Books from yesteryear

Oft has been said books are the best friends. Little was understood of this before I started reading, or made reading as my hobby habit. Alike many other things this wasn't done in a fortnight, or single handedly.

Back, as in once upon a time: that long back we were highly encouraged by one school teacher of ours to improve English, for she was teaching French, and unless we don't know what a verb (an example) is, and if a word in French is a verb, then it gets 2 levels difficult to demystify a thing. First know what is Verb, then understand what that verb means in English. Ugh.!! Never did I understand nothing of these things much save to eat, to sleep, to see, so on and so forth words. Over the span of the course she tried with her blood and sweat to instill to improve our English, but we were "we" after all: all in vain that time. Seldom we were told meaning in Hindi, for that would have beat the purpose of her teaching French for she was there to teach French and not English, mind it, and motivating us to improve English. That would have only degraded matters for thick-headed like us. She used to tell about authors like Enid Blyton, for books from this author are in simplest form of language. Reading English newspapers at home to work on English, too. But we were altogether a different sample from the population.Yikes.
I tried a lot to read, issued novels from library, asked from neighbors if they read any book, etc. Nothing could seep in back then. A black page was all I could see in novel. 
After all how could I? Every third word was new, and since I didn't understand them, looking them in 6 inch thick English dictionary sounded fun, but after reading not understanding that meaning, the meaning never held any meaning. Ahem.! I left reading, for I didn't understand no word, and since I didn't read, I couldn't understand much from the novels and words. A perfect Catch-22 situation.

Years melted away, somehow determined to improve English from the oozing motivation from my French teacher, I begun reading. Laid my hands on whatever I could find free novels from friends, Reader's Digest, sports articles, random blogs - couple of my friends write marvelously, and share on blogs. I took my dedication to work on English to a new level: bought pirated novel(s) from CST Mumbai, converted PDF to Kindle format, read missing pages of pirated one(s) on PDF requested from a friend, joined book club, well funny times; didn't leave no stone unturned. From excellent works to sometimes crap ones, from Chetan Bhagat, Sidney Sheldon to Margaret Mitchell, and J. K. Rowling. Genres of suspense, detectives, high fantasy fiction, globalization thoughts on economy, to philosophical, I've tried to read in my small life span of habit.

I'd hold on my thoughts, and stop blabbering because I digress from the blog post title. I thought to write another blog post, and share the books I read in 2015, and they are:
  1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 
  2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 
  3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 
  4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 
  5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 
  6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 
  7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  8. Gone with the Wind 
  9. The Hobbit
Well, not an impressive count for an ardent reader, I agree. Nevertheless, I'd continue to devour and savor novels. If I could make any resolution then to read novels more than this count is absolutely one. 
I owe a lot of gratitude to the French teacher for supporting, motivating us back, without her none of this would have been possible, not even in my wildest imaginations.
Merci Beaucoup.!
PS: And, I've read 3 novels in this year as of now. woot-woot!




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