It's the flu. Fortunately I had sense enough to get a flu shot in December, after having missed all the free flu shot events at G. T., out of laziness more than anything else, which has helped to convert what might otherwise have been an exceedingly unpleasant experience into something unpleasant but not utterly debilitating. I'm still not back in the pink of health, though, and this hovering around 70% healthfulness has prevented me going to the gym, among other things, which is arguably more annoying than being confined to a sick bed all day. If God had wanted that badly to provoke Job into cursing Him, He might have afflicted him with a bout of flu that left him just unwell enough not to be able to do the things he really enjoyed doing. (I don't know why I'm using conventional capitalizations of God and His Pronouns despite being violently atheist. Maybe it's because I'm a purist in speech and writing and enjoy sending descriptivists into apoplectic seizures.)
I've just finished reading Catch-22. It was one of the five or so books that I'd variously bought ill-advisedly or been handed by all-too-generous friends. It's a miracle I was able to fit all of them - plus any books I may have found lying around the house in Hyderabad - into my suitcase and was still permitted to board the flight home. I recently decided that I'd gone long enough without having read some of the great classics of English literature, and as a result I've undertaken to tackle them one at a time. Catch-22 was one such book. The only thing I'd ever read about Catch-22 was that it was hilarious or that the dialogues were hilarious. My first impression of it could not have been more at odds with mainstream opinion. Not only did I fail to crack a smile for the first ten chapters or so, but I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by the asinine caricatures being paraded as characters. Then at some point I decided that the book was not only hilarious but that the humor was quite simply a work of genius. That impression stuck, and so I now find myself among the hordes of readers who have found Catch-22 hilarious beyond description. The writing is great, too. Heller had a predilection for rich descriptions of the sort that lesser writers like Dan Brown would later be inspired by and give a bad name to. Not to give anything away, but I thought the chapter Snowden was breathtakingly well written. It's always a pleasure to read a well-written account of death and all the human suffering and confusion it leaves in its wake.
I have exactly a week left before I start work. A week. I still can't wrap my head around it. I was browsing through an old post from 2010 in which I talked about mailing in documents incidental to my college application to UIUC. I hadn't known at the time that I would end up going to UIUC, but now four years spent at that venerable institution are a thing of the past, as is the year and a half spent at Georgia Tech after that. I can't help feeling that I didn't appreciate the present enough - yes, even at FIITJEE - and that life has shortchanged me by promising me years but giving me months, so that when I pause and find myself in the year 2017 I can't remember how I got here. Oh, well.
I've just finished reading Catch-22. It was one of the five or so books that I'd variously bought ill-advisedly or been handed by all-too-generous friends. It's a miracle I was able to fit all of them - plus any books I may have found lying around the house in Hyderabad - into my suitcase and was still permitted to board the flight home. I recently decided that I'd gone long enough without having read some of the great classics of English literature, and as a result I've undertaken to tackle them one at a time. Catch-22 was one such book. The only thing I'd ever read about Catch-22 was that it was hilarious or that the dialogues were hilarious. My first impression of it could not have been more at odds with mainstream opinion. Not only did I fail to crack a smile for the first ten chapters or so, but I found myself getting increasingly annoyed by the asinine caricatures being paraded as characters. Then at some point I decided that the book was not only hilarious but that the humor was quite simply a work of genius. That impression stuck, and so I now find myself among the hordes of readers who have found Catch-22 hilarious beyond description. The writing is great, too. Heller had a predilection for rich descriptions of the sort that lesser writers like Dan Brown would later be inspired by and give a bad name to. Not to give anything away, but I thought the chapter Snowden was breathtakingly well written. It's always a pleasure to read a well-written account of death and all the human suffering and confusion it leaves in its wake.
I have exactly a week left before I start work. A week. I still can't wrap my head around it. I was browsing through an old post from 2010 in which I talked about mailing in documents incidental to my college application to UIUC. I hadn't known at the time that I would end up going to UIUC, but now four years spent at that venerable institution are a thing of the past, as is the year and a half spent at Georgia Tech after that. I can't help feeling that I didn't appreciate the present enough - yes, even at FIITJEE - and that life has shortchanged me by promising me years but giving me months, so that when I pause and find myself in the year 2017 I can't remember how I got here. Oh, well.
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