I know it is close to two months since we hit 2022. And I think we still have enough time to talk of reading and learning. Last year I read around 30 books across a wide range from business to history and psychology and memoirs. But this year I decided not to take it slow. There are few reasons.
- I wanted to focus on a few other things this year which will reduce my time in hand to read.
- I wanted to explore some classic fiction works that I have not had a chance to read and also delve a bit more into history
- I want to explore Audio books
I started the year of course reading Reid Hoffman’s ‘Master’s of Scale” the book version of his podcast. And I also read a biography of Angela Merkel. And now almost half way through ‘A Hundred Years of Solitude’
I wanted to cover War & Peace and Crime and Punishment this year…. And if possible Ulysses also… And these are all pretty long reads. And I thought let me try Audio books.
I have used Audible before but they were all for Non Fiction. I have the feeling that fiction in audio is difficult. Anyways I have decided to give it a try and I have taken a membership.
As always when you take a membership you go ahead and search for the titles you want and put them to the wish list. You get 1 credit for a month and can pick one book with that. That was the model before.. but it has become better now. You also have a lot of free books as part of the membershsip.
When I looked around I found that War & Peace and many of the Dostoevsky classics were available immediately… including Crime & Punishment. So was Ulysses and War & Peace and the Amazing Lectures from Great Courses that covers philosophy and history and more…
Now that puts you in a soup… the same one I had before.. I buy a book and then instead of starting to read that I pick one from library and read. I have quite a substantial amount of unread books at home… so why go to library… anyway that is for a different day..
T tried listening to both ‘War & Peace’ as well as Crime and Punishment…. I also listened to a few lectures on the philosophy of science… I realized that while the Non Fiction went very well with my listening pattern… Fiction was not easy… I think I need to try harder to see if I can consume fiction in audio properly…
I also used my first credit on audible with the book ‘Gandhi’ by Ramachandra Guha… I had been wanting to read it since I read his ‘India after Gandhi’.
The goal however is to get done with one of the Fiction before I head on to Gandhi.
Penpositive Outclass 
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