a study in books...

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i try and update 'weRead' application on Facebook... just to try and keep a tab on what i've read... i remember an obscure application which i used earlier... but since i've forgotten the site, let alone the user-id and password, i guess it's time for a new list...

i read quite a bit by most general standards... anything... everything... fiction, non-fiction.... bookers, cheap romance... children's books, war sagas, philosophies, physics... it's hard to segregate them into any particular boxes... they haven't followed any particular train of thought or genre or trend... anything i could beg, borrow or buy has generally determined my reading habits... and since i'm practicing my analytical skills for a job interview, i decide to practice it on myself...

1.  Books I wouldn't want to be found dead with.

let's get the embarrassing stuff over with first....
like... if i were caught in a train accident and identified as the reader of one of these, i think i'd die again... examples would be -
- a couple of Mills & Boons (i borrowed from a friend (L), who has a more incriminatory bigger collection!)
- the whole series of Stephenie Meyer's vampire-bella-werewolf drama... no excuses here... but in my defense, i read the whole thing in ebook format(!!) so no money wasted there!

2. Books that most people would love to be found dead with.

you know those books that the more 'intellectual' of your friends discuss seriously and suggest 'it's a must read'??... and then you scout for the book... rent or buy the book... only to find it makes absolutely no sense to you whatsoever... like those stereogram pictures where everybody but you can see a taj mahal in the middle of all the scribbles!!! or your father insists on showing you a particular constellation in the sky and keeps pointing at it... but you just don't know which of the myriad of stars to look at...!! before i go recollecting every little thing that made me feel demented, back to books... that is all we're discussing here...

 - there was 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. i think i understood the story per se. but if there was some 'deeper meaning' to the whole deal about the Americanized Pakistani guy who returns home, i must have missed it...sorry AA!
- then there was the 'Siddhartha'... a 'philosophical' book... which 'everybody' loves!! and swears by... and all that jazz... i read it... cover to cover... just so i wouldn't feel guilty... (those were hard times...)... but i couldn't squeeze a drop out of that philosophically juicy book....sorry PP!

3. Books that I loved while reading but five years down the line I cannot seem to recollect much.

it's happened with so many books... i loved them when i read them... and now, i cannot recollect the plot, the writer, the protagonist!! one of the reasons probably is coz i discussed it with no one when i read it and so, it such seeped away through my memories... i miss them and keep planning to read them again...
 - Catch 22 - dripping of sarcasm, the tale of Yossarian(?) winds through some World War(?)
- Catcher in the Rye : The easily likable story of the young boy who runs off from school to his home(?)
- To Kill a Mockingbird - two kids, father's a lawyer who defends the black guy accused of murder(?)

4. Books that I loved so much, i dare not read them again.

mostly found on accident, i fell in love with them at the first read... they were so real, so beautiful, so sad... they drove me into a depression which lasted about a fortnight... so, i decide to never read them again! but there's another reason too... atleast for some of them, i'm afraid i might not like them as much if i read them again... my tastes change radically every five years or so...  (remember scheduling your activities around telecasts of "Shaktimaan" on DD1 in the days of yore???)... so, either way, i havent re-read these and don't plan to in the near future...
 - Gone with the Wind

 - Flowers for Algernon

5. Travel/Timpass/Toilet Books

most of my books belong to the category...
the first one and second categories are pretty much the same... only for differing purposes... just the light stuff you carry around when you travel in a bus, visit a bank or go anywhere where you might be kept waiting or might get bored... or the goodnight book for those who cannot fall asleep without a book... with a decent plot, witty dialogues you can re-use to seem smarter than you are... that sort of thing...
these books usually determine how interesting that bit of my life was... for eg: in some years, i've gone through scores of them... i probably read at least 50-60 books of this sort in one especially sad, boring year... but i remember spending a whole semester trying to finish 'Fountainhead' in kgp and getting nowhere...
and finally, the third category of course is an even lighter version, for the long minutes in the loo...

 - Dilbert Principle

 - Jeffrey Archer, Sydney Sheldon

- Robin Cook, Fredrick Forsyth

- John Grisham, Arthur Hailey

Now that is a very neat analysis that i'm justifiably proud of!!! (I only wish i could've written a VBA script to run a macro in Excel 2007 which would put it in pretty little tables and filter them...!!!)

until i find something else to slice & dice,
Adieu!!!