One of my biggest regrets of 2009 and 2010 was that I had totally lost the habit of reading books. I continue to pick up books but I hardly get around to finishing them. In 2010 the only book I read was “The Guide”. So for Mar 2011 my task was simple and clear, “Finish reading any one book from my collection.”

I picked up the book “The Way of the Weasel” by Scott Adams, for the task. I had read a few chapters already but with the scheme of things I would have probably finished reading the book in 2020. Besides that, the book was also a gift that I had received a couple of years ago(one of the first in a series of books as gifts) and I have had it at arm’s length since then coz I just cant resist Scott Adams’ writing.

Half way thru the month I was going great time. I was doing so well in fact that I planned to raise the bar and read two books in the month. The second choice was “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. This was another book I had wanted to read for a long time and thought that the idea of a challenge would spur me onto reading it. But as things would have it I was traveling a lot towards the end of march(more on that soon) and couldn’t read more than a couple of chapters of the book.

In the end the project was pretty simple to complete but the important bit is that I probably wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t a project.

So to push me into this habit I plan to read 5 more books in the remaining 9 months of the year. I will start with “Tuesdays with Morrie” and move on to other books I have been waiting to read. I shall be posting my progress in this blog as the year goes by :)

Ps: To make up for the semi lame project for March, my April project is going to be spectacularly ambitious. How ambitious? Well frankly I think the probability of me completing it is very slim. Will give more details about Project April over the next couple of days :)

In the 1960s one of the first computer programs designed to decipher the meaning of sentences was asked to analyze the classic of all statements about temporal movement, “Time flies like an arrow.” It came up with the following message:

1. Time proceeds as an arrow does (that is, quickly or in a direction)
2. One should measure the speed of flies the same way as one measures the speed of an arrow
3. One should measure the speed of flies the same way as an arrow measures the speed of flies.
4. Go measure the speed of flies that resemble an arrow
5. Particular kind of flies, time-flies are fond of an arrow.

- excerpt from the book A Geography of Time by Robert Levine

PS: I just realized that there is a dedicated wikipedia page for the statement!

A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to product to risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book… A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume – something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it’s difficult to call books a ‘mass medium’. No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.

….

These are the places that only books can go.

This is the advantage that books still have. This is why I write.

- The Guts Effect by Chuck Palahniuk

Found this amazing Essay by the author of Fight Club. The essay had me hooked as it explained a phenomenon that happened at the readings of a certain short story by Chuck Palahniuk. The phenomenon is covered in the Wikipedia article of the author:

While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read to his audiences a short story titled “Guts”, a tale of accidents involving masturbation, which appears in his book Haunted. It was reported that to that point, 40 people had fainted while listening to the readings. Playboy magazine would later publish the story in their March 2004 issue; Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing. On his tour to promote Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories in the summer of 2004, he read the story to audiences again, bringing the total number of fainters up to 53, and later up to 60, while on tour to promote the softcover edition of Diary. In the fall of that year, he began promoting “Haunted”, and continued to read “Guts”. At his October 4, 2004 reading in Boulder, Colorado, Palahniuk noted that, after that day, his number of fainters was up to 68. The last fainting occurred on May 28, 2007, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where 5 people fainted, one of which occurred when a man was trying to leave the auditorium, which resulted in him falling and hitting his head on the door. Palahniuk is apparently not bothered by these incidents, which have not stopped fans from reading “Guts” or his other works. Audio recordings of his readings of the story have since circulated on the Internet. In the afterword of the latest edition of “Haunted”, Palahniuk reports that “Guts” is now responsible for 73 faintings.

After reading the essay and the article I was drawn to read the short story. Nothing in the world could have prepared me for the experience that was this story. The story is hardy any length yet I had to pause twice while reading it just so that I dont throw up. After a short walk I finished reading the story.

This story aint for the faint of heart. If you cant handle gore I suggest you simply skip reading it but if you can then you simply must read it.

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk