Books - definitely worth reading

After glancing through one of my friend's article on his pastime, I came to know that we share our favourite interests - reading. Although our tastes in terms of authors and subjects are different, in the end , both of us enjoy reading.

From my childhood, I always had a fascination for books. I preferred quiz books rather than Panchatantra stories, dictionaries rather than colouring books. During my college days, I heard the names of Hardy Boys and Enid Blyton. I regretted that I couldn't read their stories when I was a child.

After I started working , my reading has become very aggressive. R.K.Narayan has been my favourite writer till date for the fact that his way of portraying down-to-earth characters and the depiction of a simple life of a person in a typical Indian village has touched me so much. Swami and Friends takes everyone back to the childhood days when we played pranks on our friends and found so many lame excuses to bunk school. An unputdownable book, indeed. The Bachelor of Arts takes us to the next stage in our lives, the memorable college days. Many of the people, whom I interact with say that this is the best work of Narayan. You can find his style and touch remaining the same in The Guide, The English Teacher and Financial Expert, all of which I strongly recommend.

When I go to a bookstore, my legs always take me to either Indian writer section or self improvement section. Robin Sharma has become a very common name in the corporate world today. I read the monk who sold his Ferrari which definitely brought in a lot of motivation. Somehow I prefer stories which has some good messages interspersed in between. On the same lines, I liked Paulo Coelho's Alchemist. A story with a sensible meaning to follow your dreams. Shiv Khera's You can Win and Arindam Choudhary's Count your Chickens before they hatch contain motivational thoughts with some good examples which impressed me so much. These gave me many ideas for my prepared speeches in Toastmasters (Toastmasters, one of my interests - soon to feature in my blog).

I have a liking for newspapers as well, especially The Hindu. Whenever I find time in between my work schedule, I go to the reading room and take a glance at The Hindu.

"Miles to go before I sleep.............Pages to read before I sleep". This is my mantra. I make it a point to read atleast a few pages of any book before I go to sleep every night. I'm also planning to write reviews after I complete a book and update my blog. So keep watching.