Bookworm

Reading has its hazards, and reading a lot has catastrophic hazards, it goes without saying, if the number of books read in any given time span say a week is more than the number of people engaged with in conversation, then you run the serious risk of being a border-line delinquent.

Reading is an acquired taste, it doesn't come easy, it takes years and years of honing in, and it requires a certain specific kind of mind and personality to work its magic on. One has to have a passion for reading, for the written and spoken words, being nostalgic with the author for past fictitious events, getting heady with the smell of old crisp paper in ancient old discarded books, or falling in-love with a fresh off the press sparkling cover of a new best seller. For people who are book-lovers are story lovers, they want to visit other lands and other lives, they want to know how others think, what the world is all about, and how human beings behave under different conditions.


You can lose yourself in a book, in its characters who take on a life of their own in our lives - Nathan Zukerman, the alter ego of Philip Roth in The Ghost Writer, is reminiscing about the time when he meets his favorite author, and the enigmatic and mysterious Amy when he was 23 years old. Who is Nathan? is he ever going to be a brilliant writer that he so wants to be? Is Amy the legendary Anne Frank of the diaries, survival of the holocaust? what is identity itself? are we who we are or what we think we are? can we just assume a role and be that person?

What of the pleasant and so not-fit-in the 1930's society of America, the lovely Larry Durcell, who has no ambitions and no need of money, who doesn't think that working is important. And is money important in foisting life long relationships, or is money transient. I am intrigued by the self-portrayal of the author, Somerset Maugham, is he an unbiased observer, is he interested in the vivacious and sensual Isabel himself? the eternal questions of how we plan life and how it actually unfolds.

Sometimes you fall in love with a character like Iris in Blind Assassin, how empty and unused her life seems after all, looking back from her 88th year, how shallow and unnecessary the decisions taken in the interest of that very future which she is living all alone and with nothing to hold on to? how lonesome and terrible is life?

Books are gateways to the world of experience, they are stages 'par-excellence' because you can act out all your fantasies without endangering soul or body, and of course they are gorgeous companions, who needs anyone when there is a good book around!