We usually start out with Enid Blyton, solving a mystery or two with either Famous Five or Secret Seven. Slowly moving onto a bigger league with Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Goosebumps giving us real shivers at nine years old. Then we leap to Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter at ten, to Princess Diaries at thirteen, try some Agatha Christie at fifteen, then join Nicholas sparks and Sophie Kinsella at sixteen.
What gets me most addicted to pages and words and chapters and bookmarks are the hard bound covers and the scent. The scent of old books most of all. When you feel the cover, examine the illustration, weave through the synopsis and when something clicks, that’s when the connection starts, when you can’t stop.
Reading has always been quite a delight, and saying that is a pure understatement. What you get when you’re in a bookstore, hammering the sales guy to open up the release dates, is something only a book-a-holic gets.
For example, one book I was addicted to, and I’m confident millions are addicted to, is Harry Potter. Penned by J.K.Rowling, a genius in true sense, created a whole new world which one would want to escape into. Then there was J.R.R Talkins‘s Lord of the Rings, which got the world addicted. Sometimes some books come and take over a generation. Imprinted in our mind, lasting forever.
Keeping aside all the important points like how knowledgeable and enlightening books are, how informative and reliable they can be, I’d like to tell you more of how obsessive and enthralling and exhilarating and adrenaline-pumping books can be. Like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, however controversial it may be, sold 50, 94,805 copies worldwide, all seven Harry Potter books are part of the world’s most sold book copies top ten list. The reader’s choice and review, what makes a book, its fans and followers, builds an event in your life. You start living with the character, thinking like him, predicting his next move, wishing for something to happen, feeling real shock and pain when a twist arrives, a jolt of excitement in the climax, suspicions with the villains and finally a sense of calm happiness at the end, indirectly saying happily ever after. A ‘happily ever after’ a requirement today, is one of the main reasons one starts a book. To know what the end is going to be like.
Chicken soup of the soul, a most smoothening book series has helped not a few but millions. Reaching out to all, from mothers, to teenagers, to grandparents, to brides, to divorced individuals. Chicken soup brings us true stories which inspire and heal. Many cases of suicides and bullying have come under control with the help of these books, helping thousands of people in their lives.
Even though there’s not much I can say about my addiction, it’s more what you feel when you hold a book in your hands and truly feel the magic. There is always magic involved, in all books, so if anyone tells me addictions are bad, I’m just planning on saying “It’s magic”. The thrill at every word, when every page that passes doesn’t feel wrong, that’s when the thrill works, to get you through the book. It’s almost like torture, the eagerness to find out what’s next. The whole thing’s a thrill.
- KASHYAPI CHANDE
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- MULUND COLLEGE OF COMMERCE
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