Recent Books

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

― Mark Twain

Reading was one of my favorite hobbies after cricket of course. Though after coming to IIT , I seemed to have lost that touch for reading. But in the past year, I have managed to get back to reading more and more books and this blog is about some of those books that I have read.

1. Wheel Of Time ( 13 books ): This was my first entry into the genre of "epic fantasy" novels. Especially with such a huge number of characters. My longest read till then was Harry Porter or say Jeffery Archer. They had novels, but none of them ran on a scale as this one. This has more than 30 different characters at each time running around in different parts of the world. It was both disorienting and interesting at the same time. It was a good read and got me hooked so much that it took me only about 4 months ( note a heavy semester included ) to finish all the 13 books. For people who have read a lot of novels and would like to try something different, this is certainly a good start. Plus if you start now , you just might be able to finish the books before the last one comes out :). Then you'll understand all the hype surrounding Ran , Perrin , Mat , Aes Sedai etc . I have my fingers crossed waiting for the last one to come out.

 

2. A Song of Ice and Fire ( 5 books ): Once I was done with Wheel of Time, I wasn't sure which book to start. But then, I heard from some people that this was an interesting read. Having watched the first two seasons and being interested in Politics, I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be a good read. The explicit and the slight vulgar descriptions aside, its an excellent read about how dirty and bloody politics can get and how people can do anything for power. Though it weird, power comes at a cost. And to be "in" power, you need support of your allies, who at any turn can back-stab you. Who exactly has power in this case? Irrespective of the question, it's one hell of a read. The only problem being, only 5 books of the 7 planned have been released. And considering that the fifth took almost 6 years to finish and released in 2011, I don't have any hopes of seeing the 6th book anytime soon. But if you are looking for something to read, and you can bear the gory details and vulgar details , it's one of the books to read.

Yes , Epic Fantasy has become my latest craze thanks to people around me who seem to be reading a lot of it. It gives you a lot to discuss :). 

3. Mans Search For Meaning - In contrast to the ones above, this was something that I started by recommendation from Quora. A book by Victor Frankl , a survivor of the holocaust, this book is about how concentration camps were and the effects they had on people. It's a very heavy read and it just saddens you to read the plight of the people in those camps. Before I read this book, I was an admirer of Hitler , his personality , his skills as an orator , his patriotism and the way he handled Germany after coming to power. But all it took was one book to change that. This book makes you feel about some of the things that you have or have taken for granted in life. I have stopped complaining about small things now that I have read this book and realized how much  I am lucky. One of the main lines from the books that stuck me was :

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible night-mare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

It was this line that just stuck me as heart-wrenching. It quite summed up the entire book and stuck a chord with me.

Those were some of the books that I have read in the recent past. A few books that I have started off, but havent come to a conclusion are 

1. Losing My Virginity ( Richard Branson ) - I have  finished about half of this book and believe me when I tell you, you should read it!! It is a must read for anyone who is ever going to enter into the world of business. It's both entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
2. The Diamond Cutter - Another book that has been lying around for quite a while now but never got around to reading it yet.
3. Frankenstein ( Mary Shelly ) - At the start of this semester, I decided to give a classic a try. Just to see if I could bear reading a classic and whether I had the guts to finish it. It was more a challenge than a time-pass. And that's when I realized ...

or

Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.”
―  Mark Twain

Adios 

Eventful events

I have been planning to post but haven't been able to come up with something even remotely interesting to write about. But now I have some events happening over the past week. Some of the things have been interesting while some have been crazy.

Sleeping on the Rooftop :)

 One of the things on my TODO lists in Institute, I finally managed to tick it off the list. It was one hell of an experience :P. In fact, this was the first time I felt slightly chilly in Chennai. We went up at around 3 in the morning and stayed there till Sunrise, the first Sunrise that we did watch in all the planning done over 4 years. And believe me, it was worth it. The feeling as you sat there watching the sun rise and you sitting there basking in the glory of it with nothing but nature all around, was a sight to behold. Some of the pics taken from the roof-top :

View at 4 in morning

Panoramic View during SunRise

This was the good part. Now comes the scary part which involves the Monster Monkey incident.

It's 7* in the morning, I am browsing away to glory on my computer unaware of the fact that the door has not been bolted. In walks the beast, not a care in the world, positions itself on the bed and starts searching for food in my room. And I am right in front of it , not sure whether to shout my lungs out, attack it or just drop down dead. For a whole of 2 minutes ( felt more like an hour at that time ), I just stood there as all my comments on how people should not be afraid of these monsters kept running in my head. Finally he decided that there was nothing to get from the room and left the room. I have never reacted faster in my life. And once I knew he could not come back in, I gave him a piece of my mind, though comfortably from inside the room now.

Phew !! It's not the first time that this has happened but every other time the monkey looked scared. This one gave shit that I was sitting right in front of it and it took it's time searching my room for food. Never ever leave your door open for them to come in.

In addition, there was trips to BBQ,Pizza Republic, Hot Pot China among other things but then those keep going on. I'll finish this post with a thought that came to me while I was watching the "Vision Group C-Phi in collaboration with Shaastra" demo. What's the difference between Shaastra** and Saarang***. Shaastra is where you dance with a virtual girl while Saarang is where you might have a chance of dancing with a real girl :p.

And latest news just in, our team got selected for ACM ICPC . Hard work does payoff < full sarcasm intended >. That would be a new post someday :).


* 7 am - Timing changed to make me look normal.
** Shaastra
*** Saarang
( free publicity )