WWW – Wednesdays 20th August 2014

WWW Wednesday is a reading game started by MizB at Should Be Reading. A simple game of telling (every week) about the books you have read, are reading and wish to read. To play along, you just have to answer the following three (3) questions…

• What did you recently finish reading?
• What are you currently reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

I recently finished…

A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl. I picked up, read a little and put down this book twice. Both the times because I was just getting sadder and sadder with each page. Knowing that the ending of the book is sad every effort made by Marianne and people trying to find Danny seemed to be in vain to me right from the beginning and thinking about how heart breaking it would be in the end, I could not continue with it. So many time I had goosebumps while reading it. But this time (don’t they say the third time is a charm!) I could not keep it down. I don’t know what was different. And I am glad I did because now I can say the book does not have a sad ending. Yes Danny Pearl is killed but that is not the ending of the book, the ending of the book is the triumph of humanity in the face of terrorism. The ending of the book is the strength that talks to you from the pages. I loved the ending of the book:

“I swear I will not dishonor

my soul with hatred,

but offer myself humbly

as a guardian of nature,

as a healer of misery,

as a messenger of wander

as an architect of peace”

I am currently reading…

Bosky’s Panchatantra by Gulzar. Continuing with my love for fairly tales and folk tales, this is the one I picked up after I finished my Classic Fairy Tales book to read right before sleeping. It’s a collection of Panchatantra tales (Indian folk tales) written as a song. What makes it special is that these are the songs that Gulzar sang to his daughter Bosky (Meghna Gulzar) when she was little and so the name. By offering them in a book, Gulzar, gves us the gift of reciting/ singing panchatantra to all kids!

Next I will be reading..

Jinnah by Jaswant Singh. This is an ambitious book for me. For long I have been wanting to read more and more on India’s partition and about Jinnah. Jinnah was once called an ambassador of Hindu- Muslim unity. What drove him to demand a separate state for muslims? I have read/ seen on tv/ heard gory stories of partition. I have wondered at why did the partition happen? Was it necessary? This book is an attempt to add to the understanding of what the political scenario was during that time.

So what’s your WWW?

WWW – Wednesdays – 16th July

It’s been more than a year since I last played along WWW Wednesdays. Of course there can be plenty of excuses given like all the traveling in India before packing up Baroda; volunteering in Uttarakhand after the floods and then the whole move to Africa and settling in. (See I just gave so many! 😛 )

WWW Wednesday is a reading game started by MizB at Should Be Reading. A simple game of telling (every week) about the books you have read, are reading and wish to read. To play along, you just have to answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What am I currently reading?

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

For me that time is now and every night before going to bed I have started reading one fairy tale. Currently I’m reading from Berlie Doherty’s Classic Fairy Tales.  I love the illustrations by Jane Ray and also the way Berlie has narrated the stories. Just yesterday I read the Beauty and the Beast. And I remembered the quote that “a thing must be loved before it is lovable!” I love fairy tales and how does it matter if I’m grown up… It’s still fun to go to sleep with some magic 🙂

Along with that I’m also reading a classic – “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickines. Enjoying the visits with the Spirits and Scrooge but also enjoying the words and the archaic English!

“Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.”

What did I recently finish

I recently finished I am Malala. I had picked it up at Delhi airport this time. Not that it was in my list of books to read but as I was browsing through the books, the photograph of Malala Yousafzai was almost staring from the cover and I couldn’t stop myself from picking it.

WWW Wednesday – 26 June 2013

WWW Wednesday is a reading game started by MizB at Should Be Reading. A simple game of telling (every week) about the books you have read, are reading and wish to read. To play along, you just have to answer the following three (3) questions…

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

While avid readers play it every week, I’m a bit slow and I usually stick to one a month. My answers for this month are:

What are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay. It was gifted to me by a friend during one of our awakin sessions. Like with every self-help book, I was, at first quite hesitant to start the book. I took it be another of the kinds where the author preaches and the reader is supposed to understand and incorporate the teachings. Since it came from a dear friend with lots of recommendation, I started on the book and slowly realised something in me identifying with what she says. Feeling the burden of past, resisting change, getting aware of our past etc…The book is meant to be read slow, taking time with each chapter. Each chapter is with affirmations and exercises to look within. So far as much as I have read I like it and I feel this one is for going back to again and again.

What did you recently finish?

I recently finished The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton. Beautiful essay on how we travel and how we should travel. I should actually write a book experience of my reading the book. But a couple of points that really ran home with me were:

Whenever we travel, we are busy clicking pictures or buying souvenirs. De Botton says that’s a way we try to possess the beauty of the place – by taking pictures, buying souvenirs or carving ones name on a monument.

But the most effective way is by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, through writing or drawing them, irrespective of whether we happen to have any talent for doing so.

We come back with 1000s of pictures in our digital camera and not one image so sharp in our minds that we could almost paint it from memory, because we see the place and not notice it!

Another point that De Botton makes is that the pleasure we derive from a journey is perhaps dependent more on the mind-set with which we travel than the destination that we travel to. But he urges: Notice the place you have already seen. On a Paris street, we find the road side crepe maker interesting and we click pictures of him; while back at home, we fail to notice the road side eatery. Can you recall what is the color of the first shop in the market closest to your home?

I also finished reading The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi. Didn’t find it as exciting as it has been portrayed. It’s a regular fiction novel involving a more human form to the Hindu God Shiva. It’s interesting but I haven’t been able to pick the second one in the series yet.

What do you think you will read next?

Next I would most probably read The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma. Found it tucked deep inside while cleaning the book case and it kind of found its way on my bed side table immediately. I didn’t even know we had the book!

WWW Wednesday – 22 May 2013

Here goes my 2^nd WWW Wednesday post! I think it’s doing the trick. I’m actually more regular in my reading because I want to post about it! :).

WWW Wednesday is a reading game started by MizB at Should Be Reading. A simple game of telling (every week) about the books you have read, are reading and wish to read. To play along, you just have to answer the following three (3) questions…

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

Many play it every week! But since I’m a fairly slow at reading, I’m more of a monthly player. My answers are:

WWW Wednesdays – May 8

When I first saw this post for WWW Wednesdays on Dreamz and Clouds blog, my first response was what is this ‘world wide web’ Wednesday about. But only after a few lines I realized it was more of What, What and What Wednesday :).

Started by Should Be Reading, WWW Wednesday is a simple game of telling (every week) about the books you have read, are reading and wish to read. I found it a great way of discovering new books, so I decided to play along. Now I love reading and I would love to write about the books I have read, which I why some time back I started writing about my book experiences but then it slowly came to an end. Not that I had not read books, but I didn’t get time to write about the book immediately after finishing it and later the experience was lost. So this game is perfect for me! At least I would write a few lines if not a whole post about the books! 🙂 But I am a particularly slow reader, so my list won’t change on a weekly basis, hence I have decided to play it every month. Here’s how it goes: