2020, the year might not have been a great year for many. Thanks to the Wuhan Virus.

However, for me, it was quite the opposite. It was among one of the finest years of my life. This was the year I had fulfilled many of my long pending wishes from my bucket list.

Actually, the golden period started right in September 2019 itself, wherein I got to do an extensive solo bike trip across the Himalayas and this necessarily included the long pending Char Dham Yatra. And despite the heavy travelling I was doing, I always carried a book with me and read at night before retiring to bed. One prominent author I read was Agatha Christie.

And the reading habit stuck with me when I relocated to a new place in January 2020, a place that was going to have a profound impact on me in the days to come.

And during these times, I continued to read a mixed lot of authors, mostly foreign. Some of them were quite popular and I have heard their names, or at least their work which was adapted as movies.

While some were pretty much unknown to me and now that reading before bed became a habit, I wasn’t limiting myself to any specific authors. And this was across genres, romance, thrillers, medical, legal, mythology, espionage, and fantasy. And owing to my location, I couldn’t always get a hard copy. This was the first time, I actually started reading ebooks, particularly the works of Robin Cook.

And I repeat, though the start of 2020 had disastrous consequences for many, my life went ahead largely unaffected, owing to the nature of my job and the location where I was. And things were going beyond my expectations until September 2020 and then things begin to take the downside path, however, the good things in my life were so good that I didn’t pay much attention to the things that were actually going downhill.

And enter 2021, by this time, after all the trial and error, I clearly decided that I would self-publish my book. I mean, the actual self-publishing route and not through a vanity press. And based on some feedback which I have got, I once again begin reading contemporary Indian authors other than Amish and Ashwin Sanghi.

And some of these works included (all of them through ebooks):

Love @ Facebook by Nikita Singh

When Dimple Met Rishi @ Sandhya Menon

One Indian Girl by Chethan Bhagat

The Rule Breakers by Preeti Shenoy

The Girl of My Dreams by Durjoy Dutta

You Are The Best Wife by Ajay K Pandey

So, on the reading front, I was still going strong and during the years 2020 and 2021 too, I have read quite a lot of books, written by authors I have known before and by those I just wanted to give a try.

Because Why Not?