ok..major thanks are in order for Geetu who managed to latch on to my blog with the remarkable tenacity and intelligence (haha!) of a true-blue blogger.

Letme explain a bit. This happens to be a virus that u are reading right now. pretty harmless though. All it does is that once u get this virus, u hafta type in some info about the books that u have read and also acknowledge the good taste of the person who has chosen u for this remarkably time-consuming honour, for u.

On the brighter side, it also offers a chance for irregular bloggers like me to lounge on their favourite armchair and spew forth their gyaan like the eponymous old men who seem a fixture in public library corners. ok..putting on my smoking pipe for this major pow-wow between my brain and vanity.

here is the illustrious (?) roster of names before this tag. So major thanks to these folks for putting me on the evolutionary tree of their choice.

Geetu > Thabi > Ani spice > Neel kanthan > Abinandanan (who in turn got it from somebody who, as everybody knows, is not known to me.

Total Number of Books I Own: This one is quite easy for me to answer. because most of the books that i own in hard-copy are lso ther with me on the PC, so the net number would be somewhere close to 12,000 books. (disregarding all the comics etc.)

Last Book I Bought: Aha! even though i have a strict policy against buying books, i have bought a fair number of them. its another matter that each of my acquisitions has later proved to be a major source of heart-ache..when i manage to locate the free e-copy of that book.

But the last one i bought and read was "Snapshots from Hell" by Peter Robinson. Thankfully, i havent located the e-copy as yet (and have no intention of getting any). As far as the book review is concerned, i found it to be a bit lacking in the much talked about humour. No doubt the book is quite fascinating, but with the proliferation of blogging these days, i suppose u can find good enough authors pouring their angst for one and all. Also, relating to the author isn't quite easy. for somebdy who has been brought up on a staple of good literature and six-pack thrillers, it just fails to sizzle.

Last Book I Read: Now thats much closer home, isnt it. last book i read was just 10 minutes ago on my new mobile..the Nokia 6600..some Star Trek episode. Pretty interesting, reading on a cell-phone. i have read books on a PC, on my lap and a laptop and now a hand-held device. definitely, the handheld thingy is far comfortable than reading on my comp.but..i am digressing.

The last proper book that i read was (how i wish i could write down something classy, but alas!) John Grisham - The Partner. Typical Grisham product..nothing fancy, a law-suit, some murderous villains, a hint of danger..but with a new kinda twist at the end. Grishy isnt particularly known for last minute twists in the plot, so i was surprised to see the girl run away with the money. I suppose this particular piece of misogny was due to some unfortunate incident in the author's life at that point of time. After all, most authors r prone to a little innuendo and roman a clef novels one time or the other.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: hmm..now thats interesting..though purely from a cynical, worldly and detached point of view. My list is ready..it has been ready for so many years now. Infact, it is THE list which made me quite the bookophile that i am now. I was thinking about posting this sometime back, but then i think a lot and post a little. here it comes.

*takes a deep breath and re-enters old, abandoned highways of the mind..a flash, back to the past*

1. 1984
2. The Godfather
3. Catch22
4. Mila18
5. Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintainence

there, finally its out in the open. so, it seems that the supposed connoisseur; the one who enjoys with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties of the books that are presented to him, is in reality as much of an escapist as the rest of the population, eh!

I really have no defence. i might come across as a well-read (which i am) and well-informed (which i am not) person, but thats purely because of a joke that destiny decided to play on me.

It was an afternoon when the lights had surprisingly gone out in our sleepy little township of FCI talcher; i was 11 years old. the heat was terrible and i had nothing to do. i picked up the day's newspaper (HT ?) and scanned the sports page yet another time. with increasing time and diminishing attention span, i was getting irritable and very very upset. it was then that i took, in hindsight, the action of my life.

easy now, no melodrama here..i just turned to the world-news section in the newspaper.

i dont recall the news item now, but i definitely can tell u the import of the story. It was a news-flash about a BBC poll about the books of the century. the top 10 books were listed. Nowadays, such polls are a dime-a-dozen, but back in 1994, they were reliably few such things going on. The books that i have listed, except the fifth one, occupied the top 10 slots with Mila 18 being the lowest at no.8.

Somehow, the list fired the imagination of my pre-pubescent brain. Ah! here was a world as wild and unexplored as the Africa of Haggard. There has been as the cliche' goes action & adventure at every step. The ride has been long n rich and the drive has done nothing but get accelerated all this while.

Needless to say, the motivation of that 11 year old child still drives me..to such an extent that now , as Grisham would say, I have forgotten more books than most people have read.

Each of the books has been special in their own ways..1984 was the first serious fiction that i read, after reading reams of hardy boys' and famous five. I still remember being terrified by the whole totalitarian nightmare..and the final punishment. and ofcourse the immortal lines
"millions of people, all with the same face". a total destruction of human personality.

CAtch 22 has been my best friend. i read this novel exclusively for one year..absorbing the whole experience of writing a book. To my no surprise, reading any of my older emails reveals a raw n powerful writer wielding words like a warrior of yore; hacking, slashing & bludgeoning his way through the clutter of the english language. How i wish that i could write as i used to write earlier..that boy was simply a genius with words

The Godfather has been the entertainer & Mila18 ha been the gut-wrecher. poles apart as books, they have sustained a deep running interest in crime and judaism in me.

Finally, ZEN; it was not on the original list of books..and i heard about it pretty late. but its special because of the special bond it helped me forge. nothing more on that. this..is after all a public blog.

Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs:so traveller, the journey ends here or does it start...


now..for the fun part..who are gonna be the unsuspecting victims.
Rohit can now wite about books to his hearts content.
i would love to see Solo blog on this. please oblige dude.
Vineet Manghani is next.
having Rohit k aint a bad idea either.
so, finally, i would choose Prateek. a hard day's blog, eh !
special invite to Swati..i dont know anything about your own tastes..so would like to see




(the author wishes to express his insane desire to thank all the people who anage to make ebooks a reality and help in making a true classless society. let knowledge never be contained. hallejulah! )