Stock taking for 2011

Its been a long time since I came here though I've been reading on others' posts. So, touching base here and trying to do a snapshot of what is going through my mind:

• I'm going to India (yay!! And yeah, a second time this year :) so, double yay!!)
• I'm also going to tick off another country off my travel list this year (despite my poor traveling this year (no new places except a national park(glacier) and a city (chicago) so far, even though I traveled every single month), I finally get to finish with a bang!)
• I'm planning a surprise - keeping fingers crossed that everything goes fine :) I'll update once things are complete.
• One of my friends, M is off to his wedding. I'm so happy for him and wish I can attend his wedding. Another of my friends is engaged as well, a couple more married/engaged, this seems to be a season of marriages among close friends group.
• Finally saw the finesse of balancing - Respecttttttt!!! I hope I can get to that state soon.
• One of my friends lost his dad :( And another lost her mom :( :( This makes me feel that our parents are not invincible :( :( :( #PainsOfGrowingUp
• Another couple of friends had/are having kids. Phew! So, I finally am getting into the akka to aunty transition (seri, seri, 25ku aprom akka sollanumnu expect panrathu konjam too much thaan!)  #PainsOfGrowingUp
• Purged three years worth of blog posts on google reader, as much mail as I can throw out in official and personal mail folders and as many tasks I can finish before I leave to India. Feels cathartic! I wish there was a way to take a snapshot of my mailbox and other stuff now and just diff the differences a year later so I can cleanup just one year's worth of trash.
• Plan to get off the grid once I go home - one month of Internetless, emailless, fbless life - I'm sure it would be a big challenge given that I'm on the net every minute of my waking time, either through the phone or my ipad or one of my three computers. Would it be bliss or hell? I frankly don't know. Its a lot more easier to be out of net in India than here. Ok... maybe, I'll restrict it to half an hour a week. Lets see!
• The above challenge is one other reason why I purged most stuff - I want to let everything pile on a clean plate instead of another older pile. I'm making sense, no? 
• Since I'm going netless, this is also going to double up as a resolution lookout post. Here is what I set out to do. " This year would be more a capture-and-go year. So, no resolutions to keep, no to-do lists, no must-finish stuff and definitely no must-experience stuff! For my resolution minded friends, I do have two but they are a secret and do not carry the pressure of resolutions - I've worded them 'nice to do stuff' - they really are nice to do but I can comfortably live without doing them. Also, I have a few things that 'can be done' but again, I can live with not doing them. It would definitely be a big change from my planned life. I plan to leave all the planning to others and if any planning HAS to be done by me, I'm going to do it fly-by-the-pants style. Should be interesting to see how that pans out! " It has definitely been an interesting year - I made a ton of new friends, learned more about balance, learned that I can live with some people and without some others, slowed down on traveling but enjoyed all what I can do, experienced new stuff but really didn't plan out for it, watched only movies that I was interested in (no more lists of movies to watch or books to read - it took some time to slow down but boy am I glad I slowed down!), did a couple of all nighters having fun, learned a few new things, did a fly-by-the-pants style trip to LA and more and more. Most important of all, I learned to let go of some things and learned that emotional roller coasters are definitely bad, for everyone involved. 
• That said, the next year has a couple of resolutions from me (yeah, I love the 'do as you go' style but that is not me all the time) - the main one would be to mix my resolutions with the 'do as you go' style. And this year, there are two types of resolutions - one for the whole year and another that changes periodically. As always, they are not to be shared until done. Watch out for 2012 posts to see how the next year shapes up.
• In terms of this blog, this year barely scrapped through being the bottom in terms of numbers. However, as part of no-obligations year, I think this is good enough and I'll aim for 40 posts a year and call it good enough every year from now on. So, no worries on that one.
• I attempted the veggie challenge a couple of times for a period of a month every time and it was a success. Thinking if I should try it for longer periods next year.
• Some minor ones: Loved some of the movies that came out this year; didn't understand how 'why this kolaveri di?' became a world sensation; none of the songs that came out this year stick out; same as none of the books.
• Time is a strange one - on one hand, this has been the most interesting year of my life, on another, this is the most cathartic, on another, this is a bubble year where nothing touched/stuck. I really don't know.
• Life at Neverland has changed SO MUCH, that I barely recognize it from a year back. Even though I was a participant in it, a bird's eye view is stunning.Oh well, guess that is life!

With all that dumped off my mind, I'm off for this year!

Have fun with your families and friends and see you in the new year!

Luv,

Alpine

Last update on resolutions - Books

Books - the one hobby that has been with me ever since my first grade! My secret wish growing up was to get a job where all I had to do was to read novels day in and day out (sigh! how far I've come since then!) This resolution was to read books that hit the New York bestsellers list and other books suggested by friends. The reason for this resolution was that I was running out of favorite authors and books. After all, there are only so many Michael Crichton books and Sujatha books in this world.

The book journey has been really good and I've added a few authors to my favorites list (Nicholas Sparks! Steig Larsson! James Patterson!). Also, I tried various books like Push and Dear John and The Shack (I would read them but not if I had had other choices) that I usually wouldn't choose. Goodreads helped me track the books I've read and has been great at finding other similar books. Generally, I like most of the books I read - simply because they let me imagine how things are and how things can be. So, its hard to classify as like and don't like in books. Here are some best ones I read this year (this list is by no means comprehensive, I'm just listing those that I remember after a long time - for more books that I tried this year, check my previous posts under resolution/books tag or my Goodreads page(link on the side)):

1) The Complete Persepolis - really good book - I can't wait to try other graphic books in different genres.

2) Princess: A true story of life behind the veil in Saudi Arabia - one of the best books I've read to date!

3) Twilight books - I finished the series this year - though I loved the first of the series, its been interesting to see how the entire series played out! But there are so many spinoffs of vampires and fairies and nymphs and other worldly characters that I just don't want to read any more of these stories. One series was good but they've beaten this topic to death.

4) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - the best of the trilogy - you connect to the characters and their quirkiness. The books become darker as they go and I ended up not really liking the last one.

5) Stephanie Plum novels - this series is light reading and had me reading all the ones that came out. It is funny and looks like Nancy Drew novels for adults :D

6) Under the Dome - one of the most original ideas for a novel - Stephen King rocks!
7) The Help - one of the books that required some serious reading and it was worth it all.

There were a few novels like The Shack that, though written well, were not to my liking. I don't think I'll read them unless I have so much time that I'm pushed to reading them. Also, this year I've started reading more blogs and online article sites. So the amount of stuff I read this year is really good (yeah, yeah! I'm patting myself on the back ;)). All this wouldn't be possible without the wonderful library system in Neverland. I've gotten almost all books from the library (though it IS some work to reserve them regularly, finish them on time and return back for more books - sometimes I've run fines when I couldn't finish books on time). I've also bought a few books at Half Price books (a godsend for older books) and Barnes & Noble (the best place for newer ones). I considered buying a kindle or a nook but decided against it for various reasons. Now, with my library going e-books route, I'm getting tempted to revisit that decision. However, nothing is as satisfying as the feel of paper and the smell of books when you read them (yeah, I'm old school in that issue).

Though I'm not going to continue this resolution in 2011, I'm sure going to keep at reading books off the bestsellers list. The only difference would be that I wouldn't be pushing myself to do it. Even though it was fun doing it, it did take some discipline to read the boring and tedious books instead of reading just what catches my fancy at the time. One thing I've noticed: things I'd have read diligently a few years back (the long and boring ones especially), I now find myself impatient when reading them and wishing I could finish them faster. The average attention span has gone down and the authors have to work harder to keep the reader's attention to the subject. This is especially true for novels with long descriptions of things and places. I've lost the ability to lose myself in George Orwell's descriptions or Ayn Rand's long monologues (Francisco's speech in Atlas Shrugged or John Galt's speech in the end). This is similar to losing a comfortable position with an old friend - you may be discovering new things about your friend but yearn for the older days together. 

This seems mainly due to the large amount of options we have at any given time. When I read something, my brain does know that there are other options that can give instant gratification (Facebook refresh issues anyone?) and cannot get into the serious reading mode(strangely, I can still read the work related stuff and papers without loss of concentration - it does require effort though). When I checked with other friends about it, they reported similar things. So, I'm going to scale back my reading a bit, try to space things and see if I can recapture that ability to read long passages. But no pressures!

Last update on resolutions - Movies

Finally, we are looking at the last few weeks two days of 2010. This year has gone past so fast that I'm left wondering whatever happened to the 365 days in it. All things said and done, I had a lot of fun filling (or trying to complete) the two resolutions that I had for this year: watch more movies and read books in the New York Bestsellers list every week. 

Firstly, movies. Ummm! What can I say about them. At the beginning of this year, I was a green horn in movies, mostly due to the fact that I used to watch a grand total of five or ten movies a year (combining all the languages I knew). For that movie to hit my horizon and make me watch it, there had to be fate's play in it. It had to be hugely popular, I had to be free to watch it, there had to be friends to watch it (my watching a movie alone was a rare event before this year, or rather last August) AND there had to be someone to constantly egg me to watch it. All this combined was as regular as the meteor showers happening on a night with clear skies and visible to the naked eye! (which is next to never). Now, I can identify the major directors (I knew only Speilberg and Cameron before) and the actors (the number has gone up from a measly 5 to about 10-15 now - atleast I can say, actor X from movie Y is the guy on movie Z as well). 

I found out I just can't stand slow movies and movies with subtle plots (500 days of Summer, anyone?). Add to that list, crass movies and gory ones (Saw series - though brilliant in story, I couldn't watch even one without gagging) and movies with crappy endings (the latest to join that list is Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey). And, I do like urban action movies but really can't get the wild west action (unless there is a fast story to it). Science fiction (Inception!!) and anything to do with animation (I've even watched Princess and the Frog :D) and romance (how about the Proposal?) and comedy and kids' movies (Up!!) are totally fine with me. I can also watch movies with stories I've not seen before ( ranging from Animal House to American History X) even though they might not fit into any genre said above. But there have been movies like The Notebook which I've hated mainly because its slow even though it falls under romance genre. 

I've received a lot of help in finishing this resolution: my friends around me and my roommates watch a lot of movies, discuss about them and take time to appreciate movies. This is vastly different from how it was before last year. My friends took care of English, Tamil and Telugu movies while my roommates took care of Hindi and Telugu. I got to watch a lot of bakwaas Hindi movies (before this year, I wouldn't have imagined sitting through movies like All the best and Golmaal but now I've watched them all) but there were some good ones as well (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, 3 idiots, Wake up Sid). Even though I watch a lot of movies with friends and roommates, I do catch up with some movies on my own too. Angadi Theru was a good one I discovered that way.

A caveat: Even though I've watched a LARGE number of movies, I'd have skipped some parts of it (I've lost the ability to sit through songs and fights in a movie and have even searched for a forward button in theatres) and not seen some parts of it (scary chases (I've closed my eyes when the Tree was being attacked in Avatar and during the climax in Transformers) and brutal killings (Rakth Charitra, ugh! I was hovering on the forward button... but Surya acted well in it)). Some of my friends opine that only watching a movie completely counts as watching it. But I think that as long as I can follow the movie and not watch the boring/slow parts, songs, fights, etc. it can still be considered. Two reasons for this: one, I'm not a film critic to watch the complete movie and then criticize it. I watch it for fun and if I don't like something, I can totally skip it. IMDB has been great in helping me keep track of the large number of movies. My IMDB ratings are for my tracking - just to say how likely I am to watch it again in future. And two, if the movie cannot hold my attention to keep me engrossed enough to not skip it, then I can skip it. Movies like Endiran and Inception and Up! have me watching them without so much as thinking about skipping even a small scene in them. So, to each his own in deciding to figure out resolutions.

However, this resolution took a lot of time since I had to carve out time from other stuff to watch movies (since watching movies was not in my list before). Most weekends saw me trying to complete that week's quota of movies. Some days, I had to give up something else to watch movies - just for the sake of watching it. I'm going to take a step backward in 2011 and not force myself to watch all the movies that release (I already started doing it in December for some of the tamil movies - they were that crappy). Instead, I'm going to stick to genres and popular movies/directors/actors I like and see how it goes. So, this resolution achieved what it was intended for - give me a crash course on movies in general and help me identify what movies I like. Here's my list of top 10 favorites in 2010. Let me know how it rates against your favorites of 2010.In all, it was a fun ride and helped me sift through all the good, the bad and the ugly out there in movies and figure out what genres and directors (and sometimes even actors) I liked and more importantly, what I did not. 

Movie-phobic?

Note: this is a series of posts through my movie-normal to movie-philic to movie-phobic journey. This journey hasn't ended but I've been meaning to write them on my blog and finally found some time to give you guys a heads up on what's happening!

Movie-normal?
Movie-philic?
Continued...
I was watching about 2 or 3 movies/week and was happy with it. However, in recent times, the number of good movies has reduced a lot. Or maybe I feel so, with my limited experience with the movie world. As a result, as said in last post, I started skipping songs and fights and parts of movie where nothing really happened. I was reaching the magic number (8 or 9/month) pretty fast but I wasn't getting any fun out of it. It started turning into a chore to go look up movies, get them/go to the theatre to watch them and finally spend time to watch them. Most of the movies were not worth this effort. So, in order to get more fun out of this, I started watching even more movies (Yep! Just like throwing good money after bad!) with the hope that among all the movies that I watch, atleast some of them would be to my liking.


Sadly, that was not to be so. I realized that increasing the number of movies actually didn't increase the fun I got out of this activity. Rather, it got the bad-movie counter soaring! (Was I picking bad movies all the time? Nope! I was just choosing the movies from lists and new movie category).And at one point, I just didn't want to watch a movie anymore. I was discussing this turn of events with M (an avid movie watcher himself) and he commented that I was trying too hard to enjoy movie-watching. That set me thinking: I'd rather do nightouts reading books (yup! I'm guilty of doing that!) than do nightouts watching classics like The Godfather. I once slept through The Godfather trilogy showing that some of my friends had planned. We got the popcorn and someone started the first one. And I was nodding away to dreamdom within minutes of the first scene. I still get teased for it because I slept through all three trilogies and the breaks that my friends took that day. Frankly, I remember waking up at 6 am to see the rolling credits of the last movie and thanking God that I didn't have to watch it again.

I also know some of my friends who'd be horrified at the idea of sleeping through The Godfather. They love movies and derive a lot of pleasure out of movie-watching. With my experience so far, I have this conclusion in mind: people's tastes are different; as I can stomach a wide variety of books, so can some people stomach a wide variety of movies. I'm way too picky about movies and have a lot of ifs and ands to watch a movie (the movie Kites was a good example. As soon as a friend asked if I wanted to watch it, I made sure to read the reviews and learnt the story and only then, decided whether to go or not. I didn't like the story, but liked the hero. Nevertheless, story is king in a movie; this one had a story I didn't like and I just didn't go.). Not everyone is like me since they don't have so many conditional clauses for, duh, movie-watching. And I'm totally fine with it - atleast I know I tried something and found my comfort level in it. Trying to add more variety to the mix I have is a good experiment, but surely something that might backfire badly.

So, here I am now, taking a break from all the hectic movie watching and not making any special efforts to watch new movies - I'd rather go with friends and have fun because I love spending time with friends and join them for dinner, games or an occasional movie rather than trying to make sure I watch all the movies that get released.I'm still going to continue this experiment till this year's end and then decide which I am (movie-normal, movie-philic or movie-phobic). I have a strong suspicion I might end up somewhere between movie-phobic and movie-normal compared to the rest of the world. Unless, of course, the filmdom decides to wow me with really good movies from now to December. Ah! How I wish for it to be true! :)


P.S: Serials are fun but I'd rather watch them on TV randomly when I get a chance rather than watch them on purpose(Oh! Its just me, honey!). So, watching serials when I get bored of movies is not really an option for me - yup! I'm the legendary character who has completing Friends on her miles-long to-do list after starting it years back. (And I am getting closer to striking it off - just within a few years from now - isn't few such a safe number? :D)

Movie-philic?

Note: this is a series of posts through my movie-normal to movie-philic to movie-phobic journey. This journey hasn't ended but I've been meaning to write them on my blog and finally found some time to give you guys a heads up on what's happening!


Movie-normal?
Continued...
Now that I had all the information I needed, I set about googling for movie lists with the genres I liked. After a lot of mix and match, I found that I liked movies that had a good dose of romance and comedy and sensible characters. A strong female lead was a definite plus. One of the first movies that I watched was The Devil Wears Prada. I totally loved Meryl Streep (though I didn't know who she was then) for her acting. There was one scene right at the end of the movie where she sees Andrea (Anne Hathaway), gives her a kind look and then turns haughtily to the driver to say "Go!". In that one word and gesture, she communicates so much to the audience. That scene made me consider that there was something to the movie world where an actor can emote so many emotions and implications with just a nod and a well placed word. That made movies more powerful than books and I was sad that I had missed it for so long. I was ready for the next movie on the list.

I remember watching Confessions of a Shopaholic, Mr & Mrs Smith, Just Like Heaven and my childhood favorite, Kramer vs. Kramer. I was delighted to find that Meryl Streep had acted in Kramer vs. Kramer. Then I watched a lot of movies, english, tamil and hindi, but not much stood out. There were some good ones, like It's Complicated, The Proposal, Alice in Wonderland, Alvin and the Chipmunks, 3 Idiots, Avatar,Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, etc. But there were also movies like (500) Days of Summer (I couldn't sit through the movie - even though most of my friends said it was great! Guess its the slow-movie thing again!), Public Enemies (I expected the movie to have a good ending - but it was not to be so! And it seemed to drag at first and then the movie was over in the last 15 minutes), When In Rome, Leap Year, etc. This made me wary of watching movies. I spend around 2 hours to watch a movie and in the end, if I don't enjoy it, then its time that could've been better used.

I found that IMDB reviews and ratings were a big help. I glanced through the movie and the synopsis and if I liked that movie and felt the story was right to me, I watched it. This made me finish the top 250 list faster than I expected. And my movie counter was increasing! But I was still in the 2 or 3 movies/month and needed more movies. This was around the time I started watching movies on my friends' lists. M's list was a great one - I needn't even read through most of them since the 8s and 9s were usually good ones. I also started watching movies that I heard my friends talk about (one of them being The Butterfly Effect which was highly recommended but I didn't enjoy watching it). As I finished the 9s and 8s on M's list, I realized there were some movies that I was just not comfortable with.

As I plowed through his list and any and every other list I could get my hands on, I found that there were more bad movies than good ones. Especially with tamil and hindi movies, I started fast forwarding songs and fights and sometimes, even parts of movie where nothing just happened. This one act greatly increased my movie watching speed :P I went from 3 movies/month to 7-8 movies/month. Which was about the best balance, I should think so.

But life is life and things don't go as you plan. As the rate of movies I watch and the movie counter increased, the rate of bad movies/movies I didn't like also increased. Rather increased exponentially! From what I understand, out of 100 odd movies that come out in Tamil/Hindi, there are about 3-5 that would pass my filter. That is less than 5% of movies. With English, it was harder to judge; there were more movies with different stories and I had no way to know if a movie was good or not unless I tried it (Iron Man 2 was one such movie - I thought I might not like it, but the technology used was cool :) and it was worth the effort). Any idea how I can reduce the rate of bad movies watched? What tactics do you use to weed out bad movies from the good ones?

...Continued

Movie-phobic?

Movie-normal?

Note: this is a series of posts through my movie-normal to movie-philic to movie-phobic journey. This journey hasn't ended but I've been meaning to write them on my blog and finally found some time to give you guys a heads up on what's happening!

As you all know, I love books! But I also made a resolution this January that I would watch as many movies as possible. I've never been an avid movie goer simply due to the choices my family took when I was a kid. My parents would happily spend thousands on books for us to read but would frown on movies. It was my mom's strong belief that kids' imaginations would develop better if they had to imagine the characters and bring the words of a book to life. In a movie, everything is already laid out to you and all you have to do is enjoy it. I'm not saying movie watching is incredibly easy (as I found out recently) as I've seen friends watch movies with as much pleasure I get from reading a good book.

As a result, the number of movies I've seen in the past twenty odd years (not counting the one in Neverland) has barely crossed 300 (and yeah! I counted - thanks to IMDB). Since I have a number of friends in Neverland who are avid movie watchers, most of the conversation revolved around movies, old and new. But it remained a mystery to me as to how people can watch and watch and watch some more. So, this January, I decided to watch all the movies whose review I liked/recommended by friends. It would be in English, Tamil, Hindi (thanks to my roommates) and Telugu.

As a first step, I made sure I was watching atleast two movies a week (that's eight movies a month - which is A LOT for me - I can happily live without watching movies for months). This was an easy one since we (friends and I) would go for a movie atleast once in three weeks or a month. And my roommates watched atleast a movie over the weekend (usually Hindi). All I had to do was to be a part of both groups and I had crossed off two movies from the required list. Then I attacked the Top 250 list in IMDB. I started with the goal to watch all the movies from top to the end in that list. How hard can it turn out? All I had to do was watch the movie! But it turned out to be harder than I expected.

The first one, The Shawshank Redemption, was such a slow movie that I eventually fell asleep on that one! And it was the number one movie ranked by people all over the world. Imagine my surprise! If the majority of the world liked something, how bad can my chances of liking the same one be? But I found out that I can't stand slow movies (from my experience of watching No Country for Old Men with J) and decided that movie-by-movie strategy is not going to work out at all! Now what was I to do?

I didn't have any favorite actor/director to start the movie list with. And, I definitely didn't want to just watch any movie. Even if I was ready to do so, how would I ever search for the movies? I don't know the names nor the actors nor the directors nor the genres.... wait a minute! I could decide the genre and watch movies from it. But there was a problem with this too. I wanted to watch a variety of movies and was open to movies of different genres. After all, I was into this for different experiences and sticking to a known genre ALL THE TIME would take the fun out of it. But the genre idea was a better one than anything else. So, I made a list: comedy, romance, action-but-with-a-meaningful-story and non-philosophical movies were to be the first. I'll sample all movies that I come across: the ones that my friends recommend, talk about, new movies that come up (any genre) to keep the variety in picture. Now I was all set to take up the movie-resolution-challenge.

When would I stop? When I hit 10-12 movies/month (averaging 3 movies/week - something that most of my friends have been doing) or when I figure out if I liked this one or not (I've not really tried movie watching as something to do consciously (Before this, I've always watched a movie if I heard really rave reviews about it AND liked the cast AND had the time to go for the movie AND didn't have anything better to do AND wanted a break from whatever I was doing! Phew! that is a long list of conditions to satisfy)  - so I don't know if I like it or not - I want to give it a fair shot before I decide eitherways) or when I find out what interests people in movies.

...Continued

Movie-philic?
Movie-phobic?

Resolution lookback - 2

Its two months already and here I am with the list of books in the past two months. But two things affected my reading this time: first, I was away for about a month (yup! I was in glorious India!) and second, I started watching a lot of movies (M would probably laugh at this statement but they were a lot compared to where I started... but more on that in a later post!). So I might not have as many books as last time. Lets dig in to find out:

1. Uglies - suggested by Aths. It was good but since I read Pretties already, I wasn't surprised as to how it ended. Guess that's the price one pays for reading the sequel first.
2. Little Bee - a poignant tale between an African girl and a British mom. Good amount of twists and turns.
3. I, Alex Cross - as expected from the author and genre. But I liked it.
4. Olive Kitteridge - fascinating since it brought out the subtleties in human personality very well. A slow read though.
5. The Help - been on the bestsellers' list for about months now. And rightly so!! Very powerful tale. One of the few books which I want to read again later in life for I feel I haven't gotten all that the author tried to say. I'd probably get it better when I have more experiences in life.
6. The Piano Teacher: - okish but I couldn't connect to it much. So, I didn't enjoy it much!
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -Very intricate puzzle. It was nice to put it together but I didn't think the means justified the ends.
8. Dead and Gone - Ok! The market seems to be flooded with this genre (Guessed it? vampires! ugh!). When Twilight came, it was novel. But now, it seems to have been based to death. Okish read but there were a lot of questions which I guess would have been answered if I had read the prequels.
9. Let the Great World Spin - good story base but too watery a narration for my preference.
10. Just Take My Heart - I've already read too many stories with the same theme and frankly this one wasn't written compellingly enough.
11. The Host - good one. If you like vampires and other-worldly stuff, you should give this one a try. Its lighter than vampire stuff but still an interesting take!
12. The Swan Thieves - deep with a curious mix of art, philosophy and mystery. But they could've reduced the number of pages....
13. At Last Comes Love - trash
14. Executive Intent - nice but I'm getting jaded with this genre (political thrillers). So, even if books are good enough for a regular reader, I guess I'm looking for something more (may be a better twist, different handling, etc)
15. Summer on Blossom Street - sweet story with a good mix of characters.
16. The Burning Land - Reminded me of the "The Other Boleyn Girl". It might be that it had a similar base but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was handled similarly.
17. Queen of Your Own Life: The Grown-Up Woman's Guide to Claiming Happiness and Getting the Life You Deserve - read at recommendation of my friend. I wasn't impressed with it but I guess I'm not the right audience for it. 
18. Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia -  one of the most candid books I've read in years! I guess this book warrants a post for itself. But, a definite read!

Add to this some trash books and some tamil books. The count comes up to 25. Not bad considering that I was away half the time. But I guess I'll be reading lesser in the coming two months since its glorious summer in Neverland and I want to make use of it as much as possible. Also, I'm trying to find a sweet balance between watching movies (I'm interested to know what fascinates so many people in it) and reading books (my hobby). Any suggestions on how you manage them?

P.S: My friends and I, we had gone on a bus ride (a rarity since we usually take the car) on a workday morning (another rarity). And the passenger next to me was reading "Dear John". It was such a good feeling to recognize the book and remember the story. :) I'm glad I'm doing this exercise.

Resolution lookback

This post is a (supposed) sequel of my resolution post (yeah! yeah! I'm still writing it and should have published it sometime in Jan but haven't yet gotten to it. Maybe I'll make that a prequel to this one! Ha!)
Since I'm still writing the prequel post, I'll give a short jist of what it would have:
A list of resolutions that I had intended for 2010.

Come on! Everyone makes resolutions in January in the spirit of the new year, right? And everyone slips out of one or two of them! I made a few of them and have stuck to them doggedly so far. One of them was to read every book in the top five of New York Bestsellers list. This resolution does not really fall under the "clearing bad habits" list or "improving oneself" list (these are the lists that most peoples' resolutions fall under). I feel that to stop a bad habit, you really don't have to wait until new year. If you think you are wrong and it is bad, then all you have to do is stop it! And improving oneself?? Hmmm... that's a discussion to be had another day!

Back to my book-reading resolution. This came more out of a need: the need for new favorite authors. All of us have some favorite authors and mine had Michael Crichton, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Arther Hailey, Jeffrey Archer, Issac Asimov, Robin Cook, Sidney Sheldon (now don't roll your eyes!!), Kalki, Sujatha, etc. I also read most of the current popular books like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Chetan Bhagat's books, Dan Brown's novels, etc. But they were not books that I read for the author. I read them because I had received rave reviews of them from friends and family and wanted to give it a try. I came to the point where I've read almost all of my favorite authors' books and didn't have much left to read. And, to my horror, I found that every Tom, Dick and Harry wrote on mysteries, science fiction, political crime thrillers and complex plots. But whether they could make your heart tingle with anticipation about the next twist, that was unknown.

Towards the end of 2009, I started reading books suggested by friends but found that it was a fairly small set and that I wasn't doing justice to other books. There might be that perfect book and perfect author who has not yet been read by any of my friends. And I didn't have the time to sift through the hundreds of reviews for books and then read a book. By then, I lose the enthusiasm for reading. The New Year came at a convenient time and I decided to make a resolution (to suit my needs!) to read all the random books on new york bestsellers list. I chose this list out of thin air but was sure that the books wouldn't hit that list, atleast not the top five, without being appealing to a larger cross section of people across the world/USA.

To be fair, I didn't buy most of them. Thanks to the wonderful public library that I'm a member of, I can lay my hands on them for a tuppence. So all these impressions are my first impressions of the books and what I still feel about them (long after returning them back to the library). I feel that the test of time is the best test for anything - time shows if you really love something, if you like it, if its okish or if its plain bad. My assessment of some books might have been different if I had read and reread them a few times.But for me, reading the same book a second time, especially when the first time didn't make me like it, is a huge non-possibility. Most of the books that I've read a second time (or more) have been ones that took my breath away the first time. I would have to be so awed to actually go back and reread to get that feeling of awe again.

I plan to write a list of books that I read every month and what I thought about them, albeit in a few words. If there comes a book by which I was heavily blown away, then I'll dedicate a post to it. [Flash warning: what suits me need not suit you and vice versa! And my opinion of a book need not reflect yours! Give the book a try if you think you might like it!] Lets start the initial list of books I read in the past few weeks.

1. Dear John - an interesting one. This was one of the first books I read after I made the resolution and was fairly new to the whole show. The story was paced well but didn't include any mystery or thrillers. Emotional and good for introspection. But I found I wouldn't mind books of this genre now and then. (Earlier, I would've run helter-skelter from books of this genre).
2. The Lost Symbol - don't attempt it if you are not a fan of Dan Brown; even then, it would be hard to connect if you've not actually gone through the museums and halls of DC. I did recently and relived the happy memories of the trip through the book - so I liked it; I can't say how much that affected my judgement though.
3. First Family - racy. The loopholes were less but the story tries to show a beaten story in different light. Not very original. Think Clinton and you've hit it pretty much.
4. The Truth About Lord Stoneville - trash.
5. Impact - good, I loved the last twist to it. But again, science related - so my judgement may be biased.
6. The First Rule - had some mindless wanderings in the story. Could have been cut by one-fifth and we wouldn't have missed much.
7. The Lovely Bones - I don't like the genre. Period. The book might be interesting but the genre threw me off.
8. The Shack - I literally had to drag myself to finish this one. Showed me that there were some books/genres that I just can't read. Was one of the books I read initially and that gave me a good perspective of the variety of genres I was going to face in this exercise.
9. A reliable wife - very New Englandish. And meandered some too. I think I'm too young to fully understand this book (came to this conclusion after I discussed this book with an older friend - guess there is still a lot I should learn about the heart).
10. Arctic Drift - lots of hypotheses. Finally, the author went way out with the results. There was no gradual crescendo to the climax. I'd rather prefer books like that.
11. Cross Country - not much to say. Typical Patterson.
12. The Devil's Punchbowl - they threw in many things and tried to come up with a gripping storyline; and failed badly. Beware the exciting title!
13. Plum Spooky - I like the number series; I find it quirky yet plausible. One of the few series that I liked after a long time. However, this book wasn't as good as the series. Maybe because it was an in-between job??
14. True Colors - brought out the tension between three sisters and their lives well; it started out well, flattened a bit and then perked up in the end. If you are a woman and have sisters of your own, this would make sense. Else, try it at your own risk!
15. Shanghai Girls - read this one right after True Colors. Yet another one on sisters and their intertwined lives. The settings are different but the principles finally are the same. But I couldn't connect to it much.
16. Street Game - again, they put together lots of stuff and tried to come up with a nail-biting story but that didn't work out well. Jaimie's and Mack's relationship was supposed to be one part of the story but I felt that it overshadowed the rest. And, frankly when I'm reading books of crime/thriller genre, I'm not looking for relationship stuff. But the mememetrics stuff was cool (effects of doing a thesis in biometrics makes you love anything bio+computers stuff - I am biased) So, okish.
17. Under the Dome - interesting concept and an interesting way to look at everyone's life with that concept. Certainly one of the few new-idea books I read recently.
18. Pirate Latitudes - Definitely Crichtonish. Liked it (not loved it!! This is not in his best works list! Is that why he didn't publish it when he was alive? Did he think it was not worth publishing with his name on it? I certainly felt so. Still, this book was a surprise for I had missed Crichton's works after he died and then I got this one. Hence the like!)
19. Push - one of the books that made me uncomfortable since its a story that I just can't relate to it but know its damn true and that people meet with it daily. Though I cringed at the swear words, I understand that they are needed to bring the characters to life. If you are looking for something hard hitting, then this one would work. This showed me a new world of people - not many books have done so; but I'd rather not read such books every day and darken my mood; just a personal preference.
20. The Associate - My first book of this exercise; liked the style. But then, this is one of my favorite genres. So, no complaints!
21. What I did for love - okish
22. The Templar Cross - similar to Dan Brown's books; ok for one read if you are crazy about the genre.
23. 7th Heaven - Didn't like it much.
24. Sizzle - Liked this one. The story is the same but the connection points were different. In the last scene, one of the guys in the book says "I gave her up so she can live". One question to him: Dei, idhu avalukku theriyumaada? Ethana per ipdi kelambi irukeenga?*
25. Whiter Tiger - had been on my to-read list for quite some time. An interesting book; interlaced with the complexities of Indian society.
26. The Complete Persepolis - Loved this one! A heavy story but told with comics. Thanks to Aths for suggesting it.
27. Embroideries - I read this with the huge expectation created by the complete persepolis. But it didn't meet it. It was funny, yes; but not my recommendation list.
28. Nerds: who they are and why we need more of them - This book was more like reading a thesis on electromagnetic oscillation pattern analysis. I had to read novels in between so that I don't get completely swamped by this one. Well written; but as an Indian, I thought many things were rather obvious. And I couldn't connect to the rest since I didn't grow up in USA. Read it at your own risk!
29. How Opel Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life - Ha! Ha! Funny! though I guess I'm past that stage where I'd absolutely love that book. I'd have done so, had I read it some 7 years back :D
30. The Twenties girl - now this book found a place on my recommendation list. A light read with the right amount of story!! I wasn't captivated from page one, but slowly started liking the style and what it portrayed.
31. Camel club - Too many twists that I lost track! (or, did I read it when I was really tired?)
32. Bleachers - This one is about letting go and settling things out. I'm usually not a fan of this genre - so not on my recommendation list.
33. Vi Agra Falls - Paagal* story, as my roommate would put it :D
34. 2666 - ugh! I've lost the patience to read heavy literature, even one with good amount of twists.
35. Fired up - first book of DreamLighter series. Okish... but I'm curious to know how it turns out.
36. Pretties - Another one from Aths' recommendation list. Though the story itself was not very exciting, I look forward to reading the next one in the series. Guess that's a big win!
37. Poor Little Bitch Girl - I had this feeling of deja vu when I read this one; so it didn't make much of an impression.
38. Skipping Christmas - Ha! Ha! light reading material but the final touch was good and unexpected.

I'm in the process of reading some other books currently. You'll see them in the next list. Not all of the books in the above list were from the New York bestseller's list. Some came from friends' recommendation lists and some I picked up when browsing or reading something. But I'm glad for this exercise; I get to read a lot of genres and experiment with different authors and styles. For example, even though Push is a very hard hitting book, I wouldn't have it in my book shelf as it doesn't really make me comfortable. But that doesn't mean the book is not good. It is really good about what it portrays; I fail to connect to it as a reader; or rather, the connection I make to it makes me squirm under its glare of truth and I would rather have something light and funny to read instead of something hard and introspective. On the other hand, the twenties girl had a title and back flap story that I just wouldn't have picked up. But now I love this book enough to seriously consider buying it for my collection. This exercise made me realize not to judge a book by its cover, literally! :D

I'm also glad that I read 40 books in two and a half months. I consider that amount of reading good enough (with everything else going on in life), though my mom's going to be worried sick that I only read and not do anything else. But my other resolutions took care of the "not doing anything else" part. More on that later! Do let me know if there are any books that you think are interesting and that I should read. I'm always open to reading new books and authors, not that it has to hit the top five of the bestsellers list. And, your reviews on any or all of these books if you've read them would be awesome!

Dei, idhu avalukku theriyumaada? Ethana per ipdi kelambi irukeenga?* - Does she know this? How many people have started like this?
Paagal* - Mad as the hatter