Reader's Block!!

I was a voracious reader. It's so hard to admit that i have'nt been that for about a year now. But before I became temporarily, intellectually burned out, I ran on heavy fuel - Atleast two books a week. And I don't count the John Grisham's and Michael Crichton's in that list. That kind of stuff was the snack to fill the time between the full course servings of great writing. I read all the time. I much preferred reading to t.v, I preferred it to going out, heck, I preferred it over pretty much everything else, even music I think, and that's saying a LOT !!!

Since then, for reasons seemingly unfathomable , my metabolic rate had drastically fallen and I could not consume in the same fashion , or with the same passion as i did. Six months into that state and I convinced myself that I had made my peace with it, I threw myself into music to make up for it and hoped I would get back to reading 'one of these days' as though it was something that would just happen.Well three months later, I took stock , I had read TWO books. I decided it was getting a little too out of hand. I had to do something. So, I did. Discarding advice not to 'force' it, I made my self read things i knew i would enjoy even if it wasn't particularly stimulating. Like good old Wodehouse. Just to get back into the groove.

And I just kept re-reading dear old 'Plum' and not particularly graduating to anything more thought provoking. And what made it worse, is that I had gone and bought a whole lot of books right before I stopped reading...

Here's a list, to give you an idea...

1) Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
2) Don Quixote - Cervantes
3) Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
4) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
5) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6) Vanity Fair - William Thackeray
7) The Glass Palace - Amitav Ghosh
8) Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Stowe
9) Portrait Of A Lady - Henry James
10) Ulysses - James Joyce
11) Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce
12) Women In Love - D.H. Lawrence
13) One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcis Marquez
14) Art Of War - Sun Tzu

These books sit on my shelf, collecting dust , waiting to be perused.. (been dying to use the word!) I've began several of them in turn, hoping that something in any of them will grab me by the collar and shake me out of this inability to keep my attention focussed long enough to finish the damn books.. But no.. So far, save for pulp, I haven't managed it..

I've decided, however that I am getting back to them.. If I have to suffer through them.. I'm getting quite sick of reading the first thirty pages and not being able to proceed past that limit. It's making dents in my self-image. Ok, perhaps I'm taking it a little too seriously.. But hey, that's how i was brought up.. On books and music.. And I feel like I'm losing my religion so to speak.. Well one of my religions at any rate.

So, I have two weeks in may and two in june before college begins again and I've decided I'm GOING to read these books somehow!! Perhaps, it seems a little too ambitious to you... you may think it a little too much for a month's worth.. but a year or two ago, I could have done this in a couple of weeks... Heck, I feel like an out of shape marathon runner who is just getting back to running and finds his lungs burning for air and a break after running the first couple of miles.

Frankly, I doubt if i'm going to be able all fourteen of them.. But i'm going to try! I've made a start.. Reading Women In Love now.. Hopefully in another couple of days I'll be able to say i've finished it and more importantly that I enjoyed it....