I am not an avid reader. Books never appealed to me. 4 years of college and I didn’t read a single book. Some people say performative reading was the reason they fell in love with reading. Some say that hanging out with or even observing a performative reader motivated them to actually read. So I tried that. I picked up a book and decided to complete it just for once. I couldn’t read past 20 pages. I gave up the idea of ever wanting to read again. But then something changed. On one random day, I opened a book which I bought from Amazon a year ago, and skimmed through first couple of pages. Then I stopped and turned over to the last page to check the page number. Then I turned back to the first page and started reading again. This time slow and pragmatic. Surprisingly, it was a delightful read. Joy seemed to ooze from the hardened pores of my face. Do you ever feel that, after reading something truly intellectual, your brain got rewired? In that moment, I felt exactly that. Since then, I haven’t stopped reading. It happened only when I had nothing else to do, and no one else to talk to. Now, it feels natural. Reading takes my mind off the digital dementia.
Books I read this year:
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Made to Stick — Chip and Dan Heath
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Animal Farm — George Orwell
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The Metamorphosis — Franz Kafka (my review)
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Fooled by Randomness — Nassim Taleb