Reviving an old forgotten hobby

When we are swamped with reports, assignments, classes, tests, all we need is a day when we have nothing to do except sleep, eat, read (novels) , watch your favourite shows, listen to music, dance, etc. etc, and maybe just lie around doing nothing. But when we get that, the nothing to do part, all we want is some work to do... Wierd, but that's the way things are.. I have been so tensed and swamped with a million exams to give, a billion sops to write, a trillion revisions of the sop and then study again , and then sop and then study, and so on and so forth but now there seems to be a big hollow, with nothing to do.

I am not complaining but there is a huge lull, and I know this is the lull before the storm, the storm of stuff to do at graduate school. PhD is no joke. I have seen my friends so swamped with work, that they forget to sleep, the time they are done with today's work, its already tomorrow. So, this long long time which I have before I start cribbing and complaining about humongous loads of work again, I want to utilize it, reading novels, and catch up with all the reading I neglected during engineering. I feel bad thinking about it now. I used to read a lot, a LOT but the desire to do good in engineering, combined with the fierce competition at every level made me drop this habit of mine for quite a while now.

I have recently started reading novels again. I recently finished the famous "A Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. It was good and refreshing to read a different kind of book. The story is about a rebellious boy who thinks absolutely everything is a waste, and is thoroughly confused about his own opinions as well as ambition and intention. This book made me laugh, made me sad, and reminded how much fun is it to get lost in a story. The main protagonist in the book has been thrown out of many schools, mainly because of his disinterest in studies. He had been through a lot in his life, and now instead of trying to get an education he wants to live as an outcast. I liked the ending of this book a lot. How a li'l sister not exactly convince, but through her actions makes her brother to stay at home and not run off to some ranch to herd cattle and basically throw away his life. All of us have gone through this mutinous stage: some extreme, some not too extreme. I liked the way this book was written, it was like someone would have written in his diary, not decorated with flowery vocabulary and stuff but crude and original, as the one sees the world.

So, coming back to my resolution to atleast read 100 books before going to grad school, I am deciding on my next book. I have four books lying in my room: A farewell to arms by Ernest hemigway, A brief history of time by Stephen hawking, Kim by Rudyard Kipling and Maximum city: Bombay lost and found by Suketu Mehta, I am having a hard time deciding which one to pick. But I am most likely to go with Suketu Mehta. I am curious to know about the city which I love and admire from someone else's point of view.

Till then waiting for results and reading novels :)