It happened to me too
I’m sure that I’m not in a minority here, book lovers who lost their passion for reading books. I’m most definitely in a minority in that I regained it. Here’s my journey.
I suppose that it’s important to understand why it happened. What took me from two-to-three books a day when on vacation and at the same number a week when not? To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t really know with absolutely certainty. What I can be sure about that it wasn’t one factor alone. I got busy earning a living. Family took priority. When I did manage to find time alone, I preferred the plethora of media that’ in your face, twenty-four-seven. Smartphones, tablets, television in airports, at home, in the car – wherever I went, there seemed to be a device or two that took the place of the book in my hand. It’s easier, I suppose to consume entertainment in smaller doses, a quick fix as opposed to a long-draw-out affair. Like fast food instead of a seven-course meal at a formal French soiree. It’s quite possible that others have lost their passion for other reasons. Perhaps they don’t like the latest books that are released. Or they replaced reading with another equally satisfying hobby like classical music, or the ballet.
One fine day, as I was passing a bookstore, I found myself browsing. And wondering. The glossy bestsellers beckoned me. Baldacci. Grisham. King. Patterson. And top of the list. Owens. My mind meandered down memory lane, back to my school days where I cut my teeth in both lurid paperbacks (with Erle Stanley Gardner’s Calendar Girl), the classics (The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson) or plays (Oedipus by Sophocles, later renamed as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus). I was hungry back then, devouring almost anything that I could lay my hands on – comic books, non-fiction including the Tell-me-why series and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence people.
The mind, it’s a funny old thing. It goes where it wants. As it wandered on, from my formative years to the age of rebellion and discovery, I remembered Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, unable to forget the book’s protagonist, Howard Roark. Or John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, another one of her magnum opuses. I even remembered an article where I appeared with photograph – a godawful passport-sized affair - after being interviewed – how did those books define me? More importantly, how and why. Is there a reason that I still shudder with emotion when I think of Tiresias’s impassioned plea to Oedipus, which he ignores, of course? Or my spine tingle when I remember how Jekyll turns to Hyde? Laugh and cry with Joseph Heller (Not Catch-22, Something Happened). Laugh my ass off with Leslie Charteris. Rack my brains with Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Go on a roller-coaster journey with Robert Ludlum and more recently Dan Brown.
Books, my mind reminded the muscled me, made me feel a heck of a lot more than any other form of media ever did. Books made me think. Words made me imagine. They were all slow-burning affairs, not a quick fix that may leave you wanting, addicted and begging for more, but ultimately never really satisfying. No offence to George Lucas, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese or Chuck Lorre, David E. Kelley, or Gene Roddenberry. They have place in my heart too. Why muscled, you might ask. Well, not to give you the impression that I’m some sort of a Mr Universe, but the part of me that needs to take action. I found myself rediscovering old gems, classics that never die. I reached for that best seller by Baldacci and said to myself – hmm. Let’s give this a read. I found myself finding the passion that had never gone away. I found myself feeling – laughing, crying, scared, thrilled, and most of all, satisfied.
Perhaps, it’s not for all. Each to his own. My brother, who’s refused to buy a Kindle and prefers reading the same old paperbacks over and over again, has found a way, but then – he’d never actually lost it. You may find yourself changing your genre or sub-genre. There are gems out there – weirdly wonderful gems as well as a breed of reality books that I rediscovered – autobiographical works and their ilk Iacocca or The Diary of a Young Girl. Try it. At least, if you ever did, you’ll find that it has never really gone away. It’s there, hidden, like a gem, to be rediscovered.
I try. I don’t always succeed. You see, it’s the journey. It has to be fun. It has been for me thus far and I have hopes for the future. Hope you enjoyed it. I know that I did. Let me know what you think.
Mark Ravine