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Numbers Play!
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On October 13, 2020, having finished another book, I counted the books read this year, by counting the reviews in my blog. (My kindle, naturally, counts only the books read on kindlè.)
The number was 98. Last year, counted from March 19th onwards, it had been 39.
Idly, wondering the average rate thus year, I counted the days until October 13th this year.
The number was 287. Again, wondering, I compared the two numbers to check the rate.
It was 14 books every 41 days!
Numbers are still having fun with me! I realised it when I was 61 in '16, and had suddenly realised having been through 16 leap years, and how rare that phenomenon was.
Before that, it was buying a ring for a truly amazing price and sudden realisation of the date being mathematically unique every century. Before that, another unique date was that of joining the Pondicherry University on 8th August '88.
Our wedding date, set by his parents a few years later, was 8th August too, but the year didn't add to the play of numbers that I am aware of yet.
Wonder what next. 100 books by 20th October 2020 would be good.
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Thursday, October 15, 2020.
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Well, 100 books by 20th October 2020 did happen, and too 102 by October 22, 2020!
Further such numerical wonders weren't easy, since I read a Shirer work - it wasn't just length, but the import as well; and this was his final piece of autobiographical trilogy, which covered several decades of one's own life as a growing awareness and consciousness, so naturally while one read one stopped to reflect how much one concurred and how prescient this author was, and wondering if there was something missing in thst one lived a few miles away for years, was quite unaware of this, much less thinking of seeking an opportunity to see him and hear him.
But then, after this, it was quite late in the year, and one felt a rush as December brought one close to over 120, but one couldn't get over the 14 in 41 rate! Could one get a better number? There had been books one had read over the decades of reading, perhaps some reviews were yet to be penned? This brought it to 142 on December 31 - one had expected a couple more, but blogger said 142 - and one finished Albert Einstein's The World As I See It, a few hours before midnight.
A while before, after seeing which Agatha Christie's works I could remember, which I could find titles to where I remembered the book vividly, and then looking for more, I'd discovered that the Amazon site - Shelfari gone a few years now - had about two dozen collections of Jane Austen. Three complete collections being on my kindle, I'd started those reviews. But on Shelfari I would review all I could, and decided I'd do it for the Austen's works - complete collections, to begin with - and thought, why not keep copies of the individual reviews? So there were 23 more.
Only, funnily enough, blogger decided they were all January 01, 2021, even though the Amazon site noted them published on December 31, 2020! The two separate sets were published simultaneously by me, so it was difference of opinion between sites. I decided I'd use both dates for each of them on the blogger, and leave it at that.
142 is a number nice enough - 2020 being leap year, with 61×4 days (there's the 61 again), and even 122 books would be nice enough, but since the number was better, reaching for an even better was an effort that seemed worth, however ridiculous! After all, kindle tells me it's eightysomething, and even though several of them were complete collections or anthologies, one with well over two dozen and another with over a dozen separate books, of which one was a collection of 142 stories and another a collection of poems (Montgomery did write a lot, why couldn't one have discovered her before it was so nontrivial to see PE?), still, one didn't argue, one merely maintained it was valid to count reviews.
Now comes reaction. The newly begun on December 25th, Middlemarch, which I thought would be fast since I'd had the impression I'd seen the film, is quite slow, for several reasons. One, no it wasn't Middlemarch but another Eliot that I'd seen a film, apparently, unless this book is the same but slower than it seems. Two, she's good, but does make one not only go over for appreciation, but also do a double or several take often, with heavy convoluted long sentences that are worth it. And three, I'm in no mood to race 2021, let 2020 win.
At that, 2021 wins already all by itself, being a product of two consecutive primes, as my other half informed me to our shared delight. But books, kindle asked me for a goal and I set it at 40, one more than 2019; it seems too much at this rate, since I've a dozen or so complete collections of various classic authors, and shall be surprised to finish more than one! So kindle might count it at one. Do I count reviews? Blogger set it at 23 on the first day, despite my racing to have it set at the day before! That mixed it up!
And this, too, is just a few minutes into 11th!
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Sunday, January 10, 2021 - Monday, January 11, 2021.
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One June 25, clocked 151, in 176 days. Today, June 27, it's 152, in 178 days.
This is despite the massive heart attack on February 17, as discovered by medical authorities on March 6th, when swollen legs and inability to breathe became so acute one lost fear of hospital and surrendered with relief.
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