Happy New Year!!!

 

sun-rise-in-earth-orbit

Here’s me wishing everyone a great and happy new year 2014. Yes, finally, after a long wait of 365 days, the calendar has finally exhausted itself and the Earth has tirelessly completed yet another revolution around the Sun – though the point in the orbit where it started from and where it finished really has no bearing on us. It might as well have been any other point or any other date, we would still have enjoyed the feeling of the New Year just as well.

Not so overjoyed today are the outer planets, such as Jupitor, Saturn, etc. because they are not seeing the new year anytime soon. It takes both Jupitor and Saturn nearly 12-earth-years to complete their single year, so basically, you need to wait for a really really long time.

Uranus, with its 84-earth-year cycle lags a long long way behind as well. Can you imagine celebrating new year on Uranus?

And the worst of the lot – the saddest of them – I can certainly say are Neptune and Pluto with their own yearly cycle corresponding to 165 and 248 earth-years.

But that does not mean we got the best deal. Mercury celebrates its new year every 88 days, so all the party people…. Next year, forget Ibiza and head to Mercury!!!!

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My Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2013

It has been a month into 2013 already but this year, I have set a target of reading at least 26 books in the Goodreads Reading Challenge 2013 and of hopefully surpassing this number by a good amount. It is Week 6 and I am about to finish my 3rd book of 2013 already:

127 Hours

127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

Before this, I have already finished reading the following:

1. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer (Read)
2. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog (Read)

I know it looks like I am reading mostly mountaineering/adventure/survival books starting of 2013 but I have developed a real liking for this genre.

But if you thought I was stuck with still the same genre, here are also 3 more half-read books that I am still going to continue reading in parallel with my other book depending on my interest level, so it is not that I read only 1 book in 2 weeks:
 
3. The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
4. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
5. The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto “Che” Guevara
 
And, the next few books in my Reading List are:
 
6. Alive: Sixteen Men, Seventy-two Days, and Insurmountable Odds–the Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes by Piers Paul Read
7. No Way Down: Life and Death on K2 by Graham Bowley
 
So, that takes care of 8 of my target of 26+ books in 2013. Any other recommendations?
 
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