Category: Sunday Post

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Sunday Blues: Will This Pandemic Ever End?

The last three months have been the strangest of my life, maybe of everyone’s lives. Due to this pandemic, life was put on hold and a new normal has been born. I spent the first month just trying to get used to having everyone at home all the time. The second month was smoother, and now it’s like we have always been like this!

Before the social distancing and quarantine woes started, I had completely given up on reading. I had a ganglion cyst in my right wrist. Over the last few months it became too painful to hold even the lightest of things. So, I gave up books, tablets, my kindle and to a great extent my phone as well.

When things became really bad, I decided to get the cyst removed and try to get back to normal life. As luck would have it, by that time the world was waking up to the pandemic that would wreak so much havoc around the world.

I had the surgery and found out, much to my annoyance that there won’t be a miracle and I would still need a couple of months to get back full use of my right hand. The bandage was removed after ten days. And then all hell broke lose!

The world went into a lockdown, and the help that I was counting on to get me through the next months was no longer there. As everyone who has faced this situation knows, there is a lot more work when everyone is at home. The kids and husband tried to chip in as much as they could, but they had school and office respectively. I’m thankful that my kids’ school hasn’t lost a single day of studies and are on track for the scheduled summer holidays.

Unfortunately for me, my wrist never got the rest that it needed. It has been almost 9 weeks and my hand still feels uncomfortable and painful sometimes.

Last week I finally decided that enough was enough and picked up my first book in months. What else? Agatha Christie of course! Since then I have decided that right now I’m more comfortable with my Kindle which is lighter and more easily manageable. As a result, I have finished two books in the last three days!

It is a big achievement considering it is Ramadan and things are a bit off kilter with fasting and quran classes every day. Yet, I’m determined to hold on to my Kindle and get back into the saddle.

It’s funny how I’m suddenly so attached to this little device that I have been so vocal about disliking! My love for physical books is still there, for nothing can come close to that smell and that feeling, but I have also decided to reserve a little corner of my heart for e-readers that help you when you need it the most.

I just hope that this pandemic ends sometime soon in the future. But I have a feeling that the world will never get back to where it was before this horror started.

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Sunday Blues: Dream House Part Deux

When I wrote the blog post about the house of my dreams I had no idea that I was so close to achieving my dream. We were in the process of moving house around the time that I wrote the post, and all I could think of was how much stuff I needed to get rid of because even though the place was bigger, it has less storage space. My bookshelves have always remained a joke with my husband. He knows how sentimental I feel towards my books, and he’s not above making fun of my attachment.

When we first though about moving, my husband was full of plans to convert the family room downstairs into a gaming/ media room. I thought it was a good idea and accordingly thought up of how I was going to set it all up. I don’t like watching TV and find it hard to concentrate on anything while it is on, even if I’m not watching.

With all this planning going on in my brain, I had no idea what my husband had cooking in his head. The day before we were to start moving our stuff, I asked him which wall he wanted the TV mounted on, and he completely changed his tune! He insisted that he wanted his TV in the living room and nowhere else. I was perplexed by this sudden change in plans and asked him what was I supposed to do with this extra room that would now be useless. He told me to use it for myself and do what I really wanted to do with it in the first place.

I didn’t even get time to think things through before I was directing all the bookshelves into this room. As a result, all our bedrooms got a bit more spacious, and we managed to get all the books in one room.

This is how my dream came true and I got a study in my house. As a thank you to my husband, I fixed up his foosball table in the study too!

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Sunday Blues: Dream House

Growing up, my dream house always had the largest library imaginable. I didn’t know the number of rooms it will have, how big it will, or even if it will have a swimming pool or not. The most important thing was to have floor to ceiling shelves full of books, oh, and a ladder with wheels so that I could access all those books up near the ceiling!

As I grew older, I realized that it might not be possible to have such a library in the house and I might have to settle for a study full of shelves. I resigned myself to my fate and began looking forward to this dream study. I have to admit that in 40 years of my life there have only been two friends whose houses I have envied, both of them because they had a room full of books. I have shamelessly borrowed books from both the friends, and would have continued to do so had we not all gotten married and moved away from each other.

Over the years I have come to accept the fact that maybe I don’t really want a library. It requires too much work, and while I like my books organized and classified, I’d rather not do it myself. So it’s obvious that I need a messy study full of books in my life. Sadly, I still don’t have one. When we moved to our current place three years ago, I had definite plans on turning one of the rooms into a cozy little reading room full of books and easy chairs. Alas, my kids decided that they’d rather have separate rooms than let their mom move all their books to some other room.

And there you have it. My kids are the biggest hindrance to my dream library. They want their books to be close to them at all times. The other night I rescued 13, yes 13, books from the upper bunk of the bed where my second-born sleeps! His excuse: that he needed to have all these books with him because he never knew what he might want to read! facepalm It made me mad because he only goes up there when I turn off the lights, so what he’s reading in the dark, I don’t know.

When my husband told me a few days ago that we might have to move to another place, all I wanted to know was if there’s an extra room for my books. He just gave me that look and never answered my question. It doesn’t matter. Even if this new place has no library or study, I will not give up on my dream to have one some day. Maybe after one of the kids grows up and moves away? I don’t know, but I dream.

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Sunday Venting: Are The Kids Alright?

When my children were little, everyone kept telling me how I was lucky to have had them close together. That way, they said, they will grow up together and you will be free to enjoy your own life. As my children grow older, I have started having serious doubts about this statement. They will probably drive me insane long before they’re old enough to take care of themselves!

I know how almost everything is blamed on the electronic devices and the screen time that kids get these days, and I have always been unable to manage screen time, but for my kids there might be another reason. Over the last few months, I cannot help but feel if it is the books causing all these problems? The books that my kids read currently are nothing like the books that we used to read.

I understand that things tend to change over time, and what was deemed taboo in our times is up for general discussion everywhere now. However, the overall language, stories and setup of most of the newer books leaves me feeling a bit disgruntled. Maybe it’s age catching up on me, but it has become commonplace to use slang and derogatory words in children’s books. The humour is crude and the characters as far from exemplary as possible.

There is also a clear difference between girls’ books and boys’ books. When I was in school, books were books. They were for everyone. Yes, there were some girlish books, like Anne of Green Gables or Nancy Drew, and some books that were more interesting for boys, like Hardy Boys, but overall they had the same feel. Books like Sweet Dreams or Sweet Valley High, while popular with girls, were not the kind of books we generally found in our school library. So it was mostly through second-hand shops and borrowing from other girls that you could get your hands on such books.

Today, children have a much wider variety of books to choose from, yet to me, they all look and sound the same. Girls’ books are all about chasing boys, dressing up, or hanging out with the “in” crowd. It has become very hard to filter books and even harder to stop girls from being influenced by them. Things are not much better for boys. All fictional boys are either full of toilet humour, engaging in very crass behaviour, or chasing aliens. Some even take out the time to moon over girls!

Of course, all this is a part of life and our children should read about these things, but these are not the only things that matter. Sometimes I find it hard to believe how accepting we have become of bad behaviour in our children. All the shows that my kids watch on TV (and they are only allowed to watch Disney) are about children who have the worst manners and who behave like delinquents in school! They treat their teachers like trash, and their parents don’t seem to fare any better. Similarly, in bookshops, I can find shelves upon shelves of children’s books with protagonists who are a parent’s worst nightmare.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to change things. I can limit the screen time, but cannot ban it altogether, and I can screen the books, but not when I don’t have other options. Things like the home environment matter, as does the relationship between parent and child, but the reality is that your child is spending most of the day with other kids who are being influenced by all this. It has become quite a struggle to keep a balance and not become complete villains in our children’s lives. The uphill battle continues.

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Sunday Dispute: Is It Mid-Life Crisis?

I have been facing a dilemma. That of changing tastes and choices. I have always been proud of primarily being a detective at heart; a thrill seeker and a mystery solver, with a streak of adventure and a love for the unknown. There were a few years when this love was shared by another genre: Romance. Alas, that love affair only lasted for the duration of my teenage years. There were a few other friendships, but none as permanent and everlasting as the one between mystery thrillers and me.

This year, as I enter into my forties, I fear that my reading habits might be going through a mid-life crisis. The previously much-loved and adored friend no longer seems to hold my interest. Infact, I can hardly get myself to even look at a thriller any more. There are stacks and stacks of books staring at me, silently willing me to pick them up, their attractive covers screaming from Instagram accounts, their stellar reviews whispering sweet nothings into my ears, yet I feel nothing.

I have not found another favorite genre yet, but I’m looking around. All of a sudden I seem to have become more bold and daring, willing to venture into unknown worlds, rather than remaining a one-genre woman. It’s not easy. I would say it’s a lot of hard work. I keep thinking that if I read enough crap I might find something that will hold my interest for a longer period of time. Something with whom I can enjoy a long-term relationship.

But when you have been married for as long as mysteries/ thrillers and I, anything new just seems like a short-lived affair brought on by the advent of middle age. You have to give me one thing though. I haven’t stopped spending money on the darned genre. I still buy more thrillers than is good for my bank account, more than I can possibly read in this lifetime at least! It’s like a disease in my blood.

The more I write about it, the more it seems like the tale of a marriage going through a bad time. Maybe that’s what it is. We have been together for so long that we need a break from each other. Yeah, that’s what we should do.

Though we need to define the boundaries of this break. I don’t want to be left alone later on in life, telling anyone who would listen, “…but we were on a break!”

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Sunday Problems: The Boy And His Books

I have a teenager. He is an enigma. Just like all teenagers are to their parents. He is a lot like I was at his age, and he makes me appreciate my mom every day for putting up with me all those years ago. Like me, he needs to read just one more page of his current read, and like me, he is willing to forget everything else when he is in some other fantasy world. This makes for some interesting clashes between us.

Is there a name for the feeling when you’re in the middle of a rant about how schoolwork should come before anything else, and realize that you yourself were once in the exact same situation that your son now finds himself in? How do you keep your face straight? Do you leave the argument mid-rant? Or do you finish it off, all the while feeling like the worst hypocrite? Because if you’re honest with yourself, you still do the same thing when you stay awake all night to finish a book even when you know you have to get up early the next morning, and go to a very important parent-teacher meeting!

My love for reading was passed on to me by both my parents. Ever since I can remember, I have had some kind of books in my hands. It’s like a madness in all of us, and I seem to have passed it on to my kids. The eldest one has it really bad. He even has the same obsessive notions about books that I do. Like having the same editions for a single series, or thinking it the end of the world if, God forbid, a book cover gets a crease from somewhere, or needing to have a copy of his own even if he can borrow it from someone.

I have a box set of The Lord of The Rings paperbacks that I really love. When he asked to read the series, I let him borrow it. I thought he was quite young for it, and sure enough, he got bored and couldn’t finish it. However, not only was he able to finish The Hobbit, he also enjoyed reading it. Ever since then, somehow he got into his head that he needs to have a copy of The Lord of The Rings in one binding. He kept asking me, I kept telling him no because we already have a set at home.

One day, he found a very nice paperback with the whole series in one binding, and got so fascinated with it that I just had to buy it for him. The book is so thick that it can be used as a foundation stone in the construction of the Two Towers! Just picking it up requires serious muscle. But the boy is happy. He has been reading it religiously, hasn’t even looked at any new books while he is attempting to finish this one.

At first I was surprised at his sudden interest in reading something he had failed at before. Then I realized that this interest was born after watching the LOTR movies. I have never liked movies based on books; I hadn’t even watched the Harry Potter movies until last year. But this in my eyes is the true success of The Lord of The Rings movies… making my son motivated to actually compare the books and the movies.

So now, I sit and wait for him to finish with the tome, so that we can give some attention to the science project due in a few weeks. Today, he finally told me that he is now reading The Return of The King, and I couldn’t help but give a sigh of relief. Now maybe I can get back to some important things myself, like getting a start on that Good Reads challenge that I took up the other day!

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Sunday Musings: Reading Makes us Judgmental

When it comes to the type of books another person reads, I will be the first to admit that I judge them. I make assumptions about individuals just because of their reading habits. This person has so many biographies in their bookshelf, they must be really boring; oh, there are so many religious books in this shelf, this person must be extremely religious; so many romances in this shelf must mean that this person lives in a dream world. And it goes on and on.

Everyone has prejudices and we tend to look at others through our own prejudiced eyes, deeming them worthy or unworthy of our time. For me, that prejudice resides in bookshelves and book stacks. This doesn’t make me an evil person. I don’t stop socializing with people just because I don’t like what they read. I just judge them silently, in the depths of my heart. No one knows about it, but I do.

In the same way, I feel like everyone is judging me on the books that I read; not because anyone has ever said anything to me, but because I have a guilty conscience. There shouldn’t be any problem if I read an odd romance or some religious text, after all it’s my own choice, yet I have to think hard about putting it out there on any social media. No one has ever called me out on my reading choices, so what is it that has made me afraid to put it out there?

I find that there is no answer to this. As long as I have my own prejudice, I will continue to be scared myself. Over the years, there have been many books that I have read because everyone was reading them, even if I didn’t really want to read them. This urge to do what is acceptable was the worst in my teenage and early twenties, when I read an average of 2-3 books a week to keep up with what I wanted to read, and what the world was reading.

Back in school, every girl I knew was reading Sweet Dreams or Sweet Valley High, which later gave way to Mills &Boon romances. There was nothing wrong with reading these, except that I only read them to appear normal. The truth is, that I was probably the only girl in my class who actually enjoyed reading the books assigned to us for our English literature classes, and who looked forward to borrowing books recommended by the high school English teacher! I didn’t want to be the class nerd though, so I compromised by reading everything. Thank God I have somewhat grown up after all these years!

Ever since I started my Bookstagram account and this blog a year and a half back, this urge has reduced exponentially. I find that I can only write about the books that I really want to read, and that makes me ignore all the books that I don’t really want to get into. Add to that the lack of time and energy for unwanted pursuits, I find that I have started reading for myself again. Now, I don’t read in order to appear well read, or interested in popular works, I just read to please myself and have a good time.

Unfortunately, that still hasn’t stopped me from making assumptions about others based on what they read. I realize that that makes me a horrible human being, but we all have our vices, and mine is to secretly and silently judge others on what they read (or don’t read)!

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Sunday Issues: Of Reading Slumps And Manic Reading

2018 has been a year full of ups and downs for me personally. In some of the darkest times of my life, it was reading that brought me peace and sanity. At the same time, there were occasions when reading became the most difficult thing for me to do for days and weeks. My erratic reading habits over this year highlight the tumultuous year this has been.

The year started off in the worst way possible, but I was determined to read myself into oblivion; to forget everything and get lost in my books. It was such a good time for my reading that I settled on a GoodReads target of a 100 books in 2018! During the first few months, I was well on my way to achieving this target with an average of 9 books read per month! This went on for a while, me losing myself in fiction, buying new books every week, thinking about books, talking about books, and avoiding real life as much as possible.

As a result of this non-stop activity, I became exhausted. My mind refused to comprehend the words that were once so dear to me. I read, but I couldn’t understand. I kept having to go back and forth in the most simplest of books just to understand what was happening, and that made me lose patience, with myself as well as with my beloved books. I put the books aside and started indulging in mindless reading. I was still a reader, but now I could only read online articles about things that wouldn’t make me think too hard. Things like celebrity gossip, home design, makeup trends, and anything else that I could read and forget the next instant.

In the beginning, I thought, this is how my brain is having a detox. I thought to indulge myself for a few days, and then go back to my books, books that were still piling up while I was not reading them. You see, I was still buying books – online, at bookstores, asking family to get them for me, and any other way that I could get my hands on them. The fact that I wasn’t actually reading them didn’t really stop me from buying more and more books. It was a compulsion, and I just couldn’t stop!

This is not a story about how I overcame my reading slump. I still haven’t. I have devoured books one after another in a week, and have been unable to touch a book for other weeks. This is an ongoing struggle for me. It frustrates me, and makes me irritable. I want to be able to read whenever I want to. Books have been a compulsory part of my life ever since I learnt to read, and not being able to comprehend words is something I cannot come to terms with. I still have days when I love a book, want to keep on reading, but it’s too much work for me.

I know some would say there are definite psychological issues hidden in all this, and I agree, but I’m not willing to give up so easily. Words have been my friends since I was 4 years old, and I’m not willing to abandon them without a good fight. So, take that, Reading Slump! And on that note, I will go and finish the book that I’m currently reading and enjoying so much!

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Sunday Relationship: My Kindle and I. It’s Complicated.

I have a habit of complaining about how I don’t have enough space in the house for my books, and how my shelves are always disorganised. It’s more showing off than an actual concern, I think. However, people who don’t know me think it is a very serious problem, one that I want a solution to. And they have just the right solution for my problem!

The most obvious and easy solution is, of course, to start reading e-books. Get a Kindle, they say. Like I just came out of my cave, and have no idea that there are such things as electronic books now! To all those people, I’m not from another century. I have been reading “e-books” as they’re called, since my teens!

Of course, back then there were no handheld devices, and to read a book, you had to sit on a chair and scroll through the text on the computer screen. I have been crazy enough to do that. I sat all night in my chair to read Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire on my PC. And that is a huge book if you remember. So, I have nothing against reading electronic versions of books.

Except that I had to go get the hard copy of the book as well, because there are times when I want to read some part of it again, and it was a hassle to look for that particular part in the electronic version. Since this is not a problem any more, with iPads and tablets and Kindle coming pretty close to the size of actual books, difficulty of access is a moot point now.

Still, you have to admit, scrolling down a screen is never going to be the same as flipping the pages of a book. I have a habit of playing with the edge of the page while reading, because I’m impatient and want to turn the page as soon as I read the last word. As a result, every time I read something on my Kindle, I invariably turn the page before finishing the previous one, which leads to a lot of back and forth, and a lot of frustration.

Oh, did I forget to say that I do have a Kindle? I got one last year for my birthday, after a lot of grief from my husband. The poor guy has wanted to get one for me for years now but knowing how crazed I am, he never dared surprise me with something I might not be too crazy about. So, finally, last year I gave in, and got a Kindle Voyage which seemed to be a better option for me.

Unfortunately, I have only managed to read two books on my device in the last 1.5 years! Firstly, because I have a Middle East account on Amazon, and it keeps telling me that the book I want is not available in the Kindle Store, and secondly, because it irritates me to no end that I cannot flip the pages over to see how much of the book is left. Or, if it’s too boring, to cheat and read a bit of the ending to see if it’s worth it to read all of it!

Then, there’s this whole insane thing about smelling the books. Yes, I know. All bookworms do it. At least the ones I know do. Just like some people love the smell of petrol, I love the smell of books and bookstores. Apart from smell, there is the weight of a book. A light as air device can never fill the void of a big heavy book in my hands. I can not put weird and funky bookmarks in a Kindle either. Just another one of my eccentricities.

My dear Kindle, I love you very much (after all you didn’t come for free, did you?), but while you’re like a newer, shinier car, my old car is still the first love of my life. I cannot leave my first love (that’s my books) for the new one, though that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Love, T.

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Sunday Talks: …But What About The Classics?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of the ability to read, must be made to read The Classics (with due apology to Jane Austen. Pride And Prejudice remains a favourite of mine).

Ever since I can remember, people have been telling me to read classics and learn to appreciate them. In school, these books were stuffed down our throats until we wanted to tear our hair out. Whenever I asked for suggestions about what to read, the answer would invariably be some classic or the other before even asking me if I was interested. That was only because it is considered unthinkable that you haven’t read at least some “Classic” authors.

Later on, it became a matter of pride to tell people how you have read the most difficult books and love them to no end. Unfortunately, I have never learned to appreciate the “Classics” bar a few which took my fancy at an early age.

Shakespeare has never been a favourite. It might have something to do with reading the abridged form of all his plays for school, but even after reading a few full plays, I have never been impressed. Same goes of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. The only Dickens that I have ever liked is A Tale of Two Cities, and as for Hardy, I admit to having fallen asleep while reading Far From The Madding Crowd.

I can go on and on about books that everyone swears by and that have failed to move me. There have been a few books that have managed to touch me as well, but as a rule I have failed to find an author about whom I can say that I like all their work (unless they have only written one book, and I have liked that book).

It has taken me almost four decades to admit that I have lied about having read a book simply because I was afraid of being judged. Even when I was a kid, I never admitted to anyone how I didn’t find Black Beauty interesting at all, or how Heidi seemed to be a very boring little girl! I think I’m still a bit afraid to say it out loud.

I’m not saying I don’t like classics at all. Some have stayed close to my heart, and even now I don’t know why I like them. Alice In Wonderland, Pride And Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca to name a few.

The reason I thought about all this is that my kids refuse to read any “old” books that I tell them to. They want to read what they like, and they’re unapologetic about it. If my daughter doesn’t like Charlotte’s Web, and my son finds Pinocchio insufferable, they don’t hesitate to say it. Over the years, I have learned to stop nagging them about what they “should” read, and started paying more attention to what they “want” to read.

There was a time I used to fill the kids’ shelves with books that I had been given to read when I was their age, forgetting about how I myself felt about these books at that age. Then, when the kids didn’t read them, I got angry because I had spent so much money. I screamed and shouted, and swore never to get them another book again, yet not being able to stop buying more of the same.

My children have made me realize that there is no such thing as a classic. Any well-written book that holds their attention, is a classic for them. And that is how it should be. I shouldn’t expect a 10-year old to care about 19th Century England, when he lives in 21st Century Middle East. I shouldn’t expect a 9-year old to want to know about travelling in horse carts when she has never even experienced public buses. They will get there in due time…if they want to.

Reading books should be about your own likes and interests. It shouldn’t be about what others think you should read, nor should it be about showing off to the world how well-read you are. It is only when we let them enjoy the experience, that people will turn to reading and books. Read and let others read in peace.

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