(Getting back into) Reading

Song of the post: Moon, 12:04 AM by offonoff

I need to write this before I get sucked into the 3rd book of the trilogy.

The past two years were the worst reading years ever. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t pick up a book. I did; I read in between classes, I read in boring classes, I made it a point to read something but it didn’t stick for too long. I went months without reading and I didn’t feel a thing. It’s not just the reading I missed. I missed feeling the words. I missed the excitement I felt when I picked up a new book. I missed the book community. I missed adding on to my TBR pile. I missed crying and laughing and gasping as the story went on. I missed looking up from a book and getting pulled back into reality and groaning. I missed living in written words and fantasy worlds.

I thought, maybe I’ll let this slump wash over me. Sometimes the best thing to do in slumps is to let it get to you. I have learned that the hard way. The more you push, the stronger it gets until you have to give in with a much heavier heart. Instead of that, why not give in and take a break in the beginning where you don’t have to feel guilty for it? So I let it, even though I tried to read because without no word input, there would be no word output and that scared me the most. A huge part of me was not worried much, though. I knew I would get back into it eventually but it was a matter of when. I was tired of waiting for the day when I picked up a book and did not want to put it back down.

For my birthday in March, Akka got me books, like she usually does. I had specifically asked for fantasy books because it had been a good, long while since I read a good one (or anything, for that matter) so she had gotten me a couple of Brandon Sanderson books and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I was pretty excited about this one because back when it was released, it was really popular and I’d heard nothing but good things about it. After I had submitted my dissertation, I decided to pick it up one fine day, thinking, maybe I’m ready.

I was not, clearly. A couple of pages in, I paused and picked it at the oddest times. This was somewhere in the middle of April and I remember speaking to Indu about it when we realized we were both reading the same book and we were both struggling to get back into it. At that point I had reached the part where it was just getting interesting so I decided to keep reading. It took me till the end of May to actually become completely involved and overtaken by it. And I have loved every minute of it.

I have always loved V.E. Schwab’s writing, although I’m not very fond of her book This Savage Song. There was something very unsettling about it. But A Darker Shade of Magic was different. It took some time for me to understand the world, for the book itself to build the world and get the plot going. But once it began, I decided it was going to be worth it and I was right.

I was almost towards the end of the book when I decided I needed the other two parts but I didn’t want to order from Amazon during these trying times. That day at noon, I called one of the bookshops that I had heard was doing home deliveries and I had the books in my hand within the next hour. When I went to fetch my book from the delivery person, I was jumping. The road outside my house had been (still is) dug up so there were piles of mud and parts of road all around but I went dodging it and jumping over barricades and some of my neighbours told me to be careful and I could only smile at them in my excitement. When I had the books finally, I hugged them close and felt a sort of peace. I think the peace came from finally feeling excitement at the thought of reading. And I have been relishing it every minute. All of my other art projects are on pause for the moment and I can’t remember the last time I dropped everything just so I could read.

I don’t know how long this will last. I’m not going to bank on the fact that it’ll be with me forever and such. But I will take what I can get, even if it is only for this trilogy.

Just start

Song of the post- Rain by BTS

For the first time in forever (so sue me) I actually read for the major chunk of my day. I don’t regret it one bit also, especially since I’ve been tired since I woke up. I’ve also been irritable and in the end, it has been a sort-of-sad-sort-of-not kind of day, hence the song. I was so confused that I just kept on reading. It’s much better to escape into the book and I’d forgotten how it felt to escape reality and how easy it was for me to get sucked into a book.

As I’m writing this, there is actual rain outside today, and not just in my ears, for once. It’s the Fani cyclone in the Bay Of Bengal and the city needed this respite. This summer is quite brutal and even without the sun bearing down constantly (thanks to the clouds) the heat in the air sucks away all of your energy to leaving you with such an unquenchable thirst that you just give up on water. And this exhaustion bothers your productivity as well. Pretty well proven today, actually.

It’s the end of April and I’m quite disappointed with myself with the way I’ve been unproductive this month. I’d vowed that I’d get better this semester but I seem to only have gotten worse. It’s quite disheartening because it seems that all my efforts were pointless. And it got worse in April. I didn’t even complete NaPoWriMo. I started out pretty strong and I was quite confident that I would complete it and by mid-April, I just gave up. My failure to commit to a 30-day challenge scares me. Forget the #100daychallenge that I had so optimistically taken up. I didn’t even get through day 7.

I had wanted to paint and all, but something kept me in the way. It was probably myself. I know I just have starting troubles and I know that once I begin I’m unstoppable and I know that there are so many things that I want to do and I know that they won’t be as pretty or perfect as I would want them to be but if I just start

I will perhaps have more uplifting posts in May. Hopefully.

A perfect do-nothing day

There’s a Phineas and Ferb episode where the two boys just wanted to enjoy the day under the apple tree in their backyard and do nothing. My Sunday was kind of like that but I didn’t do nothing. That would drive me crazy.

No, instead, I took this day off from doing college work. That means I did not study, I did not work on my assignments, I did not even think what was needed to be done because I was gloriously, happily bingeing on a K-drama that, thankfully, only very recently ended. I shall hope to write about it soon!

I should feel guilty for not having worked today but I don’t. I needed today. After watching the show, I got into reading some of Cassandra Clare’s writing of Magnus and Alec. Those two just kill me. I love them so much, and Magnus so so much more that my heart hurts. It’s not very often that I have this intense love for fictional characters. I fangirled and made inhuman noises and by the time I regained composure, tears were streaming out of my eyes. Cassandra Clare just writes so well. I cried over sentences that made me laugh. I missed my fangirling sessions with my friend Indu so much. Thankfully, my roommates were both out of town so I had the complete freedom to be the person I needed to be at that moment.

Even going out to the DH, which is right next door, for lunch seemed like such a chore. I wished there was food in my room so I didn’t have to leave it. Very rarely I have these feelings when it comes to food.

Now Monday is here and I’ve been faced with the reality. I have four exams, two assignment submissions this week alone. Bye bye, sanity. I shall see you in October.

Weekend Coffee Share #5

This is my last weekend for the Summer.

My college starts tomorrow and even though I am really excited about it, dread creeps its way through me. I am genuinely scared.

My week was spectacular. I had the whole week off, as I had finished interning with CDD Society. I bought books, met Prince and his newly adopted dog, Jack Sparrow! He’s such a sweetie!

I have successfully reached the end of the second week for JR Rogue’s and Kat Savage’s June writing prompts for poetry, Because Every Summer Is Still Winter, and it has to be my biggest achievements so far. You can read them all here.

I turned into a master procrastinator this week. I had a couple of really good ideas for short stories, and Sunny has been urging me to note them down. “At lease voice record it,” he pleaded. But no, I didn’t do it because I know for sure that I’ll never forget them. And then I had some part of a scene of a story I haven’t written yrt play in my head, like a movie (I often do that), and to escape from having to write it, I turned towards my currently reading, Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (and still somehow not able to finish it).

And the big day was Saturday. Saturday morning, I woke up late (as I did on all the other days :P) and took a long, late bath. I came out of the bathroom and found an Amazon package sitting on the tepoy. I was the only one who received packages these days and not even such huge ones. I took a closer look and found out that it was from Indumathi Arunan. My Fangirl Friend Forever (FFF). Still in my pink turkey towel, I took the package to my room, took a blade from my pen stand, and hacked through the brown tape.

All the while, I kept wondering, “What has that girl sent me?!” And the answer?

    My very first book on writing.

With this amazing notebook from Sri Lanka, which is 100% handmade, recycled and with banana fibres. And the smell? Imagine if someone could capture the smell of the earth while it was raining. It’s like they sprayed that perfume to the pulp and then dried it and made paper. It smells that pure and heavenly.

And of course, she had written a note. I read that note over four times because I had missed her over the summer. I just love that she supports me so much in writing.

And then I got my package of Eleanor and Park on Friday and today, I received my copy of the final installment of Half Bad trilogy, Half Lost. 

I won two ebooks in a giveaway hosted by a fellow book blogger, For The Love Of Fictional Worlds, and I’m finished with the first one. For more, check our my GoodReads!

And now, I’m in a conflicted state.

What should I read next?!

How was you week? Hope it was as spectacular as mine!

Open Letter Fridays: To My Recent Favourite Book

THIS HAS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK.

Dear The Night Circus,

The first time I heard about you was in 2014, when Indu was reading you in a read-a-long with a few others scattered across the world. That time, I didn’t think much about you because you didn’t really grab my attention and I didn’t see you in flesh and blood (or should I say, pulp and ink?). And I definitely didn’t think that I’d fall in love with you the way I did.

Your blurb sounded weird and delightfully magical. The only thing that seemed exciting in the whole of you was the circus, The Circus of Dreams. Your plot seemed…not very interesting. I still put you on my TBR list; I didn’t want to miss out on anything.

Later next year, I kept hearing about you. Snatches of words, here and there: “enchanting”; “stunning”; “a truly magical experience”; I am a sucker for fantasy books, you should know. I felt intrigued when I heard all that. I considered buying you online but my finances pulled me towards other things and couldn’t buy you.

But when I went to Blossoms this April, I saw you and I didn’t think twice about adding you to my basket. Never mind that you had previously belonged to someone else and was of an edition that’s unheard of. Never mind that you have a pinkish-orangish stain in the corner of the last fifty pages that came from who knows where. Never mind that some of them thought you were boring and lacked story and what-not but believe me, you weren’t and you didn’t. Never mind that I didn’t consider you YA because I just wanted to devour you.

You were not what I expected. I expected ill treated animals and a hero trying to save them (like a rip-off of Water For Elephants) and a nice forbidden love (I love me some forbidden love; there’s just something really exciting about it and the anticipation of what’s going to be). But the “unexpected” was brilliant. Even though I often had to keep going back to check dates to keep myself on track, I was totally mesmerized by your words.

I buddy-read you along with Parvathi and it was a wonderful experience. There is nothing better than two people falling in love with the same book (happens a lot with Indu and me :D).

You were poetry, simply removed from their lines and strung together, sentence after sentence. The description of the Night Circus made me ache for it to actually happen. And the slight twist of tale, with what I call, “a background romance” (but those parts didn’t cease to give me butterflies in my stomach), and something so deep happens that it is beyond the perception of humans.

I loved most of the people you created: from Marco to the Murray twins (Poppet and Widget, amazing, amazing characters) to Tsukiko to Bailey. Celia reminded me of Tessa Gray from the Shadow Hunter chronicles, though I wish she could’ve been better described and was stronger. The two fathers, a psychopath and another one a sorry excuse for a father made things interesting, however much we didn’t want those things to happen for Marco or Celia. I loved the detailing: the clock, the Midnight Dinners, the food of the Midnight Dinner, the clothes, the reveurs’ attires with the little splash of scarlet on all black, and all the tents at the circus. I have quite a few unanswered questions which I will discuss with Parvathi as soon as she had read the book.

I just want to thank you for being one of those books that makes me stop all my work and just read. It had been a while since that happened, at least over six months, and I don’t know if I’ll find another book as worthy of binge reading as you were.

With all my love,

Parinitha P

P.S. The feel of your velvety cover in my hands was to die for. 

 

Second Time Around

Tell us about a book you can read again and again without getting bored — what is it that speaks to you?

“What is the use of a good book if it read only once?” ~ A great person*

I have read at least 50% of the books that I own, twice. I don’t know why. Many of the book are the ones that I bought when I was a child. I think it’s because it reminds of how being a child was happy place to be.

Either that or they don’t make books as good as they did.

 

*Please forgive me for the humongous mistake in the quote. Feel free to correct it.  

Life After Blogs

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

It would probably be more interesting.

I’d have more notebooks and I’d be writing more. I’d be reading more. I’d be hanging out with my family and friends more.

Maybe I should get rid of it.

Reading Challenge!

My good friend from WordPress, John from Johnny Reads is hosting a Reading challenge this year and I will also be taking part in it!

It’s only twenty books and I will be venturing out of my comfort zone, i.e., romance and YA and contemporary. Who’s with me?

I will put a list of the books that I will read for each one, and my thoughts of it on my other blog, Pari’s books! So be sure to check it out!

Oh, you can check out the original post on his blog!

Happy New year! Hopefully 2015 was good for you!

I turn the Page

“Hey, look at me,” he lifts my face to meet his. His face is inches away from mine and I’m flush against him. I can hear his heartbeat, which was beating as fast as mine.

“You are beautiful, in and out. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They’re wrong.” he says fiercely, and I gulp. I have never heard this tone from him.

He brings both his hands to my face and

I turn the page.

Bedtime Stories

What was your favourite book as a child? Has it influenced what you are now?

As a child, I grew up reading a lot of encyclopaedia kind of books. I was fascinated then, also now, by how animals ran, how to obtain purple and green by mixing what colours, why a myth or a legend came into existence. All such good and interesting stuff.

The set that I had and which was bought by my father way back in 1994 was the Chilcraft. It had 16 books, plus a humongous  Dictionary, a picture Atlas and a book about the Story of India. Each book was a different concept, like 1 is Stories and Poems, 2 is Plant Kingdom, 10 is Mathemagic and it covered the whole universe, probably. (Refer pic) Each book has information that is in a language easy for a child, but the knowledge in it can only be appreciated by adults.

Among them, my personal favourites are 11, People and Places and 12, World of Colour.

People and Places and Picture Atlas go hand-in-hand with the information. I learned more about geography, places, people, culture of the world more than any school text book could teach me. This was the single most book which made me fall in love with the culture, and which instigated a wanderlust in me.

World of Colour is a treat to the eyes. My favourite part of it were the stories about the colours, and the legends. It has the story of Blue, Red and Yellow. It has amazing facts from history about the use of each colour. It has a lot of sciencs mixed with it, and it is because of this book that I learned to love and appreciate the vividness and brightness and that I’m thankful that I can see.

Both these books were probably one of the main reasons why I love to read and write.