Billions of blue blistering barnacles.....

''I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety''

I flatter myself that this is not just true of Sherlock Holmes ;). I flatter myself again that I am justified in flattering myself in the aforesaid way because of what I learn, experience and share from traveling, knowing people from different walks of life and above all, reading.

A friend once said - ''You read like a road-runner !''.....its true that I am voracious reader and I have to thank my father for sowing in me the love for Reading. I have many fond memories of growing up with Tintin, Tinkle, Spiderman, Champak, Gokulam, Amar chitra katha, Asterix and then moving on to Hardy boys, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Nancy Drew and finally to the likes of John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Robin Cook, Raymond Chandler and so many more authors, the most cherished one being Conan Doyle ! I still remember the first time I read the adults-only part in a Sheldon book, blushed and skipped the pages in a hurry feeling guilty....! I have the whole Tintin-Asterix collection at home and to this day, my favorite past time is reading one of those and laughing like crazy at billions of blue blistering barnacles, Calculus interpreting jack-in-a-box as chicken-pox...ROFL.....

Many times I have a made a mental note that when I am a parent, my kids will learn to read and learn to love books and grow up like I did (I am preserving the tintin-asterix collection with great care for their sake !) and not get completely engulfed in a world of video games, animations and computers ! If need be, I am ready to sell the TV and laptop until they start appreciating reading....if its War, its going to be tough! Well, maybe not the laptop, I have too many e-books on it that one can read :D

Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, there is probably nothing in this world that you cannot read about. Added to this are e-libraries and other e-sources like Scribd where you can find so many books that you want to read once but not archive. Even if you do want to archive, all you need is a hard drive. I find this a huge blessing since it saves me the hassle of storing my precious books and lugging them around in huge cartons when I move ! I am one of those people that can read a whole book online without having to print a single page (saving paper :D) but there are obviously exceptions to this where holding the book gives you half the satisfaction !

I have heard people complain that reading just gets you into trouble. This is probably true since reading gets rid of ignorance and ignorance is bliss. There are 2 ways around it - either you broaden your perspective such that no knowledge disturbs you or you create your own filters to absorb what you want to....but keep reading...read, read, read !

I have a lot to pour out about the most recent book I read - The White Tiger, where all my filters were working full time at F1 speed.....let me leave that discussion for my next blog.....

....until then, here is a link to a lot of e-books - http://www.truly-free.org/ - Happy Reading !