Darby will soon be gone for six weeks to the US of A and I hope and pray that this will leave me with a lot more uninterrupted time to read. I have watched more movies here than I have read books (almost 5 per week) and that has got to do with the fact that I have taken my own sweet time to settle in completely. Life has found its rhythm here. I feel truly relaxed which means that I am not too distracted which in turn means that I will be able to concentrate better on books. I have not got myself a British Council Library membership over here yet but Brit tragic hero has promised to accompany me there and says that he will be a willing accomplice when I ransack the library bookshelves. Yippee!!! Nevertheless, I've stocked up on about a dozen that I will dig into even as Darby's flight takes off. The list includes 'Fame is the Spur' by Howard Spring, 'Bridge of Sighs' by Richard Russo, both given to me by Gregory Peck, 'A Wild Sheep Chase' by Murakami, 'Winter in Madrid' by C.J. Sansom (I loved his Dissolution'), 'The Poe Shadow' by Matthew Pearl, which I bought yesterday and am dying to begin, 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' by McCall Smith which Darby got me from Warsaw because he didn't let me accompany him there the last time, 'Salem Falls' by Jodi Picoult, 'Blood Sisters' by Barbara and Stephanie Keating, 'Man and Boy' by Tony Parsons, three titles that I have no clue about, 'My Friends, the Miss Boyds' by Jane Duncan, that I picked up from a quaint old book shop in Aberdeen, 'Tom Brown's School Days' by Thomas Brown, which is a childhood favourite, and 'North and South' by Gaskell which reminds me of my struggle with industrial novels during my college days and which after watching the gorgeous Richard Armitage play John Thornton in the BBC miniseries, has found a place in my must-read-again list. Finally, the thirteenth which I may be able to read is Sunil Ganguly's 'Prothom Alo' which is the only other Bangla book we carried to Poland from Kolkata apart from the 'Gitabitan'.
This is the most I can manage at 33 and it is no longer, as in my late teens or early twenties, about proving how fast I can read. In a sense, thank God for that because I know now that I read way more analytically than I did in my early youth. I am no longer a sucker for good stories alone. Although the collection that now rests on my bookshelf may be a mix...good, bad and ugly, I intend to read them all. What is, of course, very exciting is that all these books, including the Sansom and Pearl, and the Spring and Gaskell are very different from each other. Good for me. Here's raising a toast to happy reading.
Having mentioned the 'Gitabitan', I must add that I am doing a lot of singing aloud in my apartment and in the neighbourhood park and that will most definitely continue. Goodbye for now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment