Yesterday I was at Inorbit Mall at VimanNagar Pune. There's a sprawling, all glass Crossword store there. Inside there were a couple of folks leafing through glossy magazines and coffee table books which were on sale. And, I started thinking about how I select which books to pick up and read.

• Every year I re-read a couple of books. Among these are Pather Pachali, Aparajito and Chaander Pahar. Then there's Padma Nadir Maajhi, Putul Naacher Itikatha, Love in the time of Cholera, Of Love and Other Demons, War and Remembrance, The LoTR. There's the fun of being able to discover more than I understood in the previous year - of layered meanings and sometimes forgotten episodes.
• I've found Goodreads.com to be a good source of reading up on newer books and, their reviews. Interesting book reviews or, even books that have an interesting topic as their core can be picked up.
• Twitter and Facebook are good, but I don't harvest recommendations as much as I can.
• After the purchase of the Kindle and, the subsequent setting up of newsletter notifications, Amazon sends a steady stream of book recommendations by genre. All very nice, linked to reviews and all of that. That forms another source.
• I usually keep a list of books (on the phone) I'd like to read if I see (and, mostly read through) anything that jumps out and says "read me" at the bookstores. In this aspect, Landmark at Pune does better than Crossword. I haven't yet visited CMYK. So, perhaps something would come up from there.
• I get very few book recommendations from acquaintances and friends. The usual complaint that I hear is "I don't even know whether you'd like to read it !" So, I do a sneaky follow of what they are reading and sometimes ask pretty obvious questions - that gives me an idea about what is interesting to read.
• The other thing I've noticed is that I end up doing "breadcrumb reading". That's something I just cooked up as a term. What it means that I might be reading a book and, the reviews of the book or, citations inside would open up a new vista of related books and reading material. So, breadcrumbs ... One thing leads to another and I end up reading through a good chunk of stuff.
• Finally, the newsletters from the publishers (I subscribe to a wide variety of them), help me figure out what should be on the reading list.

I wonder how others make up their reading lists ? Do you make it up at the beginning of the year, or, is it seasonal ?

The other day Nikhil posted a link to this article titled "The Guilty Pleasures of Rereading".

The blurb quote was interesting:

Come on now, it’s never about the new meanings you grasp each time revisit a book. It’s the comfort of the same old story and the same old characters and the same old ending, every single time

Upon rereading the piece it appears that Arunava may have actually penned this half in jest. Reading a text is as much as reading the words as it is trying to read what isn't in the exact words by underneath. And thus, the act of reading is an act of exploration of cognitive abilities. The text and the sub-text reveal layers based on the expansion of reasoning ability and assimilation of experiences of the reader. An author may not specifically be attempting to address this space when the narrative is being weaved but eventually, the likes/dislikes of the audiences center around this specific point - whether they are able to accept, adapt and assimilate the psyche and the experiences in the story.

I reread a lot. And, besides the need to find 'comfort' in the same old characters and the same old story, the primary need is to understand. A typical example could be Gitanjali. 

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life

Or,

আমারে তুমি অশেষ করেছ,   এমনি লীলা তব--
ফুরায়ে ফেলে আবার ভরেছ,   জীবন নব নব ॥

In a Bengali household, the kid would be having access to Gitanjali at a fairly and, I say, ridiculously early stage in life. It takes a leap of perception and experiences to understand and appreciate the above lines.

The reason we reread isn't to experience the memories of where and when we first read that piece of text (hell ! for me it would be the unpleasant stench of adulterated diesel fumes at the 8B bus stand at Kolkata for most pieces of text !). We reread because we want to assimilate the experiences in the text with the abilities and understanding and more importantly, the acceptance we have of reality. We want to fit it into our mental map of the world as we see it at that point in time. Surprisingly for an author, and, a translator, Arunava decides to give this point a skip and wax eloquent about Flury's and all that is fluffy. Rereading books isn't exactly similar to having a pot of mishti doi. And, even in that stupendously shallow example, try feeding that doi to a 6 month old kid, a 6 year old, a 16 year old and a 60 year old at various times of the year - you'd bet that they will respond differently each time. Tactile experiences, including reading experiences are different. That an author doesn't want to write about it is astounding. That an author passes somewhat snide remarks is equally absurd. If all that a reread does is take you back to the first time, then as a reader you've failed. And the author needs other serious readers than you.

A significant characteristic of short stories or, short pieces of fiction is what is called শেষ হইয়াও হইল না শেষ or, in spite of the story reaching the end you'd not just close the book and move on with life. The refrain continues.

The kind of celebration of life's emotions which were present in The Summer Son are present in abundance in 600 Hours of Edward. The writing is deliberately and artfully contrived to be repressed and surging with emotional upheaval through the pages. You simply cannot rush through Edward Stanton's plans for himself and his 'management' of the plans. The book ends with the orbit but you remain hooked about Edward. What happens to him.

Recommended read. If you are interested in reading a review before reading it - here's one.

Everyone has at least a couple of dreams that verge on the sinful or, totter on the edge of being ridiculous. One of mine that can neatly fit into the latter category is the one where I think about an uninterrupted stretch of 20 days where I can read a few books which languish and demand that they be read again.

A rather pragmatic aspiration, strangely enough, also revolves around books - or, that of a bookshelf. For some time now I've been obsessed with the idea of a bookshelf that would be best designed to hold the books and yet be aesthetically fitting into a home. And, the more posts land up on this blog, the more I start to put a serious thought to this entire thing. Books on interior designs are filled with pictures of bookshelves and what not. Sadly, most shelves are a perfect fit in that room they were photographed in. And, I am yet to meet someone who is capable of sitting down with me to understand what I require and what it takes to come up with a design and make that shelf. Headboards make for nice niches to store books, but they aren't a permanent solution to anything.

I wonder why is it so difficult to get down to designing a shelf that lights up a room without overpowering it and yet is functionally top-notch.

Finally I got around to creating a shelf on the Goodreads profile for books that I'd like to keep and read again. There ought to be a lot of books in Bengali that should get listed. It would be interesting to see how or, what books stack up for others.

If you cannot see that shelf then please leave a comment and I'll see what can be done.

Just a note to say that the app does seem to work. Both for scanning ISBNs and creating a ToRead as well as adding books to the Read shelf on Goodreads.com

Goodreads.com announced the Reading Challenge for 2011. It is an interesting concept and, has the requisite bells and whistles around allowing widgets that display how much of the challenge is being achieved. Since every individual member gets to choose a number ie. the challenge, it is good fun. I see a couple of folks on my friends list putting up their challenges.

I toyed with the idea of putting up a number. And, enough dilly-dallying later I think this isn't something that suits my way of doing things. There are a couple of reasons and, I'll try to put them out in some unordered fashion.

• I don't read books with a net number of books per year to be read in mind. Which is why my book reading pattern,trends and habits are unusual. An example could be the fascination with one specific author and, the need to end up reading a large part of his/her works.
• The statistics don't lend themselves to any sort of challenge. In this specific month, I've ended up reading 16 books (new) with a bunch of re-reads thrown in here and there. This isn't going to be the number every month. And, even if I say that I do around 8 books for the remaining 11 months, I'd have gone through a 104 new books. Umm... I don't think that's going to happen. Last year, as per the stats, I read 41 new books. So clearly, there is a wide variation - the difference between projected and actual being more than double the actual.
• On the Goodreads bookshelf I tend to put in everything I read. So, that actually is a bit of a 'cheating'. For example, books by Sherry Turkle. Technically, that's neither fiction, nor non-fiction and, it shouldn't be sitting there on the bookshelf. But I do end up slipping these in because the shelves are then a real representation of what I've read.

So, that's more or less the list of things that's putting me off taking up a challenge. 

Couple of books I read in 2010 that I'd probably end up reading again pretty soon. In no particular order they are as:

• The Finkler Question
• Room
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
• Promise Me
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

For reasons arising out of pure laziness all the books are hyperlinked to Amazon.com :) And, my bookshelf is at the usual place.

I was planning to do a top ten books read (by category) and perhaps I'll eventually end up doing it. However, for the moment, here's my bookshelf with sorted by the Date Added (I generally add the books after I've read them, so, that should also indicated Date Read)

It started with this. And, yesterday Barkha commented about how 2010 has turned out to be a "good book year" for me. Over the years I've had folks remark about my reading habits and "how fast you read". Till the time Runa pointed out long ago that the book reading was actually a bit odd, I've never considered that I was a "fast reader". That is because I had to look at my Mum and anytime I saw her finish a book and then saw how much time I took to finish it - I was "slow". Anyway, this post is more because I have over the years promised a lot of folks about writing down about my reading habits and so forth.

For a small number of years after my birth I had to live outside the country - the parents were trying their level best to set up a better life for the family and, India wasn't the most promising place to do that. An aspect of living outside was that I grew up within a fairly mixed bag environment. And, somehow, since my mother seems to have always been a bookworm, I was lucky enough to grow up in houses where piling up books wasn't frowned upon. What was not encouraged was not reading them or, reading them but not talking about them. You get the drift - sooner rather than later, reading a book a day was the best way to end it. Which is probably the reason I ended averaging 6-7 books a week (do that math for per month and multiply it by around 6 years and you realize the tragedy of packing and moving). Since most books were borrowed from libraries and I really really wanted to cram as many books I could read (I salute and remain thankful to each and every librarian I encountered who just indulged in my silly game of borrow_today_read_return_tomorrow) I ended up reading books really quickly. And, there are shades of that habit mentioned in this blog entry.

So, once Runa did point out that I was being a bit unusual, I tried to observe what I did. Here's a rough list:

• I can read texts written in English at a fairly rapid pace and keep switching between text types/content types
• I can hold a thread of commentary/notes/review of the text I am reading while going through it
• The above doesn't work for Bengali and Hindi. In fact, for Bengali I've been known to go back and forth over the same paragraph
• I generally read nearly a page at a time. What this means is that children start reading a character at a time, progress to a word at a time and thereafter to a sentence and a paragraph. I seem to be able to read larger chunks fairly easily.
• I cannot seem to do an equally quick job of reading when I am reading off the screen (desktops/laptops)

And that is all there is to it really. The habit of book reading that I caught fairly early seems to be the main reason for all of this. The downside is that it is an obsessive thing though - these days I need to read some new content (preferably book/monograph/article) daily or else feel like a good old grump through the day.

I inwardly wince each time I read or hear someone end their experience of an e-book reader with a statement along the lines of "this is a good device but I love real books". That makes me sad for two reasons - first, it implies that the ones taking to the devices don't really love the "dead-tree" books and second, the conclusion wasn't arrived at after a small period of time when the reading habits were observed in light of the usage of the device.

The convenience that any e-book reader provides could perhaps be simplistically compared with the portable music player devices. Everyone crams up their device with all sorts of music and playlists with the intent that at any point when the urge to listen to music kicks in, one isn't left high-and-dry because the particular piece wasn't present. I kind of learnt it the hard way (or, was it the fun way ?) during my last visit to Kolkata. Earlier, each visit used to have a number of days of the multiplied by 1.5 number of books or, if that was difficult then I'd dip into the local bookstores to get them. This time around not only did I squeeze in some good amount of reading (during Pujas with a cold no less), I could also resist the temptation to visit the bookstores.

The e-book readers have a couple of problems probably peculiar to me though. Things like regional language books being unavailable, not all books being available in an e-book format, quirky prices of e-books (on Amazon, the cute "prices set by the publisher" does little to assuage the anger), not all books being available to a specific region and, more importantly, lack of portability between e-book retailers. However, in spite of all such hindrances, I seem to have managed to do fairly well this year And, more importantly, I haven't felt that I was missing anything given that my e-book reader doesn't render color :)

Unless the reading habits and book purchases are studied, figuring out whether the device would actually be useful isn't going to work out. Meanwhile, I do love my "real books". For example, I couldn't even imagine a Tufte book in an e-book reader format. But then, if, like me, you end up having to shift residences on and off, you wouldn't want to look at the faces of the packers-n-movers folks when they encounter stacks of boxes that are really far too heavy.