yet another year end

Can you believe that I wrote this post a year ago? So many months, so few books, even fewer posts! Time for the window to get active i say! So here is my bit, so that 2010 doesn’t feel left out (wink!)

Just like last year, I have borrowed some books from Suki which has kind of revived my reading ritual. Completed ‘The Last Child’ by John Hart in 2 days (in snatches of course). A book on a young boy’s search for his lost twin sister, it’s written at a pace that makes you restless to know what’s coming next; its also disturbing, as every character has a predominantly dark nature (the only ones that are on the bright side are missing or dead). Every character also threatens to turn darker any time and you are always expecting something terrible to happen. While that makes the book a page turner, its also a disadvantage as no ending can live up to that kind of tension (unless may be its open to the reader to guess / think beyond the last page – like ‘Primal Fear’ for example). Anyway, worth a read though like Arth says in the previous post - once read, I will want my time back to read something else.

I also read Dork by Sidin Vadakut which reaffirms my belief that moving from a blog to a full-fledged book is no easy thing. I kept waiting for the Laugh-out-loud moments which are aplenty in his blog, but it never happened. I read it fully nevertheless and wasn’t bored at all. The style is something like Chetan Bagat meets Salinger; oh, and for once the setting, the characters and situations are what someone like me would have seen experience first-hand (MBA, campus placements, consulting, clients, etc.) – this I would say is the biggest plus for Dork. It is narrated in the form of someone’s diary and it feels just like that – unintentionally entertaining and not written keeping a reader in mind. gosh! feels awkward to review a blogger’s book (unlike established, distant or dead authors) its like reviewing your classmate or something…but i bought his book and reviewed it like any other. so there.

I still want to read Great Bong’s book except I don’t quite relate to Bollywood (nothing against movies of course, I LOVE movies – in languages I understand that is..) or Bong references (no Bengali friends) or cricket techniques (oh these females!) which I expect to find in his writing, naturally. That must make me sound anti-hindi, anti-everything not south Indian, anti-men and their games. Which I hope I am not. Just unfamiliar milieu. But his blog is the only place I like to read political / social topics and he does them so well. Not like you owe it to your existence to read such topics, but spontaneously readable. As if its only natural that one knows the role of Turkey in the middle-east political landscape… See what i mean?

All the other books read in 2010 are in some kind of distant memory and none of them un-put-down-able. I have not finished any of the books I had vowed to do justice to. Instead I have a new set of books I owe a full reading. The Kite Runner is happening at the moment. I have given up on Thomas Friedman (nothing fried the dietician says! i know - poor joke), wild swans (too much history in one book) and harry potter (i really cant handle fantasyland). Made in America, Diary of a young girl and Mein Kampf still have a chance. War and Peace and a few more classics will join the party. I am also desperately looking for some fun books seeing that FUN has become my new life theme. Inspirational will work too. Don’t they write life-changing books any more? I really do WANT to read. Suggestions are welcome. Here is to 2011, hoping it will be far better in book-reading terms and the rest of the terms too! :-)