This blog about books, that began its journey on a boxing day, has completed seven years of life. I knew that as long as I was up and about, one of the few things that I would be sure to do was read books. Writing about them was a natural step further; choosing to share it with the world, a cultivated commitment. Yet here we are in another decade, you reading what I wrote, and I reading what I am about to write. This will be a good time to share some of the things I often get asked about the blog.
First off, why this blog? I
owe my love of reading mostly to the head-librarian of my school. Without
knowing what a library was, one day, I forayed into its expansive entrance. The
librarian sternly picked up four books from the nearby shelf and waved them in
front of me. I reached out to one with a horse on the cover. She asked me to
come back in a month to return the book along with a library notebook to write
about what I had read. That is how I finished Anna Sewell’s ‘Black Beauty’ the
first ever book I read on my own in English. For the first two years or so, I
logged every single book I read in a notebook duly read by my librarian who had
picked those books for me. So, reading, like all the goods things I have ever
had the good fortune to learn, was a team project that was heavily supervised
at first. That is also how reading began as an obsessive act of recording.
Do I read every book I write
about here? No, I read far more! From the larger list of books, the ones
featured here come for many reasons – gravity of theme, weight of arguments, originality,
contemporaneity, recognition and so much more. If I have to boil them down to
cardinal principles, then there are two that I have never violated. I have
never written about a book that I really did not love. I have also never shared
a book that I thought was not beautifully written and produced.
Why a generalist blog? When I
began writing about books, there was no plan shape it up a particular way,
including increasing readership. I have never really tried to attract readers
by talking about just one type of books. In the end, talking more about one type
of book would mean staying untrue to my reading, which is more akin to grazing
the pastures than eating from a menu. Deep down, I read for pleasure and would
not like to have it any other way. And even deeper down, I have always believed
that books would help me with everything I need to know. Hence, the rabbit
hole!
And now for the question that
I do not get asked at all. Do you, as a reader, have to be wary of anything? CLR
James the great cricket historian asked in his beautiful book ‘Beyond a
boundary’ “what do they know of cricket that only cricket know”? This article
begins with a similar rhetorical question on books. It is impossible to
understand books without the larger context of life in which they are immersed.
Conversely, it is challenging to comprehend life without books. Maybe,
understanding this dilemma is a good way to be reminded of the importance of
critical reading? So, dear reader, who stuck with me through thick and thin
volumes, welcome back to happy reading!
