Thursday, June 14, 2012

Reading... writing

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3 years ago, I posted a lament about how I'd ended up reading fewer and fewer books. I'm happy to report the situation has changed over the past year (or more. Didn't keep track until recently, when I felt like making a list). A recent conversation reminded me that I've read loads of books recently (Thank you Kindle!) and I felt I should make a small list.

What kick-started my return to reading was the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I'd already seen the Swedish movies before so I knew the basic plot-line but the detail that books offer and the pace of such genre of books meant I was hooked onto reading all three. Since January, I have revisited old classics - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol, The Man with Two Left Feet And Other Stories. India trip meant I found some great cheap editions of - Hitch 22 (highly recommended and still unfinished by me as I chug through it a couple of chapters at a time) and One Hundred Years of Solitude (recommended if you enjoy magical realism).

Project Gutenberg, and Archive.org mean that I have a steady source of classics (Three Men in a Boat, P.G Wodehouse stuff and Gogol's short stories). And then, I stumbled upon the A Song of Ice and Fire Series (I think the individual ebooks might be better, this 4 book version has slight problems with formatting, indexes etc.) Whoa! If you enjoyed Lord of the Rings, you will love this. Do read. Taking a break before I start reading the 5th book of the series.

So, as a diversion from Game of Thrones... I reread Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Another great epic. And a few days ago, I stumbled on one of the first complete English translations of the Rig-Vedas. One of the times where I was glad that Google digitizes books. Reading has commenced at a slow pace, thanks in part to archaic English and OCR errors.
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I'm at the end of doctoral research. Quite fast, I know, but French doctoral programs are time bound. They last 3 years and deadlines are rarely extended. Which leads to the writing of my thesis. I currently joke that reading epics is good training for writing one. Wish me luck :)
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