NanoWrimo

National november writing month is here again. And I feel so inadequate as every year. Just like the marathon I'm always afraid of signing up for, I'm not sure if I've have it in me to churn out 50,000 words within a month. I've somehow managed to pull the great trick of masking it under bravado. I keep telling myself that I could do anything if I put my heart to it but now is just not the right time. Hell, its never gonna be the right time. There are so many things I want to get to: blogging regularly, learn python,  get back to regular exercise schedule and you know what? Never mind! The list is endless and my motivation: zilch. I guess the answer to that is: how about starting with something? So, no promises this time around. But I'm going to start doing a few things on a regular basis.

But NanoWrimo is awesome! Its a great community of like minded folks coming together, setting a target, following up on it, motivating each other and getting a wave of procrastinators to finally take the plunge. If you're one of those folks who always wanted to write that amazing fantasy novel, or your own Harry Potter series, or even write your own autobiography, now is the time. Go ahead and sign up for it.

As for me, I'm still here.

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1st quarter - status check

In my last post I had talked about embarking on an effort to read at least 52 books over the course of a year. For a while, I thought this was going to end up the route of my other such ambitious proclamations. However, reading is something I genuinely enjoy.  Hence I was a little more optimistic.

It helped that my wife is a voracious reader and she has been bringing all sorts of books from the library. I started reading from her collection first and and slowly started accompanying her each time to get my own set of books that I had always wanted to read. In addition I also started listening to audiobooks on my way to work and back. This way I was able to peruse multiple books simultaneously.  Its been many years, since I read books with such a fervor. During my most addicted moments, especially with books that are absolutely riveting, one can find me glued to the book (or the kindle, of late) right from the time I come back from work, while waiting in lines, the restrooms (which has turned into a mini library) and even during lunch hour at work.

Its been a mix of books, right from classics to graphic novels to contemporary literature. My appetite has been insatiable. I feel like I need to catch up on all the lost years. My Netflix and Hulu plus usage has suffered as a consequence and I'm actually pondering whether I should just yank them off. Now I want to write about each of them. But my thoughts are all wandering about all over the place. I need to gather them and give purpose to each. Let me start with listing my progress so far. And of course before I forget, I want to highlight goodreads.com. Its an amazing website with a great app to boot. The reader community is huge and its a great way to keep track of all the books you've read and also create a wish-list for future reading. Here's what I've accomplished so far:

Read
The Great Gatsby
Shadow of the wind
South of the border, west of the sun
Animal Farm
Of Mice and Men
Such a long journey
Pride and prejudice
Freedom Song
Breakfast of Champions
Embroideries
Persepolis
Feynman
War is boring
The Communist Manifesto
The Sun also rises

Currently Reading:
The Rape of Nanking
Brave new world
The Yiddish policeman's union
Blind willow, sleeping woman
Great Expectations
The 4-hour workweek
The Beautiful and Damned

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52 Books In A Year

The other day on NPR there was an interview with an author. Unfortunately the name of the author slips my memory. But the interesting thing was his first book was based on his experiment during which he read the entire '5 foot shelf' in about an year and a half. It instantly sparked an idea, on whether one can pull something off like that in a year along with a day job. I figured something like a book a week would be doable. So one could with some effort pull off 52 books within the year.

Now keep in mind, the Harvard classics collection is much more than 52 books. A lot of those are collections. For e.g.. Plato's 3 books are clubbed as one. Its amazing that one can get an entire used collection for about $200-$300 bucks online. This works out to  about $4-$5 a book which I think is a steal. I would love to have something like this at my home just for the sake of posterity.

At this point, my 1 bedroom apartment cannot afford luxury of having the entire physical collection. So I found the next best thing. The Gutenburg project and the Internet Archive both have the entire collection in web format for free. Since the books are all over at least 100 years old, they are all out of copyright and can be downloaded for free. They also have the kindle versions for each. Giddy with excitement, I downloaded the entire collection to my kindle, armed to set forth on my expedition.

I started off with a couple and immediately realized my folly. I've been out of the habit of reading for such a long while, that starting off with century old classics was too daunting a task. And also going through the list, my initial enthusiasm watered down to tentative apprehension. I wondered whether I had signed up something too onerous. My wife suggested that I instead start with something easier and lighter. There have been lots of other great books which I had wanted to read but never got to. It helped that she is a voracious reader herself and had a bunch of books on her kindle. Also she's been going to the Mt. View library on a regular basis and bought me a bunch of books.

So long story short, I've been on a reading spree since the past month. I'm keeping my schedule of a book a week, so that means I'm on target for 52 for the year. Although I do want to get to the my original goal of reading the Harvard classics, I'm not complaining right now.

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New attempt

Image via Wikipedia

Chanakya Writes is new blog started by Gayatri, Divya and me. Now the question begets, "Why do we need another blog". To be frank, we might have as well worked on our current blogs or simply revived them. But the total lackadaisical attitude towards blogging and failure to make a significant impact hasn't dampened our enthusiasm towards starting a new blog.

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