Book Talk – What I’m Reading and What I’ve Bought

I thought I’d do a quick post about the books I’m currently reading and the ones I have bought recently.

I’m one of those readers who tends to read multiple books at one time, and in productive months I read around 4-5 books despite my busy university schedule. This is also the reason I am currently working on the contents of a small workshop I’ll be giving at Uni on how we can develop our reading habit. Perhaps more on that later?

I thought I’d share a picture of my bookshelf:

The past couple of weeks have been super busy so I’ve only read about two books. For now I’m reading 12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup, and The Year I Met You by Cecelia Ahern. I love how both books have the word “Year” in them!

It’s really interesting to read Northup’s account of his terrible time as a slave. It’s also very difficult to read too much at one point – especially because I know it is all true and that it is his own writing – his own words, thoughts – and I have watched the movie. But it’s an amazing book and is teaching me a lot about slavery and how we can try to survive in difficult situations. More than anything it’s making me realise that although we might have problems in our lives it’s not as bad as it could have been. There is always something worse in the present or in the past. Worst things can happen, we shouldn’t lose all hope about it.

I’m reading Cecelia Ahern’s novel at the same time because of how serious Northup’s narration is. I feel like I consume and absorb the feelings in the stories I read and it really affects me and my own thoughts. The same actually goes for anything else I see around me – news and personal stories affect me deeply. So Ahern’s book is actually relieving some of the sadness I feel for Northup. What I’m trying to avoid is trivializing one author’s work because of the jarring depth of the other’s.

I recommend both books to you. I think they’re wonderful and each have their own set of lessons. One may appeal more than the other but they’re both good books.

The Reading Club at Uni (Effat University) organized a book fair + literary workshops and lectures today. They call it the Reading Day. Which is wonderful but I really wish they would focus as much on English Literature as they do on the Arabic one. There is no dispute that there are a LOT of people who read in English at Uni. I feel disregarding English books is not good at all.

But! They had a handful of English books at the fair and so I bought this:

Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

And I made these cute bookmarks for my best-friend and I at one of the workshops at Reading Day:

Some days back I went to Virgin Megastores during one of my trips to the mall. In fact, it was the second time I was visiting VM that week.

In my first visit I bought this book:

I’d heard a little bit about Erin Morgenstern and I felt it would be an interesting book. PLUS the cover was kinda super adorably black and silver. I know they say how terrible it is to judge a book by its cover but have you seen Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki’s hardbound designs? Also, they didn’t really have any other awesome books and I just had to buy something.

So…bad luck for me because the second time I’d gone to VM I was thoroughly depressed because they had a LOT of new books and books I had heard tonnes about. Here are some of the first few my eyes fell upon – I’ve heard stuff about all of them and I’m in the mood to try a bit more contemporary books. I didn’t buy any because I’d already gotten Night Circus + I have loads of other books I need to read first.

I usually don’t read YA fiction. I just prefer that are a bit more challenging and mature. Perhaps there are YA books that are remarkable but the ones I have tried to read were just too teenage-y for me.

Anyway! That’s all for now! I’ve gotta finish studying so I can read before bed! Tell me what you’re reading these days. :)ar