Up until one point in my life, I never knew there was something called genres in books. For me it was all just books, holding stories. Yeah, I wasn’t aware of self-help or non-fiction section much. Pick any book and then discover the story. I guess that was a nice way too!

Do you remember the first book you ever read?? (Be it any genre😉).

So after a good exposure to these books, learnt a bit about genres, authors, styles. But till now, I cannot pick a single book as my favorite not because I’m afraid of opinions, it’s more of like how can you pick one when there are so many good ones? And just like movies, or even more than movies, the same book read at different phases of your life hits different. At times, a line from a book you read years ago stays with you, even though you might not remember the entire story or a book leaves a comfort that stays with you, yet at times you cannot even remember the author of the book you just finished.

For me, there’s no such thing as good writing or bad writing. No matter, how well the author articulates his or her thoughts, the reader plays a major role in how they receive it. A book that you read now might not hit now but may remind you something later in your life. And I recently came across a saying, if you come across a book that you are not liking, drop it, drop it immediately. You need not force yourself to finish every book that you pick up. Life is too short to read boring books. I believe right book always finds you at right time! (Cringe much). So yes, instead of concentrating on just finishing a book, pick up another one that you might like. There’s no award for the number of books you finish or for the kind of books you read, reading is a very personal experience. You cannot judge a book by its cover and you cannot judge a reader by the books they read (or the number of books they have read). But also, one has to understand why are they unable to finish a book, is it just not to their liking or lazy to read it or some doom scrolling hangover.

So now if I may ask, which is that book which has found you now??

Do you know the feeling of holding a new book, and hoping it to be good? Non fictional nr non-readers could say, what’s there in fiction. It’s the same usual story, either happy or sad ending, or boy and girl from different societal class, or hate to love story or tri-angular love story blah blah blah. But how to make them understand, yes main line could be same or different, it might be predictable or not, the beauty lies in how the story unfolds, the emotions that you go through. How to make someone see the beauty in how, even though it’s a story between two people or two families or just a story between people, yet each writers’ small perspective can give us so many different narratives? How the stories happening casually around us could be wrapped up in few words and given a title. How even after years and years, people are still able to imagine or write fiction. And the best part is some of the fictional writings are still relevant even after years, or even centuries!

Some people could say, fictional readers would expect more from reality because of what they read. May be not all, but at the least I can say, fictional readers are the ones who clearly understand the difference between reality and fiction, the freedom available in reality and fiction, the bare minimums and high standards, the normal and make-believe acceptance created around us.

Generally people who read be it any form of written content, they are kind of keeping their brain active, like an exercise for their mind. (In times like now, I would say reading is as important as any physical exercise that you do.) And among those, who read fiction are special😜. You read something, you automatically imagine that scene in your mind, you go places from the comfort of your couch, you experience different cultures without a flight ticket, you pause and ponder, you develop the patience of a monk, you start paying attention to details, you tend to understand different emotions humans are capable of, you grieve for something that’s not yours or even real in the first place, you tend to realize how the most unusual things have been normalized for us, you understand how the most complicated things can be handled in the simplest possible ways, you will live the life happening to you and not just survive it. Finally, you tend to understand the meanings hidden between the lines in books of other genres.

These days, a little kick while reading is, you liked any description in the book be it about a beautiful place, or a dress or food item. You can give those words to AI, and can actually see your imagination take a visual form. (But the fun is in imagination, remember its an exercise to your mind!). You will see the beauty & power behind those words. I guess that’s why we see so many adaptions of books these days, but not all can do the justice to those books. Just for example, imagine the content left of a book which requires at least 48 hrs. to finish is squeezed into a 2 hrs. movie. Depth is in the details, character building, boring chapters.

Read this & try to imagine – ‘strapless, with a simple silk bodice that tapered into a white beaded belt and a long, full floor-length skirt. and then along the bottom a burst of colorful wildflowers’

But no matter how far technology takes us, at the end we all long for that one connection, the kind that gets us in ways that our hearts automatically does a somersault. This reminds me of a beautiful line by Fyodor Dostoevsky –“I want to talk about everything with at least one person as I talk about things with myself.”
So while longing for such connection or having such connection, we come across an author sitting somewhere in this planet, describing exactly what runs in our mind.

And at the end, what do you do after finishing a book???? Like what do you do with all those thoughts, opinions, arguments, imaginations, feelings and those fictional characters??? (Girls will be thinking about at least one fictional man at this point!). Somehow I’m not a books club person, so not an option. Also, not that I have sincerely tried one, but somehow not a fan of it. I take my own sweet time to soak in everything before picking up a next one! So, my notes app (& at times mental notes) holds everything that a book leaves with me and occasionally throw some of those lines at people!

Also, I think someone should come up with a word for the feeling that one experiences after finishing a book that they loved, like how we have petrichor. Anyone who comes across it, immediately recalls that smell of fresh rain or a favorite memory of theirs. Or do we already have any such word??
I came across one such word – “afterstory”
The feeling that remains after the story ends, when the book is closed but the characters continue living somewhere inside you.