21/04/2020

I can't say I have been reading voraciously — however, I have been switching books quite regularly, taking up much more than I can handle. I'm of the group of people who cannot quit a book even if it gets boring at some point. I don't like leaving anything unread, even if it's not my favourite piece of work. Speaking of which, yesterday, I finally finished reading Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment. I think I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts but I picked up that book a few years ago and was unable to get through it, not because I wasn't interested in what the author had to say but more because the copy I had wasn't exactly easy on my eyes. When I acquired a much better copy a couple of weeks ago, things really changed. 

I'm not going to be the first one to admit this but I'm rather compelled by screens and I do spend a lot of screen time for more reasons than you may know. In the past year, I also got hooked (quite literally) to a couple of mobile games and I have found it really difficult to put my phone down. Last week, one of my flatmates recommended that I try doing something different on my phone since I couldn't separate it from my hand anyway — reading. That was an easy call for me to make because I also like epub formats very much for their convenience. No, I'm not the kind who prefers ebooks over "real" books (what is a real book anyway but a little dataset of knowledge irrespective of its medium?) but I have to say reading books digitally is personally easier.

My reading app lets me highlight, copy, share and quote texts. It also offers an in-app dictionary that knows the meanings of almost every word of English that exists, which is nice because I'm only ever reading English books. Although, one of my goals for this year is pick up Urdu books to improve my grasp of the language. I've been talking about it for almost 4 months now but last evening, I did finally procure a copy of a much vied for book whose name I will not mention here because it is banned. But I find it extremely interesting — aside from how it is also rather challenging for me to read because my brain cannot process and pronounce some of the words my brain reads.

Anyway. (What are we doing here anyway?)