Back to the Books

I haven't had the chance to read many books during my university days. But now, I've begun again. Away from the distracted life and without the worry of assignments and projects, I think this isolation for is ideal for book reading. Recently I finished listening to an audiobook of the old classic "The Secret Garden". I had read it as a kid, in a simplified form.

The last audiobook I heard was "The Time Traveler's Wife". The best thing about an audiobook is that it's like someone reads for you. Though you have to concentrate on the reading. I have drifted many times away if I were not paying attention. I suppose it's  because of the way my mind has been trained to shut out classroom lectures. ;)
A great place to find free audiobooks is http://librivox.org/
Ebooks in the form of pdfs are also good. You'll find them if you look hard enough :i
An audiobook or a pdf, I think, still cannot replace the pleasure of reading a book in hand.

The Fifth Mountain : Answers A Lot of Whys

Finished reading Paulo Coelho's The Fifth Mountain today and it had a lot of lessons in it. The book tries to explain why when everything seems perfect, things fall apart. And one has to believe that eventually life has a good plan in store and get on with rebuilding. Some memorable quotes from the book are: 

• All life's battles teach us something, even those we lose.... you'll discover that you have defended lies, deceived yourself, or suffered for foolishness. If you're a good warrior, you will not blame yourself for this, but neither will you allow your mistakes to repeat themselves
• There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting. What is temporary?... The unavoidable... and what is lasting?... The lessons of the unavoidable.
• A child can teach an adult three things:  to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.