Books

Reading Because I Can

Books I loved - And how I found them

Shreya Aiyer Shreya Aiyer | 31 Dec, 2019

Reading 52 books wasn’t really the plan. It was actually 50.

(Don’t shoot the messenger)

The idea of setting myself a reading challenge only originated around mid April, when I was slowly rediscovering reading all over again. What was I doing with the first three months of my year, you may ask.

Tenth board exams. Enough said.

The reading challenge came up as a means to prove something to myself. I’ve considered myself a reader for a long, long time (I mean, as a sixteen-year-old a long time isn’t really what you may consider a long time, so make allowances for relativity). But I’d fallen out of touch with the habit for a couple of years, and was suddenly inspired to get back into what I consider is a core part of my personality. So this challenge was a way to quantifiably prove to myself that I really am a reader, and not a complete fraud.

And so, the 50 books.

It wasn’t without its difficulties. One of the more unexpected hurdles was finding books. I’ve always had the luxury of a mother who would find me great books to read when I was younger. But now I simply had to do it for myself. I had to find resources to both figure out what books I’d want to read, and then source them too.

To start off … well, I was lazy. There’s no two ways about it. It seemed like a lot of work, since books don’t materialise on their own (much as I wish they would). But I had a point to prove to myself. So I resorted to simply picking up any book I found lying around the house and reading. Slowly, I began to make use of a nearly dormant library account, and also borrowed from any friend that decided to lend.

All this resulted in quite a mixed bag of content. This year I’ve explored the greatest number of genres I ever have. Dystopia, self help, young adult, Indian history, philosophy, science, science fiction … suffice to say, I’ve skipped around the genre spectrum. The beauty of it? I never found myself limited by the content I exposed myself to. Reading diversely opened up my perspectives in unpredictable ways. I could read Ayn Rand and Che Guevara and find truth in both.

And then came one of the more expected hurdles. Where to find the time? (Please note that these ‘hurdles’ only revealed themselves in hindsight. While I was going through the process, it was just a matter of circumstance and not a monster to tackle). The answer was laughably simple.

I already had the time.

All the time I’d waste away on social media, YouTube, and miscellaneous scrolling – I managed to reclaim for myself. I’d found something I wanted to do more. At the end of the day, books are my main link to the world. Sure, there’s the internet and all the social media that comes with it. But no form of content can beat a book when it comes to depth. Frankly, I might know more about the world from books than actual experience (… not exactly sure what that says about me, so take it how you will)

Besides if worse comes to worst and time still managed to elude me, there’s always sleep to lose (know that I am NOT endorsing losing sleep over reading. It just … ends up happening, I suppose. Good luck)

Now I know that a sixteen year old reading (or attempting to read) the Communist Manifesto and Kafka can raise some eyebrows. If you find your eyebrows dangerously close to your hairline, please lower them. Yes, there has always been the constant question hanging dangerously over my neck – what should I be reading?

It’s one of the dangers of leaving the safe waters of children’s fiction. People spend a lot of time and energy documenting what kids should read, at what age they should be reading, and figuring out how to guilt trip parents in general. But once you’ve decided you’ve outgrown your specially curated children’s reading list – some of which are absolutely phenomenal, don’t get me wrong – you don’t really know where to go from there. It’s uncharted territory. Again, the only remedy I have for that is just to start somewhere. My habit of simply reading everything I could get my hands on worked marvellously here. Maybe The Trial (Franz Kafka) was a step too far (or his work is simply mind numbing, fight me), or the Assassin’s Creed novel wasn’t a step far enough. It all helped me place myself in the whirlwind of all the books out there, and find more of what I liked.

And what happens when I stumble across a book that I would perhaps have appreciated more had I read it at a different point in my life? I can always rest easy knowing that I will re read it sometime (I’ve even begun maintaining a list of books expressly for that purpose). No matter what, it’s never a wasted opportunity. And there’s nothing quite like reading the right book at the right time, and having your mind blown – I will continue to simultaneously love and hate The Fall by Albert Camus.

If I’d chosen my books more carefully, maybe I wouldn’t end up “reading the wrong books”. But again, carefully curating the perfect reading list is simply time that would have been better spent reading – I’ve fallen into that pit myself. I looked forward to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway so much – it had been on my reading list for months – and ended up completely underwhelmed. But finding Betsy Lerner’s The Forest For the Trees was an outright fluke, and I could not be more grateful for it.

Anyway, at the end of all my little dramas, reading related spiritual revelations and meltdowns, I finished my challenge (actually, I ended up overshooting my intended 50) – 52 books. I’ve been told that technically speaking, I’ve read a book a week for a whole year. This is an oversimplification. Reading is just like any other creative hobby. There were weeks when I simply couldn’t read no matter how much I tried. There were books I simply couldn’t bring myself to finish. There were always times when I simply couldn’t figure out if I was ready to read a book or not. But no matter what, I couldn’t bring myself to lose my lifeline to the world. I read.

A quick Google search yields hundreds of articles about people reading 52 books a year. I’ve even seen someone with a list of exactly which book they were going to read every single week for the following year. How do people make it so tedious? (of course, I come with an internalised bias towards reading purely for pleasure) Making reading a regimented ritual is one way to kill all the enjoyment you can get out of it stone dead. I’ve hopped around a lot with this article, but there’s one thing I hope is a take away. Reading is nothing more than a series of happy accidents. Stop trying to make it perfect. Stop aiming for 52. Just read because you can.

Books I loved – And how I found them (in no particular order)

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – A gift from a friend who didn’t know about the challenge
2. The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara – A gift from a friend who did know about the challenge
3. The Outsider by Albert Camus – A recommendation from a mentor at my summer internship
4. The Fall by Albert Camus – Tracked this one down after reading The Outsider
5. 1984 by George Orwell – Goodreads recommendation
6. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut – Goodreads again
7. Maus – Art Speigelman (yes, I consider graphic novels books) – Discovered while browsing at Blossoms Book House
8. Land of the Seven Rivers by Sanjeev Sanyal – Found lying around the house
9. The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor – The first fat book I found lying around the house
10. The Forest For the Trees by Betsy Lerner – A gift from my father to my mother that hasn’t seen the light of day in a while
11. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke – Bought because I identified the author’s name from a reading comprehension I’d had in an exam once.