Fun Things

What an amazing month July has been!

To begin with, the weather has been not too bad. I had the opportunity to meet some interesting people this month, tried out a few new places to eat out, and also went to the Tomorrowland Unite event in India (which was pretty awesome).

Although my work has been pretty hectic for most of the month, I managed to take out time to do the things I love doing most 🙂

My blog post Letter to my 16 year old self got record views, and I had some very good clients for Tarot (touch wood). All in all, apart from a tiny spell of sickness (sore throat and sniffles) in the last week this month has been great!

Woohoo!

I managed to read a total of 6 books (including a few very long ones) this month – that, I believe is the most I have read in a month, ever since I started working full time.

I’m trying out some new authors and I tried to read different books this month. I have given tiny review shots for each of them, as lately, more and more people have been approaching me for book recommendations. Hope this helps.

Dreamology – Lucy Keating
An “okay” read – light, . Avoidable.
Recommended for : YA, fantasy & romance lovers

The Lowland – Jhumpa Lahiri
Great. Loved the depth.
Recommended for: Anyone who doesn’t mind sad stories.

Rush Home Road – Lori Lansens
An amazing read- glad to have discovered Lori – will definitely read “The Girls” by her. Recommended for: Lovers of African American literature and strong women characters.

Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A good read – better than expected.
Recommended for: Russian Lit and/or Classic lovers

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
A very memorable read – kept me hooked. Made me want to learn Japanese 😛
Recommended for: Anyone and everyone.

The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
Not bad at all – a decent read, managed to remain interesting despite the rants and religious overtones (at times)
Recommended for: Romance lovers, emotional/sappy people

I also started reading “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver. But I got distracted soon. Will pick it up again sometime.

My next few books lined up to read include Catch 22 (Joseph Heller), The Color Purple (Alice Walker), The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls), and Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov).

If I continue at the same speed, I will be able to do more than my planned 52 books this year and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Another foreign language

I also started a 7 week online foreign language course in spoken Mandarin/Chinese. Just completed Week 1 (trust me, not easy, but fun – nonetheless).
Let’s see how it goes 🙂

Other things

Among other things, I have been sleeping better and my dreams have become super vivid too. I also experienced a few bouts of lucid dreaming – wherein in my dream I knew I was dreaming and had partial control over what I saw – I found this to be very interesting and would love to delve deeper into this. Have you ever experienced this yourself?

I started sketching using this very pretty sketching set my friend Farah got me from Dubai