Thinking about 'Hinduism'....

Disclaimer: Just my naive thoughts....

Chatting with Karthik. Ended up talking about 'Hinduism' and drifted away thinking about it.
I prefer calling it as Hinduism and not Hindu dharma or religion. It was always defined as 'the way of life' and not in today's twisted way. But anyway, I am not writing about that.
I have talked to him about this 3-4 times and every time I realize that I barely know about Hinduism. The main point is that I have not yet read anything about it. Not even Bhagvadgeeta! I had read few 'adhyay' from Gita but I was a kid at that time and was not at all philosophically inclined.
I wish to read up more about it. To think of it, all the shrutis, smrutis and samhitas like the four Vedas and Upanishads , AaraNyaks etc. must be rich of knowledge. Knowledge which is somewhere necessary for a person's philosophical evolution. While reading such things , you suddenly come across to the answers to the questions that you never realized you had. A conscience building experience, I would say.
Moreover, I think that reading these things is like reading and knowing your philosophical history as history is not only the kings and queens and their kingdoms, but even the thought process that existed in that era. All the this literature is damn old and it would be really nice to know what Hinduism actually was. It might be really broad minded, but I think people start following it without understanding it properly which makes them orthodox and gives it a bad name and a twisted nature.
I feel that its a rich heritage of which I know nothing. When I wrote the words AaraNyaks n Upanishads n stuff, I know that those are just the names stuck in my brain since school, just like the other random bits and pieces of unindexed information. I am curious about it. I know that I wont be having patience to read a lot of stuff but some thing is better than nothing! Starting to read the BhagvadGeeta now.