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...

Day 3: How Many Books Have You Read This Year?

Getting lost in the sea of books! (Photo credit)

I Love reading. I can't be called a prolific reader - definitely not after I found some people on Twitter who have already finished 200 books this year! Having been a literature student for 5 years, I have had my fill of Shakespeare and Shelley, Dante and Dickens. I have also loved reading my share of awesome fiction like Gone with the wind and Shantaram. Or non-fiction books like Emotional Intelligence by Goleman or the Malcolm Gladwell books. Such books give a unique insight into the working of human mind and I find them quite insightful.

Since I belong to the transitional generation that moved from physical books to ebooks, I have seen both the worlds. I still read books in both medium. All the reading through college days, of course, was from a stack of physical books. It was like a full time job to finish novels and poetry texts so that I could start with the criticism of those books and prepare for exams. I read physical books pretty much through the entire last decade. I moved to Kindle a few years ago yet don't really enjoy the experience of reading ebooks. They are great to keep reading on the go and that's the only reason I have the app. I also have this habit of noting down names of books from bibliographies mentioned in other books. I noted down a dozen titles while doing a course on social psychology from Coursera about 4 years ago - never went on buy and read any of those though.

Reading has always been a big part of my life. Reading is to forget the world. You can't think of anything else while you are reading, right? While online exposure on Twitter helped me learn about new books - some of which I read or added to my list from bibiliographies - it has also added some sense of anxiety to my reading. While I have stopped looking at any must read books lists - except for occasional slips - there are times when some one mentions a title as a must read and I can't help but add it to what has now become a list of books-I-might-read-in-this-lifetime. And the ever growing list evokes this fear of - Oh my God! I'm never going to be able to finish reading ALL this! And the knowledge that some mortals have actually finished 200 books makes me feel like I have read about 4 books in my life! Even when I read a book, I feel a strange sense of anxiety to finish it fast and move on.

While I realise that I will never be able to read 200 books in a year, I definitely am working on this knot that forms in the pit of my stomach every time I start reading. I have started reasoning with that voice in my head which ushers in a sense of urgency every time I sit to read a book. For me, it's not a competition about reading as many books as the next person has. It's more about missing out on so much more there is to read. But then it isn't possible to read all books published ever, (Or is there?!) even if you stick to a few favourite genres. Plus, I think it also depends on the kind of books I read. Fiction gets done faster. But I also want to read thick fat books without worrying about how long it takes.

At the moment, I have enough books to last this year from my Amazon sale loot in August this year. I have already read a fair number of books from different genres this year and I am happy with it. Plus there is online reading where we get to learn so much.

How do you get your reading done? Are books obsolete yet with all the blogs and online content?

This post is a part of #NaBloPoMo hosted by BlogHer where I will write one post everyday this month.