My Journey of Books

I remember my childhood. I remember those summer vacations when I used to get bored. I would wait for my exams to get over so eagerly and in a day or two I'd get bored. I would ask my mother what I should do. She would tell me to play something, I'd play and then come back and ask her the same. Even she didn't understand what to tell me more. Now I wish she had had an idea of giving me books to read. I'd have read many books. Atleast I'd have started reading. When I was in 9th standard, my Marathi teacher told me to read some books. I had read few small Marathi books like Vyakti Ani Valli, Batatyachi Chaal by Pu.La. Deshpande. And the other science teacher told me to read Mrutyunjay. That was the first huge book I had started reading. I had almost finished it. But then because of hype of S.S.C and H.S.C, I was supposed to concentrate more on regular studies. So the book reading stopped again. Then during engineering, it started reading again. But then I read only few books. Still I was not so fond of books. I had liked few of the Sidney Sheldon's books. Then I read “One night at call center” which I had liked a lot! I was amazed by the story. Who knew that there are still more a lot better books?

Then when I entered Amdocs, I met Sharan. I knew him as a geek and a purely techie guy. I had an impression that he might not have read even a single page besides his techie stuff. And just to tease him and to show him that I do something more than him, I told him that I read so and so book by Chetan Bhagat and that was awesome. He must have laughed inside at my stupidity and show off! :D Anyway, then after commenting on the poverty of the book, he told and later gave me to read The Kite Runner. I took 2-3 months to read that book. But when I had completed it, I understood what the good novel is! Later I came to know about this blog. And when I went through all the blog posts I was sunk into shocks, surprises, wonders, amazement, and what not! I loved the blog. It was the great source of information about books, reading. There I questioned about my existence till now. Like, I had just born then and wondered which world I was in till then. I feel ashamed sometimes! :(

Later, I started visiting book stores. I would pick up any book and buy as I didn’t know which is good and which is not. This way, I bought quite a good number of books to inspire myself. Whatever books I read after that, I have already blogged about them.

Few months back, I started reading Shantaram. I have never read such a huge book! The book doesn't have very difficult language. But while reading it, I realized that if I know meaning of all the words, then I'll enjoy it more. Meanwhile I was reading another Marathi book. I can understand Marathi very well and even if I don't know the word, I can figure out its meaning by its roots, prefix and suffix. And I enjoy it more. Hence, I decided to take a halt. My English vocabulary is very poor. My reading speed is pathetic. And because of this, I take a lot of time to read which doesn’t allow me to concentrate for long. I found people on goodread read 2-3 books in a week. Then getting inspired I decided to work on my vocabulary and speed of reading. I bought few books for it like - Word Power Made Easy, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, How to Read Better and Faster, All about Words.

Word Power is a good start when you want to work on your English vocabulary. One can read a session from it every day and get happiness. It is an excellent book to boost your efforts. Every day was awesome when I was reading this book. But I know I'm still an indigent.  The ocean is too large. I just need to keep swimming, keep swimming! All about Words is not my cup of tea yet. But I found some nice tips of reading there. The dictionary I bought is also good. You can just open it whenever you want, you'll get more than a dull way to learn words (puzzles, tips, concepts etc). It also has a CD which has software. If you are really hungry for words, you'll get much from it. How to read better and faster has nice tips of reading and some exercises too. That'll definitely help. If you want to be an avid, voracious reader then go for this book.

Then, other than books, I have got few applications installed on my iPod. These applications are nothing but word games, word tests. Search for tests for GRE/SAT. Search for any vocabulary application. There are lots of them. These games are helpful whenever I find free minutes. Playing with words is also a nice way to learn. Other than games, we can also find some podcasts about vocabulary. I found certain 2 minutes episodes, where each episode concentrates on a word or two and discusses about their meaning, their usage etc. Good when you are travelling in bus and can't read books.

The other source of words is watching English movies, soaps.

Some of the best tips to learn new words -

1) Read as much as you can and whenever you encounter new words, search for its meaning, check the pronunciation, speak up the word, and try to use it wherever possible.

2) Read anything, anywhere. Voracious readers don't leave even the food coupons and bus/train tickets.

3) Avoid making mistakes when you write/pronounce the words.

If I had known these tips few years ago, I'd have been definitely a lot better person. I don't want anyone to be deprived of knowledge just because he didn't find anyone to guide, like I hadn’t. And therefore this blog post!

Next, I want to improve also my writing. My writing is pathetic. I gave a friend a blog of another friend to read. He thought it was mine and exclaimed - "tu itna achchha kabse likhne lagi!" That was not my blog. :( That tells me I have a lot of scope to improve.