Last year I managed to read 24 books, which was quite disappointing. So 2011 started with a goal of beating that number and getting to a total of 50 books.

7 months into the year and I have reached 25 books! The Kindle is definitely facilitating quick access to all the books I can ever want and I find I’m not really using my Librarywala subscription.

Here is a list of my conquests so far

1. The Girl who played with Fire – Steig Larsson
2. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – Steig Larsson
3. Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
4. A Case of Exploding Mangoes – Mohammed Hanif
5. The Globe II: the Science of Discworld – Terry Pratchett
6. The Silver Chair – C S Lewis
7. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner – Stephanie Meyers
8. A Prisoner of Birth – Jeffery Archer
9. Johnny & the Bomb – Terry Pratchett
10. Paper Money – Ken Follet
11. False Impression – Jeffery Archer
12. The Famous Five have a Great Time – Enid Blyton*
13. The Famous Five go Caravanning – Enid Blyton*
14. The Japanese Wife – Kunal Basu
15. The Gunslinger: Dark Tower I – Stephen King
16. Drawing of the Three: Dark Tower II – Stephen King
17. The Wastelands: Dark Tower III – Stephen King
18. The Wizard & Glass: Dark Tower IV – Stephen King
19. The Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V – Stephen King
20. The Pleasure of my Company – Steve Martin
21. Songs of Susannah: Dark Tower VI – Stephen King
22. On Two Feet & Wings – Abdul Kazerooni
23. The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole: 1999 to 2001 – Sue Townsend
24. The Ring of Solomon – Jonathan Stroud
25. The Sixth Man – David Baldacci

*Ok, maybe I included the Famous Fives to just rack up the numbers…. But hey, they are books, I really did read them and enjoyed them immensely! I also read a bunch of Archies (on a really cool comics app on the iPad – so don’t judge) which I have not included!

I’m currently reading the below two books and have a nice exciting list of ‘to reads’ lined up

1. The Dark Tower VII – Stephen King
2. BossyPants – Tina Fey

At the start of this year, I decided to keep a log of all the books I will read during the year. The thought germinated when I read a quote by Shashi Tharoor stating that he read over 100 books a year! I always thought I read a lot and thus was curious to track how many books I read in a year.

Below is the list of books I read this year… the number is disappointingly low given my inspiration for tracking. I hope I will come up with a better tally next year

And oh… do leave your recommendations on what I should be reading next year

1. And Another Thing

2. Outliers

3. Art of Possibility

4. Good to Great

5. Simple Plan

6. Lucky One

7. Memoirs of a Geisha

8. Two States

9. State of Fear

10. Golem’s Eye

11. Time Travelers Wife

12. A Hatful of Sky

13. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

14. The Zoya Factor

15. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

16. E-Squared

17. Agent to the Stars

18. Heart Stealer

19. How to Completely Disappear

20. The Leader who had no Title

21. Heroes of the Valley

22. The Careful use of Compliments

23. Pillars of the Earth

24. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

This is not really a post about anything in particular…Just some random stuff I was wondering about.

Staring at People

I wonder what really is the science behind being able to ‘feel’ it when someone stares at you. How does that work? How can you ‘feel’ someone’s eyes on you? Stare at someone for a bit (even their back) and without fail they will ‘feel’ it and turn around and look at you. It’s just strange isn’t it?

The collective consciousness of City Traffic

I’m not much into driving…It’s just tough for me to focus on so many things together. The pedals, the gear, the car, the traffic….So sometimes when I’m being driven around; I often think about how it seems that the traffic has a collective consciousness.  It feels like every driver on the road is tuned into a collective consciousness system and subconsciously knows what the other drivers are thinking … a little turn here and subconsciously the driver behind turns/brakes a little. They don’t even have to think about doing it. Packed roads…with less than a few inches of space between vehicles…and everybody moving like some smooth flowing river. It’s like watching a well coordinated show…. Most of the time that it. Sometime, maybe the collective consciousness misses a few beats and there are scrapes and accidents.

Writing my review on Watchmen got me thinking about all the other Super Heroes I’ve watched and loved. That gave me this idea of listing the Best Super Heroes according to me and why I like them.

Please feel free to contradict and fight for your hero (In the comments section) in case he/ she don’t make it to this first list. J So here goes…

1.      Suuuuperrrrman! (* Drum Roll !!! *)

My front runner and ahead of others by the million miles…Superman has been my quintessential favorite for a long time. One of the first few super heroes to taste screen success, Superman is the ultimate Super Hero. He has super abilities in a multitude of areas. He can fly, has super strength and is the ultimate Man of steel. Ok, I know he could have done with a better costume designer, but hey this was the 1970s. Everyone dressed weird back then!

2.      Batman

3.      X Men

Super Hero he is, but in a Hamlet sort of way. Spider Man seems to battle with himself in a pitiable sort of way…wondering about ‘to be or not to be a hero’. Spider webbing, roof hopping aside, Spider Man is just another kid with girl issues. Yet, he makes my cut because he is still a hero and makes for some interesting movie watching (his various adversaries included!)

So those are the ones who made the first list! Though I can’t wind up the post without a special mention of the other Heroes who almost made the list.

·        The Incredible Hulk: Not so much of a Hero, The Hulk is just a poor hunted mutant.  What I like about him is the way he throws his arms around and stomps when he is angry! It always makes me smile.

·        Iron Man: Love his Suit and the awesome things it’s capable of. Also like Robert Downing Junior J

·        Transformers: Autobots rock! I wish my car was one of them.

·        Dr Manhattan: My latest addition. Love his omniscient powers, though he’s a little high on the whole human philosophy piece.

I have fond memories of my wedding. It was the usual big fat Indian wedding… a different function every day for the run up to the main event, a few thousand wedding guests, all the bollywood type dance and music, a few hundred ceremonies, all the pampering, shopping and tons and tons of feet touching and gift taking. I had fun! J

The only thing I thought could have been more meaningful was the wedding ceremony itself. I’m not sure if it was do with the undertrained priest that we had, or it is something to do with the ways wedding vows are made in the Marwari weddings. I mean this was the single most important bond I was going to be making in my life and the ancient wedding vows I was making ranged from a promise not to go to the jungle alone to having my to be husband promise me that he will not go dig a well without me!! Jeez…  someone from the apex body of the religion should really look into it upgrading the wedding vows/ceremony!

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I am a fairly religious person. I do believe in god, heaven, hell and all the things in between. I would not want to in anyway want to ridicule religion and I do know that there are mantras to read, gods to be pleased, but would it be too much to update the  vows/the way the ceremony is held so that it can mean something to our generation today?

Take the Christian weddings for example. They have a simple ceremony and hey, personal wedding vows! One to one, special promises to each other, which they share in front of their near and dear ones. I think that is really great. If there was one best practice that the Indian wedding could borrow from other weddings, I would vote this as one!  We already have the engagement and exchange of rings as a wide spread practice in India now, even though it has no roots in the Hindu religion/wedding history, so why can’t we have some upgrade/personalization of the wedding vows too? What say?

I wish there would be some technology (and I’m sure it’s not too far out to think it’ll be here soon) that would enable you to log an interesting thought, as you have it, into some kind of a portable thought machine. For example, say you’re sitting by your window, watching the monsoon rain come down on your new car and you suddenly think of how your car, if it was really was an alive feeling, thinking creature that it sometime feels like when I drive it, must be feeling while taking its first all natural bath, and you go like, hey, that’s an interesting thought to explore, maybe write about, you could then and there, go like ‘ thought machine, record that thought, tag it, My car’s first rain. ‘ And bingo! I can keep that thought for reference when I want to write my next blog.

Won’t that be really kool? It would be so easy to pull up all the thoughts you had as and well you want them. You’d never have to forget how you felt about something, how happy you were at some time or how mad you were at someone. What you thought of when you were going through a completely new experience, seeing a new place…. Wow!

One could expect something like this to be called, say the ‘ithink’ (goes with the trend of all the happenings gadgets that our generation has to have, like the ipod, iphone etc.. and totally fits the description of the product which is, that you think, and it keeps it for reference and future use!

Maybe I should patent this thought. Later when they do come up with the ithink, I can claim royalty for the novel product idea! Well, till the ithink gets here, I’ll have to make do with the thoughts I do manage to hold onto. The rest will forever be lost, until a particular neuron connects with another particular neuron, and I go like de ja vu, I’ve thought of that before!