Hooked to books

With exposure to a wide variety of material, reading as a habit for GenX has taken different forms, writes Ria Parmar

LET Me Introduce You To... Specimen: Average teenage boy, the usual bored strut, iPod plugged in and known to fidget with cellphone every two minutes. A pair of worn-out slippers to match, an equally worn-out pair of jeans.

Yes, this is exactly how it looks on the outside. This is, in fact, the stereotypical approach nine out of 10 persons take when they size up an 18-year-old boy.

You’d probably think of him as a ‘Facebook’ junkie — aware only of his immediate surroundings, ignorant of what the world’s about. Guess what — you’d only be right three times out of 10.

Though hard to believe, we still do love reading books — once you start reading, there’s very little that can make you stop.

Reading as a habit isn’t dead at all. It has just taken different forms! Its scope has widened extensively, exposing our generation to a wide variety of material that would otherwise not have been available this easily. The misconception about reading doesn’t stop here. Those of us who do read, are categorised as sticking to a limited genre. This is a skewed theory.

For starters, let me introduce some of my own friends and the variety of literature they skim through whenever they get the chance.

"My all-time favourite would have to be the Godfather by Mario Puzo". It’s "awe-inspiringly good", "brilliantly written and has given more to popular culture than any other book". This is the exact conversation I had with my friend Taha from Indore, as he animatedly declared his love for the bestseller.

The other book he’s recently read is Flawless by Scott Andrew and Grey Campbell; a work which smoothly captures the inside story on the epic Antwerp Diamond Heist of 2003.

There are others that include history, like Alexander by Valero Massino Manfredi — a set of three volumes covering the life of the Macedonian ruler. Then there’s always Krishan Pratap’s Dilli Darbar and Young Turks that delves into the political complexities of our country.

Reading plays a huge role in defining how you turn out to be as a person. A lot we say; the style with which we carry ourselves and the way we come across, as the person within is a derivative of the literature we imbibe over the years.

Another friend, Govind Singh, student of The Doon School, is also an avid reader. His favourites, though, are plays like Look Back In Anger by John Osborne and Mother by Gorki.

Other engrossing favourites are The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Catcher in the Rye.

It seems that as long as our generation has a couple of nice songs and a good book, we’re good to go.

Whether it’s all-time favourite Archie comics or the biographies of musical legends — The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and the like — we’ve pretty much read it all. The habit of borrowing from libraries has noticeably diminished, but the joy of reading hasn’t. If we’re not leafing through pages, we’re reading off the net.

Books that one shouldn’t let pass are Jeffrey Archer’s amalgamation of crisp short stories Thereby Hangs a Tale and John Grisham’s The Chamber.

I have friends who swear by a new book named The Immortals Of Meluha by Amish. It gives a new and most intriguing angle to Indian mythology. It is a definite page-turner.

My personal favourite has always been Million Little Pieces by James Frey. It is the very book that has inspired me to write, to weave stories and to observe my world. Others I would recommend are A Thousand Splendid Suns, also by Khaled Hosseini and Ukridge from the P.G. Wodehouse series — which are absolutely rib-tickling, making this offering a gripping read.

Reading as a habit, if steeped early in childhood, will solidify forever. Once you acquire such a firm foundation — the habit is only going to become more prominent, more cultivated and more refined.

The next time you see a teenage boy strutting with a hairstyle that is 10 years overdue for a cut, the next time you see a droopy-eyed adolescent — please do think twice. It might not be because of the party last night, but because he was up late, devouring his latest ‘unputdownable’ book.