The Making of a Bibliophile

I am not sure at what age I got addicted to reading.

Maybe it was the school library.

The school library introduced me to the adventurous world of Famous Five, Secret Seven and Hardy Boys (somehow did not manage ever picking Nancy Drew). Got introduced to the American school life through the Sweet Valley Twins franchise and also to the grown up world of Jeffrey Archer and Robin Cook. Jeffrey Archer and Robin Cook were my first encounter with pulp fiction. They were my favorite authors for the longest time. Today it is difficult to point to that one author who is my absolute favorite.

Maybe it was my parents. They read a lot.

My mother was a voracious reader – absolutely loved reading. She introduced me to Perry Mason and Sherlock Holmes.

Somehow am certain, I would never have stumbled across the epic Erle Stanley Gardener if it was not for my mother. How I usually pick a new author: I randomly flip open to some page in the book and give it a read. If it felt good, I pick. Else drop. Given how old school Erle Stanley Gardener is, I am pretty sure I would have given him a miss. I have given P.G. Wodehouse a miss because of my highly evolved selection process. And I do not change my mind about authors easily – I have not read him till date. 

As a wedding gift, my mother had received a vintage “Sherlock Holmes collection” from her brother. I remember I used to read it off the table or the floor since it was too big to hold!

Maybe it was the smell of books – the intense smell you get when you enter a library. It was and continues to be as heady as petrichor for me.

I remember going to Ram Krishna Mission library with my folks. There used to be missionaries studying, reading or taking copious notes at the big wooden tables. And absolute silence - I remember hearing the pen scrape the paper that was being written on.

The silence felt strange then. But now I know better - people were busy reading! I understand that feeling today. I can get lost in the world of the authors creation – absolutely oblivious to the world around me. Since the library survived on donations, they did not have the most recent books obviously. But they had a big collection. The bonus was – you could keep the book for more than a week unlike the library at school. Was introduced to Leo Tolstoy, and Somerset Maugham here.

I sometimes wonder if I should read those books again – not sure what I would have understood then. Somerset Maugham still makes me run to a dictionary! But in hindsight, reading such heavy material probably made me look out for another library.

Imagine my delight when I chanced upon a circulating library near home. It was choked full with books from ceiling to floor, authors new and old and had a very avid reader as the library owner!

My life has never been the same. In a matter of weeks, the owner understood my taste and started recommending new authors and books. Discovered some really amazing authors here: Daniel Silva, Robert Tanenbaum, Harlan Coben, David Baldacci among a host of others.

I still visit the library and take the owner's suggestions on new authors and books.

The school had a return policy of a week. So did the circulating library. There was real pressure since I did not like leaving books unfinished then. The other alternative was to buy the book if it was so intriguing. But my parents did not encourage buying books: “You will not read them again. There are too many books you are yet to read”. So I ended up paying fines in case I took longer than the designated one week(which happened when the books got bigger).

I disagreed with them, somehow I thought I knew better (like every other teenager). I started putting together a little book for myself. It has a list of authors, along with their books I have read. Have a neat little marking system as well – green for WOW, black for DON’T BOTHER. The idea was: once I can afford to buy books, I would buy the books marked in green. I have slowly started buying those books I had so loved – it feels so good to somehow have them in your own home.

I am yet to prove my parents wrong about one thing though: I am yet to re-read the book collection I am trying to carefully put together. I hope to prove them wrong sometime – and chances are I won’t. I have stopped reading books midway if they bore me, I don’t waste time on stories which don’t hold me. Re-reading a book? Slightly unlikely as of today. The problem is there are too many books yet to read!