{"id":2067,"date":"2015-01-09T15:10:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T10:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=2067"},"modified":"2015-01-11T20:30:45","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T15:30:45","slug":"our-reading-resolutions-afia-aslam-papercuts-magazine-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/our-reading-resolutions-afia-aslam-papercuts-magazine-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Reading Resolutions: Afia Aslam, Papercuts magazine Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"

New year, new books, new resolutions! This month, the Desi Writers\u2019 Lounge team is sharing its\u00a0reading resolutions: goals for the new year, finally tackling those to-be-read piles. Join the conversation by sharing your resolutions in the comments and on\u00a0Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I spent some days in Islamabad last December sorting through my late grandfather\u2019s books. Several gems appeared, most notably a 12-volume set of the Makalaat-e Sir Syed (1923 edition).<\/p>\n

The books, roughly categorized, were about politics, policy, history, Urdu, and health. I was struck by the noticeable lack of fiction, and in contrast, the noticeable lack of non-fiction in my own collection in Karachi. The wasteland\u00a0that was my Urdu repertoire also stood out in uncomfortably sharp relief, and there was a sense of regret and embarrassment as I packed up the Makalaat to be shipped off to a relative who would be genuinely excited about reading and owning them. \u201cWe are not worthy of these,\u201d I thought morosely on my mother’s and my own behalf as the last of the tape was slapped onto the box.<\/p>\n

There is so much to read, and so little time to do it in, and even less space to store the books (I remain a staunch supporter of the printed book, however, the only Kindle I ever owned still lying unused and \u2013 by now \u2013 outdated in my bedside table). But I am in a position to choose the books I read differently, and sorting through Abbi\u2019s books told me quite clearly that I ought to be doing that.<\/p>\n

For me, reading is part of a larger project: a life project, an education project, an identity project. In the last year, riding on the wings of the DWL Readers\u2019 Club, I was reading widely but entirely in English fiction (the only exception being a biography of the Prophet Muhammad by Leslie Hazelton). And because of my work at DWL, I tend to read more South Asian fiction in English generally. Those choices need to change now, consciously so.<\/p>\n

Hence, these are my reading resolutions for 2015:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Read at least two non-fiction titles on politics<\/li>\n
  2. Read two biographies of authors or poets<\/li>\n
  3. Read five Urdu titles<\/li>\n
  4. Read more Urdu poetry<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here\u2019s hoping!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    (Addendum: A fifth reading resolution – read as many as possible of the unread books that I’ve purchased over the years. This is increasingly beginning to look difficult to pull off…)<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    New year, new books, new resolutions! This month, the Desi Writers\u2019 Lounge team is sharing its\u00a0reading resolutions: goals for the new year, finally tackling those to-be-read piles. Join the conversation by sharing your resolutions in the comments and on\u00a0Facebook and Twitter.   I spent some days in Islamabad last December sorting through my late grandfather\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[470],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2067"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2094,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2067\/revisions\/2094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}