A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson

Listening to: 2 very chatty daughters of mine

Mood: In a funk

I happened to be browsing through my sister in law’s bookshelf for something, anything to read, she suggested this book. It’s pretty slim pickings around the G household these days. India – you need libraries. Make it happen.

Anyhow, I know that this book may not appeal to everyone. The author goes and hikes portions of the Appalachian Trail. Actually, my interest was only piqued because my brother had expressed a keen interest in hiking the trail while he was staying with us a year ago.  That combined with the endorsement of my sister in law that he was funny and I decided why not.

She wasn’t lying, he is funny. Not all the time, and not enough to write home about, but he does take a light hearted approach to writing. I found it interesting enough to read in 1 day. I’m a fast reader though.

It wasn’t a great book, it was just a “meh” book. Mildly amusing and a good time pass if you have any interest at all in Hiking. I felt that it dragged on a bit at the end. The best part was his phobia of bears and reminding all the readers that he read lots of books on bear attacks and how he was sure to die of a vicious, slow bear attack.

Verdict: Meh. Not a bad read if you’re bored or interested in hiking.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Ladies and gentlemen - this may be the best book ever. I've finally finished this behemoth and it was amazing.
This book should be something that is required to be read before finishing college (just like those leadership classes I'm always harping on).

Verdict: If you have any type of open mind at all, you need to read this. Seriously. a must.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

I hope you'll forgive me for dropping off the face of the earth for a while. My family has moved to India.  Unfortunately, we don't have the library facilities that I'm used to in the US, so my books have been rather few and far between. I have yet to read a book great enough to write about on my kindle, but as I mentioned, that's what you get when you only get free books. :-)

In desperation, I turned to my own bookshelf (and what is left, after my husband ruthlessly weeded out anything and everything not worth keeping) and found Atlas Shrugged. I got this book free from an organization dedicated to spreading Ms. Rand's ideas but never got around to reading it, mostly because it's a ginormous book.

Well. I rather wish I could have found this book earlier. I'm half way done with it and while I don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's premises, this is one of the most amazing books I've read in my entire life.

A bit of warning: This is not a light read. This is not even a medium read. It takes some serious contemplative power and quite a bit of open-mindedness, as well as time. As I mentioned, this is not a small book.

What has impressed me the most so far is the craftsmanship of the story. I really, really enjoy Ayn Rand's brand of storytelling and her ability to weave many, many ideas and social commentaries into something that seems like a simple story. If you dig under the surface a little bit, (and really, it would be criminal to bother to read this story and not dig more than a little) it is in no way simple. I'll post an update when I'm finished with it.

Verdict so far: If you are in anyway interested in social vs. individual welfare and have an open mind, this book is for you. actually, this book is for anyone who has an iota of intelligence. You may not agree with Ayn Rand's ideas, but the important thing is that she is raising some very tough issues, ones that every one has the responsibility to contemplate. 

Comments on My Kindle

As I mentioned before, I was gifted a kindle as a present a few months ago. I have been using it almost nonstop since then. I thought I would give a little feedback on how the experience has been.

I was a person who always scoffed at the idea of buying and using a kindle. After all, I'm a heavy fan of the library/borrowing books and kind of a purist (my god that sounds snotty!) about books. I'm one of those that likes the weight of a book in my hand, the rustle of pages, etc.

That being said, I really, really appreciate this gift. There are some things that the kindle excels at. One is space saving. Books are bulky and heavy. If you're constantly on the move or travelling (as my family has been for the past three months) lugging around lots of books is a rather painful option. Along the same lines, it's a small device (I'm not all that excited about micro devices - that spells headache for me!) and really light. There have been many times when adding the kindle to the travel bag wasn't a space problem and saved me hours of boredom. One more thing to note. Anywhere you can access the internet, you can buy books. India is still in the dark ages in terms of libraries. The ones you do find, are small, private, cost money to belong to, and require that you have transportation to and from. It really is a lot of pain value. Need a new book? Bam. Shop and kindle will deliver instantly as long as you have wireless internet. One more positive thing about the kindle is that Amazon offers many, many free books/excerpts. You don't even have to shop from a computer, kindle has that feature built in. Like I mentioned, most of this won't be brand new novels, but you can find some really amazing and interesting reads. They also offer a lot of free classics.

On the other hand, there are a few things that are disappointing about the kindle too. Because it is so small and light, I worry constantly about breaking it - especially when travelling with it. I suppose you could buy a case for it, but I did not. Another thing to note is that the kindle isn't backlit. Unless you have a good source of light in the room, reading quickly becomes impossible, as I found out to my chagrin on a train. I was trying to put my kids to sleep without the light on and tried to read. No reading for you! Also, if you are a reading junkie like me and get tired of the free books, buying books adds up quickly. Our family is earning in rupees, so we're trying not to spend in dollars. This makes every purchase on Amazon debated as to the necessity. It also is really just another electronic device to stare at. I used to really contemplate which books to take home from the library because of time and space constraints. On the kindle, I feel like I should download and read anything and everything free. This leads to quite a bit of wasted time for me. I also get really frustrated when I like something I'm reading and find out it's just a teaser of a few pages. This gets really annoying. I also am finding many more fiction stories on Amazon than non, but that's an amazon problem, not a kindle one. I didn't find any effective way to sort the books on the kindle. There wasn't a way I found to tag books and keep track of what you read. I have some 500 books on there right now (I know, some collecting behavior going on there!) and it's a pain to have to sift through to find the ones I've not read yet.

What's your favorite/not so favorite features?

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

I borrowed this book because my dad really liked the movie when I was younger and I happened to catch my husband's brother in law reading it and he recommended it.

This piece of fiction is written around a Scottish Presbyterian male familial group of fly fishermen. It has been hailed by critics to be a great work and even more exceptional as the author finished the book in his 70's and it was his first work.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure why he did recommend it. My husband's brother in law is Indian and not all that into fishing. This was the major problem I had reading this book. In the interest of disclosure I didn't finish it. I have read many books that have nothing to do with my interests, experiences in life, or background and enjoyed them. For some reason, this wasn't one of them. I'm not sure if it's the author's writing style, the heavy "this is a man's book" feel, or if fishing is just too far out of my interest range, but I just lost interest very quickly.

Verdict: I don't know that I would recommend this to anyone who's not a man that's into fishing. I'm not saying it wasn't bad, but it is a niche book and not to my tastes.

Mahabharata - R.K. Narayan

I know that this post will most likely come off as incredibly nerdy and/or snooty. Not much to be done about that.

Mahabharata was next on my list because I've been trying to dig a little deeper into the Indian experience that I find myself living at the moment. That and my husband was nagging me (in a good way sweetie!) to read it. We picked a simple version by R.K. Narayan as a starter. For those unfamiliar, the Mahabharata is an old Indian text that is a commentary on how society should function together. For the uninitiated to Indian culture, it's like a delightfully frustrating maze in which you have to go back and try again a few times, even though it seems simple. Much like learning Hindi. Thankfully, this version is short and features simple language. There are as many authors of the Mahabharata as there are authors that wanted to create it, and it has been a constantly evolving text, changed more than a few times over to suit both the times and the location where the author was from. The Mahabharata is beautiful because it's so deep. If you want to get progressively harder (all the way up do damn, this is impossible), there are many, many versions that become progressively longer and more complicated to understand. Seriously. You can wander all the way up to the Sanskrit version. Unless you're a Sanskrit professor, you probably won't be able to read it though. I'm not going to be arrogant and declare that I'll get just below Sanskrit, because that's just ridiculous. I do, however want to get a slightly more complicated version. One of the things I found frustrating about R.K. Narayan's version of this book was that while it challenged me to pay attention, it also glossed over many, if not all of the story and kept it very superficial. My husband and I have on many occasions gotten into discussions about this story and I can feel aspects of it that are missing in this book.

Verdict:

Amazing version for beginners if you have any interest/inclination to dig into Indian culture and ethos. For those who already know the story or have already read it, this won't cut it.

Hey...what's up?

Sorry to have just jumped down a rabbit hole. Life does that to me occasionally. I haven't been reading all that much lately. I have been working on a historical fiction series that my husband bought for me that I'll review when I'm finished with them. I've also been quite taken with Amazon's kindle for PC. They have a number of free books offered, but be aware, you aren't going to find any new titles for free, mostly older and obscure stuff. Still some good finds if you have time to sit and hunt for them.

So please hang in there until I get my writing groove back!

Becky