My list of Incompletes.

This year’s reading list.

I have been trying to do this for a while, but finally, I think, making a comprehensive and loud commitment out of this would help me read all the books I’ve bought (sometimes on an impulse) and not read.

Yep. I’m pretty sure we all have that list.

I’ve been trying to get my head wrapped around TZ Lavine, but getting a complete picture is too hard until you have it a coursebook (probably an intro to psych course). The same thing happened with “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. I took too long with that too.

“Nausea” was an impulse buy on a recommendation by an aunt, but Existentialism is too complicated right now, especially being introduced to it in Sartre’s own words. “Confessions” by Tolstoy is my father’s. And “Blue Citadel” and “Life is Elsewhere” were birthday gifts I haven’t got around to yet.

“Lord of the Flies” just slipped my view otherwise it would have been over quite a while back and again, I had trouble getting used to Camus’ narrative. Currently, I’m going through Berger, a recent addition (along with Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”), and Walden, treating each as a series of essays…hopefully I’ll get the first six finished this semester.

I don’t think I’ll ever get through “Anathem”. Or “Shadows of the Mind” by Roger Penrose for that matter, which should be a thesis on advanced theoretical computational philosophy. No, seriously.

Makings of a bibliophile ??

It was April, and I was back home for the last time before my my end semester exams. My mom and brother were leaving for Lucknow to meet a few relatives so it was gonna be me and my dad alone in the house for about a week. I was hanging around the house when I took up a long forgotten idea of mine.

I started cataloging my collection of books; mine -that is both me and my dad’s – collected over the last 3 decades or so. My dad too was supportive and with mom being absent to fuss over the mess, it was the perfect time.

It was with almost childlike glee that I stacked up my books on my bed, stacks as tall as I am( not that I’m tall) ! It was good holding books which I had not touched for over half a decade, and had spent a large chunk of my childhood getting lost in.

I was so jobless I actually took up a few – reading my favorite parts of them was so refreshing ! Some book s are too much fun to only read once. Sometimes I was surprised that I found a new meaning between the lines, other times I was left dumbfounded that my younger self ever read such material. But I guess that’s how life is.

The books on my bed. A lot have been cataloged already and are missing from this picture.

There, just right above the Harry Potter series was the space occupied by the Wheel of Time series. There on the top is another hole – probably dad’s photography books.

A lot of this was done on time ( before mom came back ) with the help of my dad.

Check out the full list.

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

  -Groucho Marx.