Book Review : I'd Rather Read

This book should have been titled as ‘My love affair with reading’. I took time to pick up the book and start reading. Though it’s a thin, petite, cute book but still after going through the table of contents, I was not sure what kind of world this book will open up for me. But one fine day, I told myself that reading is reading and I should exercise my brain with all kind of books.

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Browsing through the chapters, I felt just one thing – jealousy. I know it’s a real strong word, but yes, I was jealous with all the fourteen authors. They were exposed to the book world right from their childhood and my romance with books started when I picked up the subject of English Literature in college. The only books which donned the shelves during childhood were tonnes of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Maths. When I was cruising through my X and XII standard, CBSE had introduced a new edition of books in English. I loved them as they had beautiful poems and stories. Never had it crossed my mind that I would love swimming in the pages of the books and end up writing as well. English Literature also happened by chance as I didn’t get through any engineering college and getting an admission via payment seats was not the norm followed at my house. I had decided to pick up management in Masters and there was no point studying science for three years. And hence books fell in my lap. I still remember the days when I used to turn philosophical with T. S. Eliot, John Donne and William Wordsworth.

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‘I’d Rather Read’ took me back to those years when I was building up my relationship with books and I am happy that it was not short lived but a marriage for years.

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Few excerpts from the book that I liked :

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\”Children don’t remember authors. They remember stories. A child doesn’t read a book because it is fashionable to do so. They read only because the story speaks to them. Children start a book with neither prejudice nor expectations. That makes them a true reader in every sense.\”

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\”I liked reading about exotic places and people who owned islands and ate unfamiliar food. It didn’t make me feel deprived in the least; on the contrary, it showed me that the world was a big place, full of joyful possibilities.\”

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And of course the short sweet poem by Jerry Pinto.

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I have a new reading list to finish now. The authors have listed their own favourites and I was a little disappointed that from the long list I had hardly read one or two.

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If you would like to know what exactly consists in a bookworm’s world, pick up this book. And if you want to coax somebody to pick up reading, gift them this book.

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Author: Various\nPublisher: Rupa Publications\nRelease: October 2015\nGenre: Non Fiction / Anthology\nBuy from�Amazon