New moorings
How to choose what to read?

By Dr Shradha Kaul
Books are my moorings. Every time I approach the end of a book, my concern is what I will read next. Come what may, a book lover can never endure for long without a book. A very relevant question that may occur at such a time is how to choose what to read. There are a number of leads that may work in the direction of providing you with your next book. As youngsters we were lucky to have recourse to a mobile library service and some lending libraries. I would wait for the fixed day the mobile library would visit our location and try to get my book for the week. But to an insatiable reader the stock in such libraries would not be completely in line with their requirements.

The next thing that comes to mind is joining bigger libraries, if any, in the vicinity. Unfortunately, such libraries are difficult to access because of two reasons; firstly they are almost nonexistent in our country and secondly the existing ones are virtually inaccessible owing to location and cost.

The next best thing would be to form a book club with like-minded friends. Necessity is the mother of invention; this may sound a bit clichéd but could prove to be quite helpful in this case. Each member could buy a book every month, so if there are ten people you have ten books to circulate within the group, say even if you buy 7 books / person / year, you get to read seventy books in a year. Not bad at all! Also, the number could go higher if more people join in later; there is no limit to the number of members. Of course the club will have to devise a set of rules and regulations to manage the show.

In school bestsellers are the ones, which get discussed by the majority of students. We do come across some good books through this channel as well. But, this according to me is a very temporal source and may not help in enriching the mind to a great extent. At the same time I would like to state that some reading is better than none. One never knows what an interest in a Harry Potter book may blossom into. We could have our own version of a J K Rowling or maybe even a Tolkien. I have seen children graduating from RL Stine, to Eoin Colfer, to Rowling, to Tolkien and then getting into serious business of researching on the mysteries that exist within the portals of the books.

While looking for my next book, I would certainly keep the author in mind. Sometimes, more than the book it is the author who matters more. We start looking for books by familiar writers for the reason that we’ve liked the style or the plot of the previous book and we have certain expectations from the subsequent titles by the same author. As children we have the tendency to go through the entire series, like reading all Agatha Christie’s, all in Famous Five series, all Hardy Boys etc. Maybe this was the reason that authors came up with an entire series of books. In fact different authors have ruled over our lives at various levels. Even holds true of greater writers like Shakespeare who had a series of tragedies and comedies.

Many a time my sentiments have dictated my preference for a book. To explain this phenomenon try and remember the point in time when your spirits have lifted after reading a particularly humourous work or have been subdued after reading an emotional piece. So somewhat naturally my selection of what to read may get influenced by my EQ at times.

On some occasions one may start reading a book on someone’s recommendation. May not be your kind of book but sometimes references work favourably for books and authors as well. I remember reading many books, which were out of our league in terms of assimilation because of the difficulty levels but still wanted to read it just because everybody else seemed to have read it.

Your subjects may also influence your choice of books to a large extent. If history were my favourite subject I may develop a passion for the historical sagas. As commerce students some books with stories on stock market crashes may interest some of you. A number of authors write books pertaining to specific subjects like you have John Grisham writing books woven around law; Erich Segal has books like Doctors based on the medical profession.

As you mature, you develop an affinity for a certain type of books; you could evolve into a litterateur or just a reader of light best sellers.

Well, at the end of the day, books get read because of a variety of reasons, so who’s complaining?

—The author is an academic & writes on varied issues