Reading Again

Always, at every moment, asleep and awake, during the most sublime and most abject moments, Amaranta thought about Rebeca, because solitude had made a selection in her memory and had burned the dimming piles of nostalgic waste that life had accumulated in her heart, and had purified, magnified and eternalized the others, the most bitter ones. 

                                                                          - excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude

I've gotten back to reading. Or so I would like to think. During the winter break, I managed to read 'Love In The Time of Cholera', my first Marquez. I was hooked. Every moment described in excruciating details, the semi-fantastical setting and the heart breaking story of unrequited love was unlike anything I had read earlier. So I decided I would pick up 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' next. I'm a little more than halfway through it and have a feeling that I would finish it this time. My previous attempt during the winter of 2007-08 had been a disaster. In hindsight, I was not in the state of mind required for the rather slow and intense reading.

I'm probably the worst multi-tasker I know. This, despite being almost done with my MBA! So I cant, for example, read and watch TV at the same time. Or browse and listen to music. I don't enjoy it and I invariably end up losing one thread completely. Anyway, the point is, I need time and space to read novels. So last Saturday when I woke up early (8 o' clock) and saw the sun streaming through the balcony door, I decided not to open my laptop and instead pick up the book. For the next 5 hours or so, I kept reading. Stopping only for the cup of tea and bowl of cereal in between. The phone didn't ring and there was no music playing. And the world didn't change because of my absence from Facebook.

Enough talking about reading. Back to doing it.