I spend about half my waking time reading.
What I read varies. I subscribe to two magazines and regularly read - The Economist and The New Yorker. I used to read India Today regularly, but of late, I only dip into it occasionally. In the morning, there is a superficial glance at The Times of India, The Economic Times and Mint
During the tumultuous Trump years, I ended up subscribing to the New York Times and Washington Post to keep up with the high drama of US Politics. The subscription continues as I find the long-form journalism in which the two papers invest pretty compelling.
But the bulk of my time is taken up by books. And unlike many avid readers, I have moved on from hard copy and now read primarily in the electronic mode and, over the past few years, increasingly as audiobooks.
A list of books I have completed reading in the last few months and also the list of books on my Kindle and Books apps and on my nightstand illustrates the range of my reading:
Books completed in the last three months:
- Lessons: A Novel by Ian McEwan
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- The Free World: Art and Thought in The Cold War by Louis Menand
- Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
- The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes by Donald Hoffman
- Checkout 19 by Claire-Louis Bennet
- The Passenger by Cormac Mccarthy
Books I am currently reading:
- Victory City by Salman Rushdie
- Nirmala by Munshi Premchand
- Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
- Quantum Computing by Chris Bernhardt
- Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
- Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising by Judith Williamson
- Semiotics the Basics by Daniel Chandler
Besides the above, there is a score of books that I have dipped into but hope to read sometime in the future actively. And dozens more sit on my devices or shelf that I have yet to crack.
For avid readers, the lists above may seem like a not-so-humble-brag. But many others might think it is a recipe for madness.
The question to them would be why a seemingly sane and functional guy reads so much and so widely.
More simply, the question is, why do I read?
I read because to read is to be all I can be - to let the multitudes in me breathe, think and dream. To read is to time-travel into the past and the future. To read is to live in many countries. To experience untold wealth and biting poverty. To read is to be a philosopher, a scientist, a poet, an astronaut and a vagabond.
Take just the books I have read recently or am currently reading.
I spent a week being a writer, living a life damaged by exploitation as a teenager, and finding redemption in forgiveness.
I spent a month experiencing the poetry of tennis and the depth of addiction.
I negated material reality and saw the faint outlines of an emergent physics that could marry the philosophical concepts of "Maya" and "Atma" to hard-nosed science.
I was a Gen Z prodigy with an argot that portends where 21st-century literature is going.
I experienced that the most profound form of grief is its own redemption.
I struggle with the maths at the core of the next computing revolution.
I discover frontiers that can open up new vistas in my decades-old professional practice.
Therefore, the question is not why read but how can you not?
TV, movies, social media and the like are the shallows. They won't free you from being all that you can be. Instead, they bind you to somebody else's viewpoint.
But then you may ask, doesn't reading hook you to the writer's viewpoint? No, I say. The very act of reading is to allow yourself to go beyond the written word to synthesize a new immersive reality that is partly your creation, like walking into a street that has been around for centuries but whose experience is all your own.
The medium is the message. So what gives the written word its magic? I don't know. Is it because it's the oldest form of preserved human expression? Has the millennia of use engendered an evolution in the human psyche that gives the written word its potency?
Perhaps, a book or two out there ponder the above question. If so, those books will join my list soon enough.
In conclusion, let me answer a nagging question in the minds of some of you. If I read so much, when do I work and earn a living?
Luckily I have chosen a profession where I get better at my work the more I read. However, it's a pity that the timekeepers do not recognize my reading as billable hours. And alas, neither does the taxman allow the fortune I spend on books as a write-off.
