A to B: Why do you read?
B to A: What do you do in your free time?
B to A: What do you do in your free time?
Books are one medium, you can have your own preference ‘if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run’ all is well in the kingdom of god!
Reading is about the joy of discovery; discovering people, places, cultures, histories, emotions and so on. Human understanding is at two levels one at the physical level and the other at the intellectual level. In terms of simple physics it is about picking up the actual physical signals, processing them and the light bulb in the end. Travelling, conversations, reading books are just facilitators of the signals, the processing /discovery is a completely individual process. My mantra is better get the ‘signal’ than fret about the purity of the signal. Slowly with time you hone your skills to really eliminate the noise and embark on your own journey of discovery.
Reading is about the joy of making a connection. Sometimes a written sentence is like someone just read your mind and wrote it down succinctly for you to read with your own eyes and touch with your hands. This kind of connection is very rare, how much effort we invest on real people so that they can understand us but to no avail.
I may know 10 people in the physical world and 5 characters in the literary world. You may not know the 10 people I know but we could be acquaintances in the literary world(small world). What do people do when they meet; they talk about (gossip about) the people they know in common. Carrying forth the analogy what does book man/woman do? They talk about their literary hero’s and the literary geniuses who created them. Sometimes these conversations and connections can define years of relationship.
I have a friend with whom I could only talk about books (and only some children fiction books in particular) because we had our differences over everything else. I would call this some real connection!
Reading is about learning to become more tolerant in the real world. The more you see people who are not like you the more you learn to accept them. The first human reaction is to ignore if something doesn't directly affect us, but a humane society entails empathy not ignorance.
Our relationships encompass people who are in some way like us, how do we seek out people who have nothing in common with me? There are always two sides of a story, we always know our version, and how do we see the other version?
Books provide that window to peer and look, the more you try to seek you might actually be able to put together the pieces of the elephant that baffled the blind men(blind men who went to inspect an elephant, each one came back with a different version, none closer to truth individually)
Circling back to the foremost point made earlier, reading or any other interest is all about having a good time.
On a rainy day, take a glass of wine, sit by the window, dig into a comfortable lounger with a snug throw and read a book till you doze off peacefully at the same spot. Books are a simple romance and a worthy pursuit..
Reading is about the joy of making a connection. Sometimes a written sentence is like someone just read your mind and wrote it down succinctly for you to read with your own eyes and touch with your hands. This kind of connection is very rare, how much effort we invest on real people so that they can understand us but to no avail.
I may know 10 people in the physical world and 5 characters in the literary world. You may not know the 10 people I know but we could be acquaintances in the literary world(small world). What do people do when they meet; they talk about (gossip about) the people they know in common. Carrying forth the analogy what does book man/woman do? They talk about their literary hero’s and the literary geniuses who created them. Sometimes these conversations and connections can define years of relationship.
I have a friend with whom I could only talk about books (and only some children fiction books in particular) because we had our differences over everything else. I would call this some real connection!
Reading is about learning to become more tolerant in the real world. The more you see people who are not like you the more you learn to accept them. The first human reaction is to ignore if something doesn't directly affect us, but a humane society entails empathy not ignorance.
Our relationships encompass people who are in some way like us, how do we seek out people who have nothing in common with me? There are always two sides of a story, we always know our version, and how do we see the other version?
Books provide that window to peer and look, the more you try to seek you might actually be able to put together the pieces of the elephant that baffled the blind men(blind men who went to inspect an elephant, each one came back with a different version, none closer to truth individually)
Circling back to the foremost point made earlier, reading or any other interest is all about having a good time.
On a rainy day, take a glass of wine, sit by the window, dig into a comfortable lounger with a snug throw and read a book till you doze off peacefully at the same spot. Books are a simple romance and a worthy pursuit..
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