Reader's Block

Started Reading:

Argumentative Indian-Amartya Sen

Nudge

Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand

Sons and Lovers-D.H.Lawrence

Planet India

The Ascent Of Money-Niall Fergusson

Rubaiyat-Omar Khayyam

An Equal Music-Vikram Seth

Hot,Flat and Crowded- Thomas Friedman

Lajja-Taslima Nasreen

Half Read:

The Diary of a Mad Man-Nikolai Gogol

The Overcoat and Other Stories-Nikolai Gogol

Dr.Jeckyll and Mr.Hyde(I know the story!)

Freakanomics

Almost Read:

Shantaram-Gregory David Roberts

Post American World-Fareed Zakaria

Everybody Loves a Good Drought-P.Sainath

Tipping Point- Malcom Gladwell

World Is Flat

Its not like I cannot complete books, but once I catch a new book I don't go back to the old ones. Am I subconsciously confusing books for lovers? Or do I have the soul of a silverfish in a human body?What is this disease called?

Whatever the diagnosis, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, that there is another list.

The Abandoned.

The Alchemist-Paulo Coelho

I'll Always Have Paris- Art Buchwald

Sometime in time, I will hopefully complete reading the other books.And another list that has given me some more hope over the past few days.

Devoured:

Nehru-A contemporary's estimate by Walter Crocker(thanks Umair!)

The White Tiger-Aravind Adiga(thanks Rajini Kanth,Marathi Manoos, Oco)

***

I chanced upon this interview of Stephen Fry(!!) and this is what he says about first love.

"Like a lot of first loves, certainly first loves for sensitive people such as I was then I guess I have what I have is called the primary writer’s arrogance of assuming that my experiences are common to everyone else’s experiences, sometimes it is true, mostly one hopes it’s true and therefore that’s what one likes in a writer. You think oh, I feel that too. Just occasionally you might express a feeling and everyone goes, “What?” Then it’s very embarrassing, but I’m assuming that most people their first love when they’re teenaged that unbelievable hole that opens up inside them of longing and yearning, of pain, of joy, that huge great bundle of toxic emotions and allied to beauty and opening out into nature and to glory and suddenly connecting you with every love poet and every love song ever written that that explosion in my head and heart will never be matched. You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture as the poet put it, but it stays with you like a good acid trip. You know you get a little flashback every now and again. It will never leave you and it teaches you to look at things differently and to feel things differently. It educates your soul if you like and all first love is unrequited ultimately because it’s so huge. It’s such an act of giving and it requires so much back that it can never be given back and in that you wouldn’t necessarily want to give them back. It’s just like a… It is like an atom bomb. It is like… It’s all the energy of who you are and who you want to be and what you love and what you hope to be explodes and it is impossible for a single human being to offer that back to you in a mutual way. It would be like matter meeting antimatter. It’s sort of almost important that what you do is worship and yearn and long, but so that was to me of course the single most important thing in my life and occasionally I get dreams and I’m back there again and I’m still as trembly as every I was and I get… because I’ve written about it I get emails and Twitters, whatever from people in you know in adolescence who are going through the same thing and say, “Oh, I read your book and it was the same for me and it is the same for me and he’ll never look at me, she’ll never look at me.” “What can I do?” “I’ll make a fool of myself.” “Should I write them a poem?” And, “What if they reject me?” And, “oh my God.” And I read that and … You know these vast sagas, these romantic sagas that are played out in every school, in every village and every town and every country in the world. It’s going on. It’s all this massive emotional energy just spreading outwards and some of it is… and totally unhappily, so the only thing that saddens me is that the, I suppose the default community attitude of kids is to suppress it and to smother it and to pretend it isn’t there and to be ashamed of it, not because it’s transgressive or because it’s gay necessarily. It’s just as, just as, just as problematical if it’s straight. It’s nothing to do with that, but because the school yard attitude is that you don’t talk about these things. There is no… You know you feel all this emotion, but the language for it is forbidden really. You just don’t do it, unless I think girls are probably better at it and maybe the online community helps with it. Chat rooms and things you can express yourself, but generally speaking boys of fifteen, sixteen are much more interested in sport or even if they’re not more interested in sport and their soul is yearning they’re not going to say it and if only they could it would be good. "