Reading delight

I cannot stop buying books even though I have piles unread at home. Only a bibliophile will understand the allure of buying books and reading them sometime.

There are loads of books that I have bought over the years some of which I have already read, some I had started reading and planned to return to reading them . I have a habit of reading a few books at the same time as I cannot wait to devour each and everyone of the books I have bought or received.

I am most delighted whenever I receive books as gifts particularly if they are books by authors whose work I have never read. Every time I discover a new author and enjoy his or her writings, I want to read all his or her other writings. As the list of my favourite authors continues to grow, I find that I prefer to spend time with my books than hanging out with people. I go out and mingle partly out of obligations and partly I do want to keep in touch with some of my friends and participate in events that interest me. The idea of just staying home and read is inviting but I know if it were just me and the books, it will be me and my thoughts and that is not going to be healthy in the long run. Amongst friends, it is easy to talk about a movie rather than a book unless the particular friend is a reader. Going to a movie is an activity you can choose to do alone or with friends. If you read a book, you have to do it alone. When we read, you and I relate differently to the story and various parts of the writings will strike a chord with various readers. Not everyone who reads the same book will share the same connection to a piece of writing.

In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth.

-Marcel Proust,Le temps retrouve * Through reading , we can find out about ourselves and our beliefs and in turn reinforce whatever opinions or beliefs we already have or we may discover things that have not crossed our minds before and view things from a different perspective. *Le temps retrouve ( Finding Time Again or Time regained or The Past Recaptured ) is the final volume in Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu