I like big books!

 I like big books and I cannot lie...

Reading big fat books that run into 800-1000 pages is second to none! It's like a saga that runs into several episodes! It's settling down for the long haul - to witness the entire lifetimes of characters, living through their ups and downs! Rejoicing in their happiness and agonising over their sorrows! You root for some of them and share the author's hatred for the others. 

It's like snuggling into a different world and living amidst people of imagination. It could be a war world, a romantic world, a world where thrillers are taking place. Long books offer us their world for long enough to feel like we are a part of it. There have been times when I finished a book and felt like I returned to the rude, real world - and there wasn't anymore left to go back to.

And the one reason that long, written sagas pull us in is the writing! The prowess of the writer has the power to create a world so vivid and lucid that we can imagine it, we live in it. We weep and smile at the scenes conjured in our mind by the might of the writer's pen! We can't wait to get till the end as the suspense builds. We want to see the good rewarded and the bad punished. 

And as readers even our intelligence is at stake. Giving up at the length of the book or the kind of writing says something about me as a reader too. 

I mean I read Catch-22 because it is deemed one of the greatest books to read - on every reading list ever! I get the satire of war and the deliberate length of the book to cover it from different angles - but still it kinda got too long and slow. I still finished it because it's one of the best books of all times! 

Stream of consciousness, for instance, as a genre is like the author's imagination to ours. Mrs. Dalloway is a whole book with her standing at a street corner and looking back at her life. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the same names coming up again and again. And still, as readers, we find that riveting and love the challenge of keeping up. 

Writing reams and reams of pages, putting one word after the other is a coveted feat in itself. And to make it so riveting that people get to the end of those 500 pages is an accomplishment as a writer. 

It's the flood of words that keeps the rivers of our imagination going! I recently finished The Signature Of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert and I think it's so unfair that she is known mainly for Eat, Pray, Love. Just like Gone With The Wind, this one also tracks the life of the woman protagonist. And I just love to randomly snuggle into the pages of such books once I've read them from cover to cover. Just open it anywhere and begin reading. Or go for the interesting bits where you know how the story unfolds. There doesn't have to be an order to re-read them. It's like plonking myself right in the middle of the ocean - with water on either side as far as eyes can go! It's literally a sea of words to drown in, to forget the world around us and go under the influence of the story. 

Long non-fiction is a different kind of a beast. It's not just a story that flows. There are facts to be analysed and each chapter placed in context while reading it. The process of finishing a 500-word non-fiction book is long enough that one doesn't have the luxury to go back and forth, like we could in fiction. I read Sapiens twice to make better sense of it and I still can't jump in somewhere in the middle and make sense of it. Such books get intense and need probably a few more reads to feel like home. 

I am currently reading 21 Lessons for the 21st century. And while I am done with the technology part of the book, I am still piecing together information and how it would apply to the rest of the book. So it's more of an uphill task. But that's the learning curve as a reader, I guess. It helps to keep up. Sometimes for enjoyment and other times for education. 

The journey of reading goes on...

There is no happily ever after

There is no happily ever after! 

Although we've been raised on a steady diet of the knightly stories where damsels in distress are being resuced by charming princes! 

Ask Meghan Markle! 

She literally married a prince! And yet, her fairy tale story came to a quick painful end! 

In real life, it's not just about the prince and the damsel - and the evil step-mother will have her say! Because this is real life and not a fairy tale! Her association with the prince was rife with controversy right for the start. The stiff upper-lipped royal family was sceptical about accepting an outsider. And the fact that the royal family's resident perfect daughter-in-law made it harder for Markle to shine. 

Markle had a Hollywood career - somewhat successful - before she met Harry. she's lives the life of an independent LA woman before she was expected to live in the confines of the royal traditions of Britain. 

Whether she was responsible for the crumbling of her royal fairy tale or the others in the family, crumble it did! They gave up their royal status, moved out of the palace and live like ordinary citizens in, well, California! 

Can Markle go back to her previous career? Sadly no! She lost what she was looking forward to in her new life and she can't go back to what she had. That's a sad end to the "happily ever after" that everyone expected from this story!

Ask Jennifer Aniston! 

As much as the paparazzi have been obsessed about this Hollywood star, her life hasn't been a bed of roses either! 

The only FRIENDS character to have built a phenomenally successful film career too, Jen's real life is far from the happy ending we think it is!

Her marriage to Brad Pitt was touted as the biggest fairy tale romance in Hollywood. And that lasted 5 years. And this came at a time when Jen was ready to start a family and did not even want to split! The year she thought she's be raising babies brought her hurt and loneliness - not to mention the speculations from the press. 

Imagine the hurt of a woman who's marriage ends just as she is planning to have kids with her husband of 5 years! And the horror when she realises that not only is her husband in love with someone else already but is also a father figure to her son! 

The other woman got what she was looking forward to! She has been open about her wanting to have children but she was never blessed with one! 

For all the wealth and fortune she owns, are gaping holes her life too. Apart from her marriages falling apart and never having the babies she always wanted, she's constantly had to fight off the paparazzi at every turn. The popular press has been constantly been hung up on her relationship status and whether or not she's pregnant!

If you think celebrities lives aren't relatable, talk to any married couple! Especially if they started with hearts and flowers hoping to fly away into the sunset riding unicorns on a rainbow! There are no happy endings! Why so you think movies end where they do! Who wants to watch the annihilation of a love story that has been built on the hopes of single people, giving them the promise that they too will have this love story some day! 

Showing the real truth beyond that would ensure that the box office collapses and no one believes in the genre of rom-com any more. 

So yeah! I am glad that the current generation of girls are being taught that they don't need a prince charming to rescue them. They are people in their own right and that expecting someone else to be the sole source of happiness in their life is unrealistic!