[A READER’S LIFE] When you open that book for the FIRST time..

It’s strange – you are hurled into a new world, a different world.

From the moment your eyes fall on that first word your mind gets to work – trying to make it all seem natural to you. Trying to get you to SEE it, HEAR it, SMELL it. The book’s working hard for your attention and your mind’s it’s ally.

BUT..

Even these two with their shared powers of persuasion can achieve precious little on their own because you simply won’t accept this world, this story as true – as a part of you – until something about it catches your heart.

Until it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you weep, and makes your scream – ”WHYYYYYYY!?!?!?!”

THAT’S what you expect as soon as you open that book and decide to travel through different dimensions of the writer’s mind. And then when it actually happens – when your head starts to make some sense of the story and your heart starts feeling something for it, it’s as if everything around you falls down and now it’s just you and this treasure of a book in your hands.

Starting a new story is like…..hmmmm….well….I could sit here all day and still won’t be able to find an example that even comes close to describe that feeling. Because there isn’t one. You CANNOT describe what happens to you in that moment. You just let it slither it’s way into your head. If it’s good enough, you’ll hand over the control to your heart. If not? Well, that’s what 1 star reviews are for, right?! xD

A book is not just a bundle of pages. It’s a gateway into the workings of multiple minds –

🖤 YOU – the reader, for you would interpret it YOUR OWN WAY. You will read it different, understand it different, feel it different. Your preconceptions about what the characters do (or don’t do), what their motivations are will have a major role in determining whether you’ll fall in love with it or it’ll join your DNF’d pile of shame. xD

🖤 THE WRITER – because of a very simple reason: it’s the product of their mind, afterall. Much of why what happens, happens in the story will have been affected by the writers’ own set of ideals – their sense of right and wrong, their dreams, their experiences. Everything that shaped them, helped them become who they are will have an effect on how they shape their characters, even if just a little bit.

🖤 THE CHARACTERS – A good book will leave you shook, to the point that you will start questioning your own sense of reality because to you, the characters of the story will be real – in your mind they will be flesh and blood. You will sympathize with them, laugh with them, cry with them, get mad at them. Most importantly – YOU WILL GET TO KNOW THEM. How they do what they do. AND WHY THEY DO IT! You will be privy to it ALL!

WHOA!

SO MUCH HAPPENS WHEN WE READ A BOOK. And it happens so smoothly that we don’t even notice it until we are done!

AND THEN?!

AHEM. Let me show you –

It’s time to go through it all – ALL OVER AGAIN! ❤ ❤

[A READER’S LIFE] How To Read a Book PROPERLY//My Reading Process//

I know. I know.

WHAT’S SO HARD ABOUT READING ANYWAY?

Open the goddamn book, read the fucking words, pretend to be shocked/moved etc.

RIGHT??!!

Reading is an art. Each step needs to be savored, taken pleasure in. It needs to speak to your soul. Reading a book should incite a change in the deepest level of your being. AND THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.

Luckily for you, I am here to enlighten you lost souls on how to properly read a book and this I will do by giving you a sneak peek into my own reading process.

Now, it may get a bit intense here but HEY! YOU KNEW WHAT YOU TOOK ON WHEN YOU CLICKED ON THIS POST, YEAH?!

SO NO COMPLAINING and let’s get to it.

THE WALK

*sigh*

Having finished reading the very last page, I close the book. My mind is still in a haze, unable to process the surroundings I now find myself in.

Seconds turn into minutes threatening to turn into hours when I snap myself out of a long lost dream, shake my hand off of the last shreds of the world I just left behind in the pages of the beautiful book lying on the bed. It’s a hard decision but a necessary one nonetheless.

I walk over to my bookshelf, admire the general splendor of all the hardbacks and paperbacks, bathe in the quiet reassurance of their utmost beauty and I just keep watching and watching….and watching…

THE CHOICE

Awe turns into irritation real quick.

Standing in front of my magnificent shelf I become aware of all the brooding eyes staring right into my soul, trying to manipulate me.

EVERY SINGLE OF MY PRIZED POSSESSIONS BEG FOR AN HONEST CONSIDERATION. Making those sweet doleful eyes, crushing my heart.

 

PICK MEEEE!!!

No wonder it takes me HOURS (sometimes even DAYS) to decide what to read next! But I turn my heart to stone and ignoring all their fictional pleas reach my hand out to rest on a random spine.

YES! THIS IS GOING TO BE MY COMPANION FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.

With a heavy heart, I make my way back – back to re-enter a world entirely different from my own.

THE TRANSITION

Reality as I know it starts to fade away. The world around me crumbles – brick by brick- until it gives way to another dimension.

Here, I am a captive of the writer’s words. They clutch the insides of my mind and pull me in. No longer am I aware of my previous life. I am living now in the minds of these wonderful, wonderful characters – crazy, flawed, AND MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN BEINGS THEMSELVES.

Yes. I LIKE IT HERE. Can I stay here forever? CAN I?

I am lost in a world of words and emotions and I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO COME LOOKING.

I FEEL SAFE.
I FEEL LIKE MYSELF.
Yes. I AM HOME AGAIN.

THE REVELATION

I have lived a full life here, have loved these new friends that I made just a few hours ago – loved them like we’ve been together for eternity. Their laughs, their cries, their hopes and dreams, their fears, their shadows – all etched into my mind as if someone had carved them there with utmost care and precision.

But now these lovely people are about to reach the conclusions to their respective stories – all the hardships they had been subjected to are almost at an end. Their wait is over and the things they want are almost in their grasps.

And while that’s good news for them, it’s distressing to me.

I will soon have to leave them – leave this beautiful world and all these wonderful people. I have come to love their lives more than my own but now I won’t be privy to the details anymore.

HOW WILL I KNOW IF THEY WERE ALRIGHT TILL THE END? THAT NO DANGER BEFELL THEM AFTER WE PARTED OUR WAYS? HOWWW?!!?!

They will move away into the quiet recesses of their own little worlds, to live their own lives and I will become a mere stranger to them – A ONE-SIDED LOVER who will continue to obsess over them for days, months EVEN YEARS TO COME!

I AM UNHAPPY. OH, SO UNHAPPY.

THE HOPELESSNESS

Here I sit, with a closed book in my hands and tears welling up in my eyes.

It’s agonizing to watch a world – a world that has made me feel more alive than I have felt in a LONG LONG TIME – fade away into nothingness.

It’s a tearful realization but I keep heart. I have faith because I know that these memories that I have stolen from the neverwhere world will now stay with me forever. Because I know that with a flick of the page I will be transported back to that magical world where everything will STILL BE THE SAME.

AHH!! SUCH A LOVELY PROSPECT.

THE WALK

*sigh*

Yes. I am back again, scratching my head, trying to avoid those puppy dog eyes!

GOD HELP ME!

AND THIS, DEAR READERS, IS HOW YOU PROPERLY READ A BOOK!

*PHEW*

I also hope that all you people who think that reading is nothing but looking at words have changed your perception of it now BECAUSE IT IS HARD WORK!!!

*dies of exhaustion and a broken heart*

Soo..do you have the same reading process as I? What steps would you like to add/take away?!?! LET ME KNOW! I WANNA KNOWWW!!!

[A READER’S LIFE] Confessions of a VERY picky, VERY moody, VERY stubborn reader.

Reading is a habit I formed very early in life. One of the very first books I read was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. That kid irked me in the beginning, to be honest. I only had the abridged version of the book and since I read it a very long time ago, I have forgotten most of what happens with him but there is ONE THING I DO REMEMBER and I REMEMBER IT VIVIDLY:

”Tom”
No answer.
”Tom.”
No answer

And then Aunt Polly just loses it!

[A READER’S LIFE] 5 TOTALLY Weird Things I do as a Reader, Lover, Dragon of BOOKS

(WARNING – It might get a bit dramatic around here. But hey, that’s just how I roll. 😉 )

Books are paperbound dreams that lift you up, up and above everything you know and everything you like to escape from. Soo pretty, soo beautiful – you just want to admire them and hold them near and never let them go. But they are also the cause of many of those weird quirks that we unintentionally and inevitably form.

And I am here to share them with you.

WHY, you ask?

Well, I don’t know about you guys but it’d do me good to know that I am not the only one who does these crazy-ass things.

❤ TOUCH-THEM-NOT

I don’t like people going through my shelves. PERIOD

Yes, they can admire those immaculately put, beautifully arranged mighty ones BUT THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH THEM, TAKE THEM OUT AND START FIDGETING!!! I know, I know, it’s super extreme and hey, I wasn’t like that always, okay?

But something happened once upon a time –

Mumma was showing some distant cousins my books (YEAH THEY WANTED TO SEE THEM BECAUSE ..OBVIOUSLY! *PFFTTTTT*) when one of them wanted to see ”that big, blue one” (and here we are talking about LADY MIDNIGHT by CASSANDRA CLAIRE) She took it out. The little guy held it for a few nanoseconds, got bored, left it lying on my bed and went out. And as she was putting the book back, she totally messed up the corners doing the task in a hurried, haphazard way.

MY. OWN. MOTHER!!

THE BETRAYAL!

I was NEVER THE SAME AGAIN!!

❤ PROTECT AND ATTACK

When I was little, me and my little brother used to sleep in the same room. Our study was in the room adjacent and all my books were there.

One day I heard of a break-in in one of our neighbor’s house,
I WAS SOO FREAKED OUT and NEEDLESS TO SAY that from that day on I slept with ALL of my books tucked around my bed because I was afraid that some vicious fuck llama might steal my babies!!!!

And this is something I still do, by the way.  I NEVER leave my books in the bag whenever I go to stay at my relatives’. I take them out at night, keep them by my bed and the next day, I do it all over again.

SUPER WEIRD, I KNOW!

❤ TO-READ or NOT-TO-READ

Now, this is the reason behind many of my reading slumps. I get soo sulky after reading a beautiful story that I JUST DON’T WANNA START A NEW BOOK because then all the memories of the one I just finished will be GOONEEE!!!

I feel as if I will lose a part of me. And that’s one of the biggest reasons why I don’t start a new book FOR A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME.

This happened when I first finished reading Harry Potter. I WAS SOO IN LOVEEE WITH EVERYTHING ABOUT THOSE BOOKS THAT I RE-READ THAT SERIES COUNTLESS TIMES before moving on to The Hobbit. and then, what do you know? THE PATTERN REPEATED ITSELF! I was a glutton for them and –

The most recent example of this though is when I read The Snow Child. That book destroyed mee!!

❤ FEAR AND LOATHING INSIDE THE T.V. SCREEN

I am sure you guys can DEFINITELY relate with this one.

I am afraid of watching book adaptations. THE FEAR OF DISAPPOINTMENT IS JUST TOO GREAT. Sure, there are some really good ones out there but whenever I find out that the book I read has been or is going to be made into a movie/series, I get so fucking nervous because a part of me believes that it’s just not going to be good enough.

Case in point, Good Omens. The adaptation came out months ago on Amazon Prime but I kept putting it off till now because I DIDN’T WANT O REPLACE MY PERSONAL IMAGE OF ALL THOSE CHARACTERS AND AMAZING SCENES.

But it was FAAAR from being a disappointment, I am telling you! I ABSOLUTELY ADORED THE SERIES!!! ❤

❤ SHARING IS NOT AN OPTION

Whenever I come across an amazing, heart-wrenching book I don’t want to tell anyone about it. At least not in the beginning.

You see I feel like telling people about it will somehow take the magic away and...then it won’t be as special anymore.

This happened to me recently when I was reading The Night Circus. My friend asked me if I recommended it and I FLAT OUT SAID –

I know that was a horrendous thing to do but I WAS JUST NOT READY TO SHARE MY LOVE WITH HER.

❤ OH MY LIBRARY, HOW I LOVE THEE!

Whenever I visit my local library, I AM FILLED WITH ENVY BY ALL THE PEOPLE THAT ARE THERE. Like what are you all doing here, you abominable little shits??

THIS LIBRARY IS MINE!
THESE BOOKS ARE MINE!
AND MINE ALONE!

SO GET YOUR FILTHY LITTLE HANDS OFF THEM YOU ABOMINABLE TWATS!!! 

I mean I could be browsing in a completely different section but if I see someone else in the next one, picking out gorgeous hardbacks and stroking them, I GET SICK TO MY STOMACH! It’s like hey, my future boyfriend might be in there and you are probing him!

WHAT ABOUT YOU, HUH? Which of these habits are you guilty of? Can you add to my list of weird little quirks that readers have? WHICH ONE DID YOU FIND THE WEIRDEST? Let me know.

[A READER’S LIFE] Beware the SLUMP //Treating a READER’S most-feared disease//

Reading. Reading some more. More reading.
Reading is fun.
Reading is life.
Reading is DOPE. (do people still use that word. though?)

READING ALSO BECOMES A PAIN IN THE ASS SOMETIMES! 

Don’t get me wrong. There is NOTHING I love more than waking up to a box full books just arrived from Amazon but
BUT
BUTTTT…

What to do when you JUST CANNOT MAKE IT WORK?

Well, I have successfully overcome this. Sure it took me a LOOONGGG time but hey, what matters is that I DID IT! And so I am PERFECTLY qualified to share my amazing tips with you as well.

So let’s get to it then!

TOO FUNNY TO NOT USE!!!! XDXDXDXDXD

[REVIEW] //One word – HOCKEYYYYY// US AGAINST YOU – Frederick Backman

When I picked up this book, it was already too late. Too late to turn back. Even though it would take me a few chapters to really start liking it, it would become a necessity for the next few hours that I read and read and read…and read this story. This story of kind hearts and brave minds. Of seriously misunderstood teens and the chaos within them. Of how it would shape their lives in a matter of a few seasons – whether for good or for bad.

There is nothing but extremes in Beartown. People go all out or they don’t go at all. They love with all their hearts or they just don’t care at all.

A town of winners. And everyone else.

A town where they only understood one religion – Hockey.
An obsession.
But is that really a bad thing? To be able to lose yourself into something even if just for a few minutes that you forget everything else?
Yes. And No.

 

A girl is raped. She didn’t mean to. It just happened. It wasn’t her fault. But nobody really cared. Or if they did, they didn’t much care to acknowledge it. A girl was raped and all the dominoes came crashing down all around this icy town. A girl was raped and it defined the lives of many, many people…for many, many days to come. A girl was raped and it gave birth to violence, resentment, hatred, depression, competition, and most of all, it gave birth to a reckoning.


When tragedy strikes, we are surprised how it could ever even happen. When hatred simmers in young hearts, we try to locate the source. But more often than not, we forget that it was all in us. Always. The act just paved the way. It just acted as a catalyst for the things to come rushing out that have always been within us, to begin with.

Frederick Backman’s Us Against You deals with human fragility and their strength simultaneously. How a father will make peace with the fact that he couldn’t protect his daughter? How a best friend will collect himself when the person he loved the most turned out to be someone completely different? How certain people will try to take advantage of the chaos. Will they succeed? Will it be a good thing or a bad one if they did?

Beartown is all of these people and every one of them is Beartown. And they live for hockey. They live for becoming something other than who they are. For staying the same. For getting out. For staying put. They will fight until the very end. Until they can fight no more. But then something absolutely terrible will happen. It won’t be enough.

The odds will be stacked against them till the very end.

“Kira Anderson is sitting on the steps outside the little house. waiting for a man who never comes”

It’s also about relationships. With yourself. And others. How delicately you handle them? How much are you willing to sacrifice for them?
Whom do you put first?
Are you selfish? When are you not?

On a macroscopic level, Us Against You is an account of the all-important, all-consuming human pride. All the different flavors of it.

Political agendas.
Smart men.
Manipulation at their fingertips.

Dreams.
Sacrifices made to achieve those dreams.
Proving your worth in a town that understands nothing but successive wins. Peter Anderson and his dilemmas. Late-night driving.

Tears.
Heartbreaks.
Career sacrifices.
A chance to forget about the shame that chance has seen fit to put on him. A chance to prove his worth.
Again.
And again.
A never-ending process. Because there will always be people who will underestimate you.

Determination.
The town gleams with it, inside out. Sure there is violence but there is also compassion which can easily be found in two mothers, their love for their children, their devotion to hockey. Its the little things that will make you fall in love with the residents of Beartown – shaving cream filled shoes, an overly sarcastic friend, sisters doing anything they can to keep their brother in line, friends singing and shooting and irritating the hell out of each other, long runs and even longer practices to make sure the one who can do it, does it and doesn’t get off the track. These things will melt you, strike confidence in your heart about these people, get you pumped up for whatever their future will bring. Yes. It will do all those things.

But this story will also do something that every good story does and should – give you hope, give you strength.

”Mistake…just a mistake.”

The one person I always rooted for throughout the book, from the beginning till the end was a boy. An eighteen-year-old boy. This boy is reckless until he isn’t. This boy is harmful until he isn’t. This boy is a beast. Yes. But a beast hiding a fatherless childhood, a brute hiding the fear of non-acceptance. A brother, an uncle, a lover, a friend..he is all those things. If only people could look behind that strong facade. If only the man with the blue collared t-shirt didn’t think of him as just a mistake.

”Just a mistake”

One other thing about the writing that struck me as most beautiful is the amazing use of repetition by Backman throughout the novel. He uses it to tug at our curiosity in just the right amounts and at just the right places. And it may not seem like much right now but when you’ll read it, you’ll understand just how much it adds to the beauty of the story.

In the end, to understand the larger-than-life hearts of the residents of Beartown, you need to read it. You need to let their struggles consume you. They need you. They need you to understand their story. They need to tell it in their own words, horror and all.
Won’t you listen?

“We’ll stand tall if you stand tall”

 

What did you think of the book?
Have I convinced you to read it yet?
What part intrigued you the most about this review?
What are you reading right now? Because I am in desperate need of suggestions!

[R E V I E W] Let go // A novel of obsession//THE ZAHIR by Paulo Coelho //

People are like clouds.  Sometimes they stay welled up, greyed, and full of pain. Sometimes they let it all out, sometimes they rain.

But whether the drizzle is a happy one or just a premonition of an upcoming storm is quite hard to figure out. There is one thing, however, that we can be sure of and that is the reason behind all they do –

L O V E.

Sometimes it’s the lack of it that drives them mad, sometimes its abundance. But whatever the case, it’s always the extremes that lead to every outburst. Something similar is at the heart of T H E  Z A H I R by Paulo Coelho.

I have never really been that keen on Coelho, to be honest. Yes, I have read The Alchemist, and yes, it was a brilliantly written novel but that was years ago and since that one book by him, I never quite got myself to pick up any other of his books. I don’t know but there is something about the way he writes. It’s mysteriously unsettling. It’s like something inside of me wants to escape whenever his words enter my thoughts. I feel…well..I can’t quite put it into words but whatever it was, it stopped me from reading whatever Coelho wrote. That’s why I put off reading The Zahir. It was given to me by my boyfriend who made me promise that I would read it. And I did, thinking that he will soon forget about it and I won’t have to go through that unknown and tremendously disturbing feeling again.

But he would NOT let it happen! DAMN, he would pester me EVERY DAY about it! xD SO MUCH THAT I HAD TO READ IT AND GET IT OVER WITH. He claimed that once I read The Zahir, I will change my opinion of Coelho. I doubted it but I decided to give it a shot anyway.

AND HE WAS RIGHT!

I admit that the first few pages, I didn’t know what was going on and was uninterested. But just as I was about to quit (I was, after all, looking for reasons to just close the book), I was hooked in.

It was like the words were clawing me in and the more I resisted and wanted to leave, the more I kept getting drawn into it. It was like quicksand and I could not break myself free.

I was now a captive of this treacherous little book.

And I never realised when my hate for my captor turned into Stockholm syndrome*!

*ONE DIRECTION, ANYONE??? oh, come on!!!!!

That was the moment I knew I was falling in love with Coelho and what’s weird is that I ENJOYED IT!

The Zahir was becoming my obsession. The sheer volume of the narrator’s thoughts! THEY WERE VERY LOUD! I could hear my mind screaming them back to me, just to ensure that I never forget it.

I was enjoying this kidnapping! I was enjoying how completely detached from the world I was becoming. And somewhere in this process, I found the one answer I too had been searching for soo long, without even realising it –

Am I happy?

There is someone for everyone which sets their souls on fire, who ignites such a passion in their hearts that it becomes impossible to not think about them in every thought, to not see them in every face, to not dream of them every passing night.

But the tragedy is that some people realise this a little too late – that once broken, the fragile thread is never smooth again, the heart is never again. That’s something that happens with our story’s protagonist. He is rich. He is famous. He has the passport to be with any woman he likes and still lead a happily married life. But he isn’t happy. He loves his wife. He loves his career. But he isn’t satisfied. His wife loves him. She loves her life. And yet, she isn’t satisfied either. Neither of them is happy. They need to find that SOMETHING. THAT FEELING OF BEING ALIVE. And in search of their respective obsessions…what will they eventually get?

Passion or despair?

I am T H E  Z A H I R.

Your obsession.

I was left enthralled by the time I finished reading this absolutely gorgeous book. Have you read The Zahir?
Did you feel the same?

Do you plan to read it?

What are your opinions of Coelho in general?

Do you feel the same aversion as I felt before reading The Zahir?

LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW! ❤ ❤ ❤

Until next time 🙂

THE INSIDES OF A READER’S MIND //NOT A PRETTY SIGHT//

They are all around you. They see you. Scrutinize you. Judge you. NOTHING ESCAPES THEIR NOTICE. YOU MIGHT THINK you can fool them but let me tell you, honey, YOU ARE SO FUCKING WRONG! They are READERS. And BOOKS are just ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THEY READ. They are good at guessing thoughts, assuming things about you that are 99% of the times ARE QUITE TRUE!! They are READERS AND GUESS WHAT?