The Pensieve

With the advent of e-books, software readers, hand-held devices and the Project Gutenberg , you literally have access to more than a book shelf. A good e-book reader for your mobile when you are standard at some place with nothing to do is Mobipocket reader . It comes along with a good PC based e-book creator that can take simple HTML or .txt files and convert into a format usable from a mobile device. With the text files combined with Emacs and a few regexps, I was able to convert most of the files to readable html files in a few minutes and feed them back to the e-book format converter for hours of readable entertainment. So, my current bookshelf contains: Arabian Nights Robinson Crusoe by Defoe Daniel The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce Dracula by Bram Stoker With these books with me, who would mind waiting on a long queue?

Going forward... Happy Diwali to anyone who has managed to reach this site! With this being a long weekend, by next novel that I recently read was NEXT by Michael Crichton, based on the new advances that are being made in the world of genetic engineering and the implications of their effects in the social world. Good read which changes the perspective of the darker side of generic engineering in the ever changing world.

The time machine Managed to get a copy of the King Solomon's Mines by Henry Rider Haggard. The book was originally published at 1855, more than 150 years since I am reading it. I'm sure that it would transport me back in time revealing how people lived and the problems that they faced. Of course, you can get the text in an electronic form from the Project Gutenberg for free, but I prefer the traditional form of reading where you can 'shutdown' any time and 'restore' in a jiffy. The other book that I have in reserve is The Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864). There are so many classics that you can get access to for free if you do not mind staring at your display or PDA. But don't miss them out.