There are two kinds of people in this world..the one that reads by choice and the other that can't read.... this is after completely robbing the people who do not like reading of their very existence !!! Do not get me wrong... I have no intention of insulting anyone and hence I must most definitely clarify at the very outset what I mean by reading... it is reading anything beyond what is mandatory for one... like for a student his course books, for a chartered accountant a balance sheet.. i mean reading for pleasure, reading for the mind.. reading for the very fun of reading... from a newspaper to the symbolism of william blake to principal mathematica, , , what have you.
I think I'm very lucky cause from my childhood I had my family's extensive library at my disposal but I guess what really moved me into reading was the fact that I was basically a loner... due to the frequent change of venues (work demands of my parents) I hardly went about making friends and through all my loneliness and solitude my only companion had been one book or the other.
and after all these years and even after becoming a more socially outgoing person I still feel the most very tranquil and at peace when I sit down to read a book.. half a poem here.. a few pages from my favourite novel there.. or unwind with a joke book... books as a whole still will be my best friend.
WHERE DOES ONE START?
Well if you haven't yet started reading much then am sure when you think of picking up a book it might seem like a very daunting task..I do agree and hence here are a few guidelines as to where you start holding the ropes..
1.* know yourself...
there is no one who knows you better (unless you are an unfortunate libran, aquarian or gemini who hasn't still been able to trick your airy thought process.... jokes apart) so analyse what kind of books you wanna read.
fiction or non-fiction *(this is very vital so do not under estimate it)
assuming you want non-fiction... identify what do you want to read about... something that arbitrarily relates to your studies, career or do you want to read about something that truly interests you.
eg. a surgeon reading about psychiatry or about women's liberation.
if you wanna go about fiction then you need to determine what kind genre mainly moves you..
drama/plays
humour
crime-detection
classics
inspirational
women's subject
poetry (doubtful if you already haven't started).. etc etc
- source...
there would always be people around you who have been reading avidly... if your thought processes somewhat relate to theirs check out the books they recommend.. borrow ... its alright.. for initiation its good to make safe choices than to experiment and regret.
- discuss...
if you don't wanna right away start with reading.. talk to people about books.. there would be people willing to discuss pros and cons of books...you cannot go wrong on this.
even after these steps if you cannot start a reading habit.. then i'm sorry to have wasted your time.
HOW TO INITIATE CHILDREN INTO A READING HABIT?
can you really blame children if they do not want to read nowadays... how can they.. there's the tv, the music system or better still the computer..* too many distractions *all around to create a conscious drive in them to open a book and discover the fascinating world within.. they would much rather see britney spears and john abraham doing boogie shakes or whatever they see nowadays (excuse me for my ignorance on this part cause I don't have a *functional *tv at home.... mark the word functional!).
i'm not asking you to take as drastic a change as to completely cut off tv or the comp.. even you need to use them.. but only you as parents can bring about a change.
a recent franco-american research showed that an average kid of 12 spends about more than half the time that he is at school in front of the tv... now that's too much television... please do not allow that.start a reward-punishment program* but make sure that tv/comp does not become the reward all the time. encourage *physical activities however difficult it may be in the urban set-up.
read to them when they are young
talk with them about it when they are old...
its a rule of the thumb that can never go wrong.good luck!
RANDOM SAMPLINGS:
these are my highly highly biased selection of books (for any kind of readers) that I have enjoyed reading over a period of time... it can be of use if you want to try out something and (for the fellow readers that is) any suggestions as to which authors I should try out.
- plays...
lets see... you can read some
shakespeare *(a midsummer night's dream.. comedy
hamlet/othello/king lear/macbeth...tragedy
a merchant of venice... as a specimen of dark comedy. one of my favourites)
george bernard shaw *(how can one miss... pygmalion & man and superman... amazing!)
- poetry
p b shelley *(one of my favourites is... ode to the west wind.. need not be everyone else's)
w wordsworth (lines written in early spring)
keats (endymion & ode to a grecian urn )
walt whitman *(to a stranger)
milton (paradise lost and found... yeah I know its long but incomparable)
robert frost (any!)
elizabeth barret browning *(how do I love thee)
coleridge (kubla khan)
bengali... rabindranath tagore, michael madhusudan dutta, kazi nazrul islam.
you can also get the classics like aenid (by virgil), inferno (dante) and illiad and odessey (homer) in the petry format but since they are translations you may as well as read it as prose unless you want to read it in the poetry format.
- novels... classics
d h lawrence (women in love, sons and lovers)
alexander dumas( the count of monte' cristo... I have lost my copy!!! woe)
oscar wilde (picture of dorian grey)
this is just to name a few
- novels and short stories by russians
Russian writers form a different genre of writing altogether because of not only their rich plots but the imporantce their works have weilded as they went about influencing millions of readers throughout the world.
one should not miss leo tolstoy, dyotsvoyesky, nikolai gogol and anton chekov
5. Novels... contemporary[the bestsellers]
Ian Mcewan (amsterdam, atonement... my personal favourite)
Sidney Sheldon* (rage of angels, master of the game)
John Grisham* (a time to kill, the partner)
Jeffrey Archer* (not a penny more not a penny less, sons of fortune)
Dan Brown* (well how can you leave out... da vinci code)
Robin Cook* (the year of the intern)
to name very few
continued in comments....
