Sum up: May-June 2021

In the past couple of months, I’ve picked up a number of books, only to read the first few pages and then put them down on my work desk to collect dust. Even right now, I have four books sitting there in a pile, and I have yet to finish any single one of them.

The one that I’m more likely to finish before July is up, is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Incidentally, I thought I was doing a re-reading with this one, but only later figured out that the first time I read Brave New World, it was an abridged version. So really, this is like reading the book for the first time.

The one book that I’ve actually managed to finish reading back in May (and I have not completed one book in the whole of June) was Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air.

I don’t usually read books that are personal narrations of a real-life event, so this was something new to me. It was interesting enough, and I managed to gain some sort of an insight to mountaineering and what an expedition to the highest peak on the planet entails. I did feel that the author tried his best to be inclusive in his writing, in trying to bring non-mountaineering folk (like myself) along on the journey, in making sure that we understood not only the stakes, but everything that was involved to finally make it to the top.

It was interesting, but I still felt like an outsider for most of the book. Maybe it is also because of the state of the world that we’re in right now, with lockdowns running rampant in various countries due to the outbreak of COVID. Spending time outdoors with fresh air and people just feels alien, in a way. Almost like something from a very long time ago. Something we no longer have as matter-of-fact, and something we’re looking forward to hopefully in the not-to-distant future.

It hasn’t been the best reading year for me so far. I’ve had bad reading spells when I simply cannot digest the words on the page, and of the few that I’ve managed to read, they didn’t all speak to me. Again, I want to put the blame squarely on COVID and what it’s done to us emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Maybe the second half of the year will be better. Maybe that’s all we can hope for.