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