Reading, though lonesome an experience at times, is too precious to give up, writes Pradeep Sebastian
Reading 'makes people happier and more successful in love. People who are more literate are happier, more likely to be in a lasting relationship, living in their own home, and don't smoke.' This headline from a 11 September Telegraph posting was summing up the results of a research study by the National Literacy Trust. Interesting, I thought. But how nuanced and wide-ranging is the study? While I think there is something to this, my own experience of reading (and a lifelong observation of what reading seems to do for others) is that it is more complex than this. For starters, many friends I know who read a lot have unhappy marriages, smoke a lot, and don't own their houses. However, I do think-especially for India – literacy is at least one key to success.
Have you ever wondered if reading is not necessarily a good thing? That it could end up making you feel lonelier, instead of offering companionship? It's such a solitary activity. And perhaps for those addicted to it, even a vice? Why should reading be automatically privileged over, say, DVD-watching as a more worthwhile activity? Recently, a friend – a booklover asleep in the shadow of her books – woke up one day and asked herself, 'What has reading done for me? What do I have then, after years of indulgence? Are they worth the investment of a life?' And she answered that while no one was ever ruined by reading, she didn't think anyone was saved by it either. Debatable. But I think in just questioning if reading is naturally a holy act, she was offering a view of reading that is not sentimental or twee. What are the joys and snares of reading?
Reading can also be a dangerous thing. Risky, even. With some books you are not the same person after you have closed it. Book lovers know this. Which is why serious readers will wantonly pursue subversive books — they like the danger, like being damaged and wounded — and book junkies mainlining on bestsellers will keep away from anything too intense — such as an unhappy ending. Why do we read at all, though? Besides the usual answer — that we read for pleasure and for instruction — are there other more mysterious reasons? Could there be a more personal, private reason why we read what we read? For instance, there are those who read because they are infatuated with someone — they must read the same books as the one they are infatuated with.
Not all books need to be read. And if you can't finish a book, drop it. Don't feel compelled to finish it. Books must offer connection, thrill, transcendence, pleasure. If the book you are reading isn't doing it for you, abandon it. There are after all so many delectable books in the world. Why linger with one that doesn't offer new delights? All of us have unread and unfinished books on our shelves. Some of them are there because friends urged us to read them or thrust it on us, and we just couldn't find it as exciting. Other books were bought from glowing reviews that said we couldn't live without them, but all too quickly we found out that we could. And a lot of those unread books are impulse purchases – we couldn't resist the book jacket or the blurbs. Should we feel guilty? I don't.
I actually read less and less these days. 'Don't we all?' chorus my friends when I tell them that. Reading has become a form of discipline for me. Something I must mindfully do every day, and not let myself be swamped or distracted by easier or less rewarding tasks. I have become suddenly aware that curling up with a book is one of the few solitary pleasures left to me. I know many devoted readers who don't read in that crazy fashion they used to any more. And they feel more than a twinge of regret that they watch more movies or chat longer on the phone than getting back to a book they started. We are readers in exile; reading has become a nostalgic act, a home we long to return to. 'We read to know that we are not alone,' said C.S. Lewis once. The books we read makes us part of a larger (invisible) community of book lovers.
These days I read not so much for literary reasons as much as personal enjoyment. Surely what we read is what we are or what we are becoming – or desire to become? Reading has given me a sense of my self, has taken me away from the world, and returned me to my solitude. It's really one of the last solitary activities left, isn't it? And that is why, though it might make you lonesome sometimes its way of taking us deeper into ourselves, of returning us to ourselves from being in the world too much, is too precious to give up doing.
Personalities 
Reading 'makes people happier and more successful in love. People who are more literate are happier, more likely to be in a lasting relationship, living in their own home, and don't smoke.' This headline from a 11 September Telegraph posting was summing up the results of a research study by the National Literacy Trust. Interesting, I thought. But how nuanced and wide-ranging is the study? While I think there is something to this, my own experience of reading (and a lifelong observation of what reading seems to do for others) is that it is more complex than this. For starters, many friends I know who read a lot have unhappy marriages, smoke a lot, and don't own their houses. However, I do think-especially for India – literacy is at least one key to success.
