Imagine this, From Class 5 till I graduated high school, I read close to 600 books!. I had memberships everywhere; Dad’s collection, neighbour’s collections, school libraries, Government ones and of course, private circulatory library. I begged, borrowed (but never stole) from literally every possible person who can lend me a book. I even saved my pocket money and bought books, Volga Ganga was my first. Being sympathetic to my addiction, the lady from circulatory library reduced borrowing price just for me! My price chart was Re. 1 for 300 pages book and Re.2 for 600 pages.
Then there was drought. Of books!
It is indeed true that the professional colleges and jobs suck the living hell out of hobbies. At least that was my excuse. My reading habit went into limbo. For the next decade, I managed to read only four books, and all four of them were written by Dan Brown! Of Couse, there were half-finished mass hysteria books from Robin Sharma, Paulo Coelho and Ayan Rand.
I gave multiple attempts to get back into the groove, but there simply wasn’t any time left in my days. Commute to the office (duh) was one possible attempt but my books had to brave Chennai Sunlight and London Rains. None of these worked out. With minimal success, I managed to finish the paperback series of MJ Akbar.
As one more attempt by pouring some money into a kindle (I discourage it) but the challenge here is, time. If there is no time for paperback, what difference would Kindle make? Amazon Echo gave some relief as it ‘read me’ a couple of Kindle books. Still, again, I needed to be physically in the vicinity of Echo throughout.
Finally now, Audible. In came to rescue.
Finally, I could do all mundane mechanical (but mandatory) tasks of the day and still read a fantastic book! The books themselves are little more expensive than their Kindle/paperback counterparts, but this arrangement works for me !!
Now get this: Just in 2019, I was able to close my year’s resolution of 52 books, and I am on track for 52 more for 2020. Just in 15 months, I have crossed the Scholar stage, and now I am a master. Apparently, you can directly approach me about questions on what why and where and I will have the answer.
God bless Amazon 🙂
P.S. This is NOT a paid post. Amazon did not pay me to write this post.
The Bach 