite from the drudgery of life? Should it be bound in pencilled columns and 24-hour formats? What is the difference then, between curling up with a book and sitting for an exam the next day?

There is no difference. My dear friend, I still stand by what I said. But I am also beginning to realise that at times, I need the push. Especially, when the book doesn't exactly grasp me by the collar, but is one of those which is mild and a bit rambling. The last time I was absolutely rivetted by a book was when I read The Caine Mutiny, and to a mildly less extent while I was in the middle of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Those were the books that kept bugging me as I slogged through my office work or threaded between the throng of people on my way back home. The rest I picked up when I was fairly done with my day, and reading them made me calm and thoughtful. 

So this month on, I shall quit making lists. If I need them, it probably means that I am not enjoying reading, and deep down I know that's not true. My Goodreads Reading Challenge will continue to adorn the side of my blog, and make me shamefaced, but that's all right. If it takes a few months to finish a single book, so be it. Nobody should rushes through ice-creams and chocolates. How are books any different ? 




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Side Reads - A Book of English Essays - Edited by W.E. Williams

Remember our school days? Remember those dreary passages we had to read and read again - between the lines and over and under them? Remember wondering how could the study of language be so dry? Well, it turns out, what we were served was high in protein, but pretty much devoid of spice and juice. Let me set the record straight. Essays are fun. Read A Book of English Essays to see if I'm right.  As the name says, it is a collection of small essays on a multitude of topics by the who's-who of English literature - Francis Bacon, Joseph Addison, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, A.A. Milne, R.L. Stevenson - honestly the list is quite scary. But once you pull your head out of the table of contents, it's a treasure mine. Most essays are short, possibly the length of a newspaper article (which is how they must have been originally published I think). What is interesting though, is the topics they are on. So there are absolutely gorgeous ones like 'Getting Up on Cold Morni...

The Long and Short of It

Call it stuffy, but there'a a charm about long-winded sentences.  People my age - and by that I mean the early-to-mid thirties - have had a disgusting time with school texts, which were expressly chosen for their remarkable abstruseness. Most of us were put off with the language, given the  endless probing into seemingly harmless pieces of text and losing marks to our seemingly erroneous interpretations (at this age, I am told that I am never wrong, I can decipher things the way I want; evidently an adult's imagination holds more value than a teenager's). Abstruse works were seldom long-winded, but vice-versa always held true, and does so - to some extent - even now. Excerpts from classics (I remember Shakespeare's pieces - abridged, they said but that didn't make a spot of difference at that age) lacked any modern adherence to placements and abounded in queer, archaic phrases jumbled in a sentence spanning three lines; we were taught conjunctions like '...

How are rugs and books related

As a child, I was pretty indifferent to rugs or carpets. Back at home, they always existed. They were scrubbed and vacuumed and dirtied and dribbled upon and I didn't quite imagine life without it. Till I moved out.  Basic amenities do not cover rugs, far less, carpets. The first few days I didn't mind, basking in my new-fangled independence, traipsing over bare floors with un-socked feet. Eventually though, the irremovable stains on the bathroom floors made it clear that, in the absence of carpetting, a near-permanent use of slippers is a must. Then came the winters. It brought the chill from all possible directions, including and especially, the floor. The soles of my feet must have been frostbitten on a regular basis and I yearned for the luxury of a nice woolly carpet to sink my feet in. As a conscientious student out making her life (not very successfully), I chose to brave the chilblains (they were not, really).  It wasn't until I was married that ...