In the busy part of Bombay that I lived in as a kid, there was a run of the mill market-square. It had a grocery store, a pharmacy, a copier (Xerox) shop, and a couple of others I can’t recall. But my favorite corner was the one occupied by a ‘Raddhi-Walla’. Of course, we call them scrap-collectors now but that term wasn’t part of my vocabulary back then. The store owner would diligently separate books from all the discarded stuff he had collected over the day and keep it aside for me. I’d stop by on my way back from school and comb through the haul. I had a pretty fun childhood, but finding a potential read from the stack was often the highlight of my day.
Remnants of this memorable activity from my childhood very much remain to this day. It’s majorly why one of my favorite things to do in Vancouver (besides NOT doing the Grouse Grind) is to frequent thrift stores, not to shop for clothes, but to sample their bookshelves. I figure it’s the love for books that I picked up as a child and cultivated over the years. But it’s also that joy of discovery, that chancing upon a pristine copy of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy or the definitive biography of Muhammad Ali with a gorgeous black and white cover of a shadow boxing Ali. I wager it’s the same joy from when I was nine or ten and found a copy of Moby Dick or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea at the raddhi-wallas.
I am a strong advocate of buying books and surround myself with as many as space allows. I am aware that this practice is tantamount to hoarding but I’ve found my unread pile of books to be a powerful motivator to read more. The Lebanese-American Scholar Naseem Taleb defends this practice and dubs the unread stacks of books as an ‘anti-library.’
… a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
Indeed, my anti-library acts as a constant reminder of the things I don’t know. In this, it keeps me intellectually grounded and forever curious. And what template do I follow while buying books? How about Annie Zaidi’s…
I buy a lot of books and I don’t know what I’m looking for, only that I should not be bored. Let them take me down tunnels of discomfort, grief, caution, disappointment, happy accidents, panic, excision, shock, mirth. Let me have stories I can argue with. A weird story that answers only to its own name and will not accept any genre tag. A purposeful story that doesn’t carry a placard. A sprawling conquest of a story that doesn’t smell of ambition. Anything except more of the same.
Books have provided me great comfort during this year’s difficult times. It’s prevented me from being over-reliant on people for company and instead enjoy my own. In the words of Marcel Proust,
With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends—books—it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: ‘What did they think of us?’—‘Did we make a mistake and say something tactless?’—‘Did they like us?’—nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else.
This year, I’ve read everywhere - on the bus, on my bed, in cafes, and in my lab. And, I’ve read everything, well almost. I’ve put myself in different people’s shoes, worn a different pair of spectacles, traveled back in time (and forward), and gotten a quick lesson in behavioral economics. I’ve felt happy and sad, often both at the same time. I’ve cried and laughed. I’ve felt warm. I’ve felt whole. If there is one thing I’d recommend people do in 2021, it’s to try and read more. It’s good for you. Ceridwen Dovey writes in a wonderful piece,
A 2011 study published in the Annual Review of Psychology, based on analysis of fMRI brain scans of participants, showed that, when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. We draw on the same brain networks when we’re reading stories and when we’re trying to guess at another person’s feelings… So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers.
The current state of the world has highlighted the importance of Art like perhaps no other period of time. Annie Zaidi writes,
Society needs its bitter messengers, its poets, soothsayers, historians. Truth and art keep us this side of human… Art is a lifeboat, a raft we cobble together from scraps left on the shore after a shipwreck…This lifeboat of art also serves as a web, a matrix of truth, beauty, and consciousness.
So here’s to art. Here’s to books. To distill the personal experience of reading, I’ll quote from a beautiful essay by Scherzade Siobhan
Reading, as I have discovered since, is an act of tender revolution. Selfcare has become a trend of sorts but the fact is one of the earliest ways I discovered how to truly care for self was in the company of books.
And, I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with author Sven Birkerts when he writes that - “I read books to read myself.”
Here are some recommendations for the week -
I’ve been watching Ozark in which Laura Linney is brilliant. She starred in a wonderful movie with Mark Ruffalo way back - You Can Count On Me.
I borrowed heavily from Annie Zaidi’s writing for this piece, so it’s a perfect time to recommend her stellar book, Prelude To A Riot. It’s short, taut, and incredibly powerful.
Sticking with the theme for this weeks newsletter, I loved this essay - My Father’s Stack of Books, and this powerful piece by Annie Zaidi after she won the Tata Lit Fest Fiction book award - Why do the rich and the powerful sponsor literature festivals, prizes, and art in today’s world?
Paper Kites is an Australian folk-rock band. I’ve been listening to their breezy first EP Woodland on loop this week.
I loved this interview with Dhruv Sehgal which Chalchitra Talks put up recently. Dhruv created one of my favorite shows to come out of the Indian web-space (Little Things) and here he speaks candidly about reading, life, etc.
Starting this week, I am going to use this space to recommend some poetry.
Do not ask your children to strive
By William Martin
Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a potpourri of random thoughts littered with recommendations galore. If you liked reading it, do consider subscribing and sharing it with friends. Also, this newsletter tends to appear in Gmail’s Promotions tab. Consider filtering it to Inbox for easier visibility.
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