If you enjoy reading, you must have a collection of tomes. I suggest you flip through these and see how many you have actually read.
Some books are like fashion trends. You feel you must possess these because everyone has been raving about them. So, off you go to the nearest book store and pick up a copy. You place it on the shelf and feel a sense of pride. Now there’s the small matter of finding time to peruse it.
Starting a novel is akin to an adventure. You don’t want to be side-tracked by the mundane call of household chores waiting to be tackled. You know you will not be able to give this new acquisition the attention it deserves. So, you put off the pleasure for another day. Somehow the days run into weeks and then months until, a year later, you catch a glimpse of it and feelings of guilt surface.
You might take it down and sit with it, determined to make a start. Or you just might assuage the guilt by convincing yourself that this is a pleasure that must be savoured and is not to be taken lightly. You recall the rave reviews and know that this requires complete commitment.
I feel that one of the main culprits for our reading less these days is the laptop or desktop that we work on the whole day. After hours of staring at a screen, your eyes need a complete break. This modern tool has robbed me of one of my favourite pastimes. Eye fatigue has set in, which prevents me from sitting down with a book and reading it from cover to cover.
Gentle reminders
As children, each one of us in my family had separate libraries and we devoured books like they were going out of fashion. We wrote our names inside and kept track of what we had lent. If there was a delay in the book being returned, there were gentle and not-so-gentle reminders.
I remember a sister flying into an incontrollable rage when a sibling (not me) took some of her prized possessions and sold them to a second-hand book store because he needed some money urgently. There were tears and recrimination and the guilty party looked suitably chastened after being made to feel that he’d sold our house from under our feet. I don’t think there has been such a furore ever, not even over ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls.
The idea for this article was inspired by another on the ten most famous books we never finish. The list includes Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices and, surprisingly, The Great Gatsby. The latter choice was difficult to comprehend, given that the movie was such a hit.
But that’s often the case. Books are made into films and it is very rare for the cinematic experience to exceed expectations. I have found that after reading a book and seeing the screen version of it, I am often left underwhelmed by the failure to capture the tone or spirit on celluloid.
And then there is Danielle Steel, whose books have been made into rather successful movies. That’s when I realise why so many people back home in India flock to theatres to see Bollywood films. These provide escapism, a happily-ever-after and survival against all odds. There’s no need to search for inner meaning or to be intrigued by an open ending.
All ends are neatly tied up and one is never left with a sense of what might have been.
I do realise that you can indulge in the pleasure of reading with devices such as Kindle. But I prefer the feel of paper, turning pages, buying attractive bookmarks and, last but not the least, the pleasurable sight of those shelves crammed with books, some well-thumbed and others waiting to be explored.
