Friday, July 30, 2010

Overcoming Reader's block

You might have heard of writer's block. Its a condition where in the write loses the ability to produce new work. There could be various reasons for this, the wikipedia link gives a very good brief on the condition.

However I am here talking about reader's block, which is something I've been suffering for quite sometime now. Which is a condition that I am sure many of you would have guessed correctly by now, is the inability to read any new work of fiction. I also do know the reason for it, my love for the Harry Potter series!! Yes guys, I am not joking! One the risks of reading the HP series is that you get so addicted to the books that you just cannot come out of it and think of reading anything new. I was introduced to the HP series very late (2004!), although I had heard of the series before I had not really got down to reading it, I was busy completing my collection of Frederick Forsyth novels. You wont believe that I took a liking to the HP story not by reading the original work of JK Rowling, but one really convincing fan fiction. I had received the ebook through mail (The Order of the Phoenix) and assumed it to be the real one and to be fair I really did enjoy the book. Thats when I decided to purchase  the first four books (assuming that I had already read the 5th) and completed reading the books in a matter of 2 weeks.

My brother was visiting us then and he had at that time just completed  reading the 5th book (which was surprising back then because my bro had never shown interest in reading novels, to be fair to him now all that has changed, he has read quite a few books now on a broad range of topics) and was discussing something on the storyline. Thats when I realized that I hadn't read the 5th part at all. I did manage to read it immediately afterwards and had promptly booked, collected and read the 6th & 7th books on the day of their release in India.

Its now 3 years since the release of the deathly hallows, but I still haven't completely recovered from the reader's block. I've tried various cures ranging from re-reading all my fav FF novels, all time fav "October Sky", tried out new authors like James Rollins (who is good btw), tried delving into sci-fi and cyberpunk genres but all of them have resulted in me coming back to square one!! I had to resort to re-reading the HP series another couple of times to satisfy my insatiable appetite for reading. I am now desperate. I need to get over this block. I hope that FF's new book thats due to release this Nov will help me get over this. But if anybody who has gone through similar feeling/condition have few suggestions/advice for me I will be very happy to hear them.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Doing a Phoenix



Been wanting to do this for sometime now and re-incarnate this blog which was long dead the second time. Suddenly decided to do this today. Found few brilliant new templates on blogger and thought of trying them out and lo...the blog has re-incarnated...but doesn't have any new content.... Need to think of something to blog now...

UK election results - A reflection of India in late 1990s



UK heading to coalition politics brought back vivid memories of the Election and Govt of India in late 90s. Guess all nations have to deal with coalition at some point of time. Maybe India can well give some lessons to UK now......