Hooked to the Book !





"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."

This quote by George Martin is an excellent insight into the motives of habitual book buyers. I know several habitual book buyers and most of them have an amazing level of intellectual stock. Conversations with these people are always interesting and engaging vis-à-vis others who mostly talk like newspaper echoes or television news analyzers. The advantages of reading books (not restricted to a specific genre) are many. The most distinctive advantage is the ability of such people to build rapport with people from diverse cultures, tastes and interests. It’s also a proven fact that reading has many positive cognitive consequences. (http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/Academic_Resources/Reading/Useful%20Articles/Cunningham-What%20Reading%20Does%20for%20the%20Mind.pdf).
Further, reading books is a safe bet and can help you enhance your career prospects to a great extent. Quite a few industry leaders have confessed to this. There is no dearth of titles or topics and sub topics published considering the sheer size of the book publishing industry. A case in point is India, which produces nearly 1, 00,000 books every year and this industry is growing at a healthy 15%- 20%. In case you need motivation to buy books, just use the substitution mechanism. Maybe this is a little idealistic. Imagine, if you cut on the occasional dinner outing (Rs.800/- for two at budget hotels. This is inclusive of some transport cost that you would incur).  The savings allows you to buy at least 3 good reads. And if you can do this on a monthly basis (more idealisticJ), you would have read 36 books by the end of the year. Of course, you have flipkart, amazon, infibeam and the like throw book buying parties when they have 25% discounts and other offers. 


For me, a bookstore is pretty much like a candy shop for a kid. Extremely difficult to choose and near impossible to get out of the store! I know of bigger book fans that are forcefully shunted out of bookstores during closing time. And well, for those who have reasons and excuses for not reading books, remember you are just damn UNLUCKY!


Thanks Rishi for the editorial views!


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