Why can't I read non-fiction?

I've been reading(or rather trying to read) non-fiction for sometime now. I have 4 on my "currently reading" list:
1. If its Raining in Brazil, buy Starbucks: An interesting book about macro economic factors and how they affect the stock market.
2. The Tipping Point: A book by Malcom Gladwell on social networks and how they can spread ideas in the same way epidemics do.
3. Who took my money?: Another book by the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy(just can't remember his name).
4. 7 Habbits of Highly Effective Teenagers: For those who know my age and are wondering why I'm reading this one... maybe I'll post about it one of these days:)

Its been more than a fortnight(actually its almost a month now), and I'm not even close to finishing a single one of them! I wonder why is that? Its definitely not because I don't enjoy books, I LOVE books. This recent inability to read them made me doubt this very statement. So on Friday night I went to the library and issued a Steve Martin legal thriller(The Attorney) and was done with it by Saturday night. That's close to 500 pages in a day!
Its not that non-fiction books are boring, infact some of them are very thought provoking, I've really enjoyed reading the few that I've actually managed to finish, but somehow I just don't seem to be able to get through most of them. I know many people who read non-fiction on a regular basis. My mom loves reading biographies, Dad is all into the Stock Market genre and my roomie has devoured the Gita, the Bible, Gitanjali, Plato and what not!
I've been giving this issue a lot of thought recently. The first question that came to my mind was, why would I want to read non-fiction in the first place? The answer to that was simple, I enjoy learning new things about this crazy but somehow logical world of ours, I get a kick out of finding out how the weather in South America affects the share price of a utilities company on this side of the world, or how is the spread of AIDS is very similar to the spread of the Hush Puppies shoes craze in the pubs in Newyork. And non-fiction is the clear choice for this kind of info. So obviously these books have the stuff that I want, but then why (the hell) can't I read these books?

After spending sometime, building and shooting down theories I think I've got it. Its the same reason that children are taught lessons through stories. Don't get it? Its the same reason that bitter pills come with sugar coated coverings. I want the pill, infact at some levels I need the pill, but I can't handle the bitter taste that comes with it, I'm still the 10 year old who wants to find out why it rains, but I don't want a book on Meteorology or the study of atmospheric phenomena!
Thus my friends....(and other people who for some strange/scary reason are reading this blog), I find refuge in Fiction. I quench my thirst for knowledge of the functioning of Airports or Hospitals or of the Auto Industry by reading Arthur Hailey, I understand the intricacies of Western Law through John Grisham, study the Green House effect (or the lack of it) with Michael Crichton and in an introspective mood seek the company of Paulo Coelho. These are my teachers, telling me stories about people who don't exist going about their imaginary lives, fighting cases, landing airplanes or curing patients, and I take it all in with a mouth hanging open, busy gulping down sweet colored goodies, not knowing or caring that they hide bitter pills inside :)




--------UPDATE(Aug 3rd '05)--------

Finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince(600 pages) in 24 hours. It was just about O.K., however there is no point discussing the book. Doesn't matter whether the book is good or not, coz Rowlings got all of us hooked, and she knows it :). She writes and we read, thats the way it is and will remain till the 7th book. PS: Someone does die, and that person is.....
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not Harry :P

Quarter Century

My Blog is 25 posts old!! Its been a nice ride, though not "all that I ever hoped for". You see I'm very good at hoping for things and thus my poor (25 posts) old blog can't possibly hope to match up to the expectations, but finally the best/only question I ask my self is, if I had to would I do it again and the answer is a no brainer "YES". So there you go, I'm happy to be here on this 25th attempt at.... whatever that is:). Since the only reason, I'm writing this post is that I have nothing else to do right now. Let me update you(who exactly are you? and why would you ever read my blog??), on my little discoveries over the last two weeks.
1. RSS Feeds: I know, I know RSS(Really Simple Syndicate) has been there for a while now, but I "discovered" them for myself only a few weeks back.
2. Bloglines: This online feed reader was a natural extension to the RSS thingy. Its really amazing, one of the few tools/applications that can drastically improve your productivity(in my case productivity means, I can now monitor a dozen more blogs to pass my time:).
3. Firefox: This browser rocks!! I love tabs :D

Every time, I don't blog for sometime, when I come back, I feel confused, I don't know what to blog about, sometimes so much has happened that it would require a couple of hours to put it all down and sometimes you really don't have much to say at all. This particular instance is a combination of the two. I started writing this post after reading a number of blogs archives and thinking that it would be awesome to go back a year in time and read about the person you were, and then the thought struck me that If I don't write about who I am today, how can I read about it one year from now??

Reading Update

Updated the books section. As you can see I've been busy reading stuff:). All the serious material was turning out to be a bit of a drag so decided to go back to fiction, started with The Rule Of Four. Seems O.K, read up till late last night, which did not help with the Monday blues. Managed to catch the 10 o'clock bus somehow and have been a bit drowsy the whole day. Will resist the temptation to finish it tonight as I have a deliverable first thing tomorrow morning, can't afford to be late. The weekend was fun and hectic, V,T,J,A has come from tvm and hyderabad. Went to LalBagh.... twice in two days:). Binged on lots of junk food and discovered the pleasures of paid coffee.
The coming week looked as if it would turn out to be another one of those slow ones, without any work, but during a momentary loss of sanity mailed my manager, explaining that I was free, getting bored and would love to help him out with any work that he can give me!!! I know.. I know, I'm seriously considering medication, hopefully it was just a once a lifetime thing, helped by my lack of sleep last night. Going by my managers reaction I think I will be busy for the rest of week starting from tomorrow morning. Lets see if I can sneak in another post during the next few days.

Been a while....

Its been a while! I've been very very busy, with so many things happening one after the other. My bro and buddies were here for a few days, it was awesome, don't know where the days went. Next thing I knew, had a ton of work with a unbelievable dead line( boss told me that I better believe it:). Just finished the work today(I didn't have breakfast or lunch! Since morning I've had
1. A cup of tea
2. A slice of chocolate cake(was my friends bday)
3. A pack of chips....
Going out for a pizza. Gonna bing on a 8 inch with extra cheese ssssslurp! Ohhh by the way went for "Bunty aur Bubli" with the gang, it sucked big time, the highlight was watching my bro trying to get through the movie(he had the same look on his face that he used to get when mom used to blast for him something) . It was hilarious:) and he got to go again back at home, his friends forced him! LOL! Sometime, just sometimes I pity the guy;)
me hungry, will blog soon, ciao.......

Only the paranoid survive

Yesterday night I finished "Only the paranoid survive" by Andrew S. Grove, the CEO of Intel. I had started it a while ago, but due to various reasons had left it half way. The whole book revolves around the concept of strategic inflection points. What are they? Why are they so important? How do you spot one? How do you survive one? Most of it was typical management theory, you know... the usual stuff. The high point of the book was the last chapter: Internet, signal or noise? In this chapter, the author applies all his priciples(theory) to the new concept of the internet. Here the point to note is that, this book was written in 1996, before internet really took off, before the dotnet phenomenon and way before the internet bubble burst. The conclusions he comes out with are bang on! Even in retrospect, this chapter couldn't have been written any better. The experiences and situations that Grove uses are also very interesting and some of them are very suprising! Did you know that Intel was a semiconductor memory company, and that it moved over to microprocessors only when the japanese started kicking there ass in the memory chip market. A good read for anyone interested in the history of the computer hardware/software industry.

Net Identity

Been reading a lot of blogs recently, and noticed one thing which was common across all. It is the use of a separate net identity. This is something that I've never had. I think having a net identity would be very liberating. Its not so much about hiding your existing identity as it is about getting a new one for a new world. Another thing I noticed is that most "alias" arent cool or heroic(like superman or jamesbond:). Here is a random list or some: gurupanguji, wakechick, britchick(lots of chicks:), mbagirl, iceman07. More commonly it is something personal, something you are passionate about.
Inspired, I decided to get myself one. I started out with my name and thought of picking out a part of it, but since its barely one and a half symbols, there isn't much scope there. My next idea was to use one of my nick names. Well I've had only two nick names in my life. The first one was used probably till I entered my teens, which I'm not going to mention or adopt as it is one of those innocent baby sounds that can be twisted to mean lots of other things(know what I mean:). And the second was given to me by one of my classmates in school, which is Chow by clipping my surname. Thought about it, but it sounds oriental, not that I have anything againt that, it just isn't me. So the hunt is still on... Any suggestions?

Clients on campus....

I came back from home last tuesday. Since then have been slogging it out at office(clocking 15hrs a day). Been busy with preparations for a client visit. Yesterday left office around 1!(i.e. today morning). Today the clients are here, and since I'm not involved in the presentation, I suddenly have nothing to do. I'm tired, sleepy, bugged, worried, bored and I have a headache. In the background, a "PR" problem has cropped up. Should get resolved/blown-up-to-dangerous-propotions by today evening. Not looking forward to it.
Just finished a cup of extra strong tea hoping that it will get my spirits up. Doesn't seem to have helped much. Been reading lots of MBA blogs. I have four books at home that I have started and haven't been able to get back to for more than a fortnight due to work. Will try to do some reading this weekend. Got a forward today and discovered this french new reporter Melissa Theuriau. She looks awesome, been a while since a face struck me as so beautiful. Hey my headache seems to have dissapeared, feeling much better(Must be the tea)! Pangs blog something.. ur exams are over! I think I will take this current upswing(of my mood) and put it to some constructive use.... Ciao.
Some of the blogs I've been reading today: Simba, WakeChick, BritChick, IceMan07, PoweYogi.

Traveling back home....

Its thursday morning, and I'm a few hours away from starting my trip back to trivandrum. This will be my fourth trip back home. I just wish the journey was a bit shorter and a little less eventful. I travel by bus. A typical trip starts at around 6:00pm. With one stop for food, the scheduled arrival time at tvm is 8:00am the next morning, i.e. 14 hours for the entire journey. This however is the theory. In most cases the actual time goes upto 18hours. My second trip took 20! It was a mess. The tsunamis had just taken place, the president was visiting the state and the roads were blocked. I reached home in the afternoon.
For people visiting chennai, the journey can be completed in as less as 4 hours!!(or so they tell me) If that was the case I would go home every weekend! But I shouldn't be complaining, some of my colleagues have to take a flight and then a train to reach home. One of them needs atleast 4 days just for traveling(total). Then there are other people who are based out of bangalore itself, but some of them are staying far away from Electronics City and spend 3 hours every day for commuting! I don't know which is worse. The best thing to do is to be happy with what you have, and how do you do that? just take a look at people who are worse off, trust me there will always be someone around:)

New apartment

This weekend was very busy, we (arj and I)spent both days relocating to the new place. It was a very new experience, we bought all kinds of things for the first time, buckets, brooms, mops, drinking water! Next was the cleaning process. We dusted, swept, scrubbed and mopped. It may seem strange but, i had a blast scrubbing away at the layers of dust that seemed to have fallen in love with the floor of my room. Next we filled up the showcase in the hall with all kinds of things, mostly books. arj has an impressive arsenal of books, including the "Bhagwad Gita" and verses from the "Prophet". For the house warming, arj suggested that we quote Kahlil Gibran:).
Finally... I have my own place. The night too was very eventful, the rooms were very hot, and i saw arj get up around midnight and start pouring water all around his bed!! why? because evaporation would lead to cooling:). Anyway the best part of the whole thing was today morning. When i ended up getting up at around 6!! Now for people who know me, this will come as a shock. It was because my room faces east, and as the sun rose, it sent its warm rays through my bedroom window to persuade me to quit the dream world. It was a lovely feeling, i opened my eyes and the first thing i saw were the swinging branches of the lush green trees right outside our place through the bedroom window. I'm looking forward to getting up each morning:)