A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R R Martin
The year 2023, like all my years, started with a resolution of reading 12 books in 12 months. I normally go beyond this goal of mine, by 7-10 books. Alas! It was not destined to be this year too. I could only read 12 books by the end of December 2023. I did complete my resolution, but frankly saying, it didn’t feel complete to me. With books you travel the world, with books you learn how to travel the world too. Books give you wings to express your thoughts. Javed Akhtar once said, if you read you learn new words. Words to expressions are the same as bricks to buildings. You can make your building as tall and as lavish you want, based on the number of bricks that you have. Similarly as vast is your breadth of knowledge about words, that vast can be your possibilities of expressing your thoughts. This particularly holds true to the current times we live in, where majority people in the middle of the sentence stop by saying “you know” and fail to properly express themselves. No one knows completely what is in your mind as long as you don’t utter the words.
I normally enjoy reading only fiction. It has drama, character development, plots unfolding, expressions and everything else that I love. That’s why I read a couple of fiction books including The Green Mile, Of Mice and Men, The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco, The Remains of the Day, The Hen who Dreamed She Could Fly, and the Sweet Bean Paste. Amongst fiction, historical fiction is the genre I like further more, and so I read The Redhead of Auschwitz, A River in Darkness, and Everyman Dies Alone. Of Indian authors I read only one book and that was The Krishna Key. Largely inspired by The Da Vinci Code and set in India, this was a book that I felt to be the most dull amongst all that I read in 2023. To challenge my love for fiction, I read one absolutely nonfiction book, Desperately seeking Shah Rukh. A book that was a surprise to me and I am glad I ended the year with this.
In 2024 I have yet again taken the challenge of reading 12 books. So far I have already read one. I wonder what will be the fate of my reading this year though given that the craze of scrolling your phone like zombies has started to creep in me lately. In fact that maybe one reason why my count was limited to 12/12 in 2023. To all the people reading this article, I urge you to read too. Read and live the lives of people you are not, learn about how lives of people differ, about how each life is important, and how varied viewpoints we all can have. It’s like entering a valley of flowers, and it’s beautiful. Lastly, like always here is a video journey of the books I read.
Aali Pant 