When I was about three or four, my father used to read me this story about a doctor who flew over mountains to save unwell animals. The doctor would keep saying Limpopo, Limpopo and my father would dramatise the whole story making it funny and teasing me too. It had a profound impact on me.
Illustrated books increase curiosity among children. They would like to see how the ogre, monster or the witch looks like. I remember vividly how my daughters used to remember all the sentences of the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ verbatim, having made me read it out umpteen times. They used to love the witch cackles and ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall.’ Enamoured and enchanted by the cackle, my daughter even enacted it in class, sporting a witch costume.
As a nine-year-old, I was introduced to the world of Enid Blyton: Amelia Jane, Famous five, Malory towers; Magic Faraway tree was my favourite. Apart from these books we had a beautiful collection of Amar Chitra Katha comics, with pictures depicting the folklores, epics, and history. Archies, Asterix, Chandamama, Tinkle digest, were books that used to keep us occupied during our summer breaks.
Reading classics like Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens) or Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson) or Far from the madding crowd (Thomas Hardy), as a teenager equipped me with a refined vocabulary, understanding the finer nuances of the English language and taught me about societies, relationships, hardships or in general ‘life.’
My liking for books like Mills and Boons was not much as compared to books by Robin Cook or Alfred Hitchcock. I enjoyed the mystery, the scientific explorations, the scheming sci-fi plots and thrillers. I had a friend who used to love reading and we would exchange books and discuss too. Then there was a reading era where I read books by Sydney Sheldon, Author Hailey, Harold Robbins interspersed with classics like Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) and Agatha Christie.
I cannot just stick to one genre. I have been very eclectic in my choices, swaying between classics, historical fiction, mystery, magical-realism, fantasy and even non -fiction. As one matures, ones reading tastes differs or gets refined. My favourite authors are Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafak, Haruki Murakami and Dan Brown.
Reading is a very individual activity. It takes you to a world where you alone imagine the character, the scenes in the book, the voices, the beauty, the evil, the love, and the hatred. Sometimes when the book is humorous, we might be laughing ourselves or might be crying due to the grief involved. I read this book ‘A man called Ove’ (Fredrik Backman) and I fell in love with this cute grumpy old man ‘Ove.’ A fantastic, fast-paced, mystery was The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon) which incidentally was a book about a book and the mystery involved finding the author. An epic fantasy novel would be The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien), including The Hobbit, where I find the character Gollum, though mean and selfish by nature, yet pitiable and adorable.
Classics like Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Pride and prejudice (Jane Austen) Gone with the wind (Margaret Mitchell), Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), Great expectations (Charles Dickens), Awakening (Kate Chopin), to name a few, are books one can read and reread. Discussing classics in a book club is a delight.
Sometimes we begin the discussions, and we do not realise the duration for which we have been arguing or agreeing upon a viewpoint. Often, we end up contradicting each other but we gracefully accept each other’s perspectives. Everybody’s opinion of an event or character or the ending in a book differs. One interprets the events in the way one perceives it. Book clubs, makes reading a more enjoyable act.
Apart from hard copies of a book, there are many formats of e-books like epub, PDF, mobi files etc, which can be read on various devices. I strongly feel that listening to audio books cannot be classified as ‘Reading.’ It would be like watching a movie, without the visual.
The joy of reading is something one cannot elucidate fully but one must experience it themselves. I read with enthusiasm, devouring the book and then wait to dissect it at the book clubs.
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” — To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper lee)
Anuradha Sharma is a freelancer based in Abu Dhabi
