Bibliophiles

When you finish a good book, how does it feel? Is it the same feeling for everyone? Do we feel the same way when we finish a good series?

According to me, no. Perhaps it's because I'm a bibliophile? A bookworm. But finishing a good story book to me is a feeling that's..... that's like when you've finally figured out a person. It's a warm hug on a winter day (not Mumbai winter) and good, strong coffee in the morning. It's... perfection, satisfaction and nostalgia rolled into one.

When you finish a story book you've finished a story. Multiple stories in fact. Those characters in that book or that series will never live again. They will never wake up and make decisions again. They'll never solve a mystery or fall in love again. For all intents and purposes, they're finished. The end. Sad, right? But think about how they lived... What lives they lived! Filled with adventures that were worth writing about. And that makes me happy. It's a very bittersweet emotion.

And sometimes I think that is why 'bibliophile' sounds like the name of a monster. Because we devour books. One after the other. Sometimes, when we are so excited about what happens in a story, we start skipping sentences and paragraphs to read ahead faster and faster. Perhaps that is why we like to reread books. My father frequently asks me why I have so many books I've already read? Why, when I can return them and get half the price back, I don't do so? And he's never quite satisfied with the logic that I like to read them again and again. He thinks books are a one time story. Like a movie.

But they're not. They live. And every time you live through them again, a different perspective emerges. Maybe it's because this time, you actually read the sentences you skipped in your hurry the first time you read them. So I like to reread books. And yes I read a lot. I read fast. I devour stories. I live through these stories. Where else can I go cliff diving, have a whirlwind romance in Paris, or solve a murder mystery? Not in my life. But Bella and Katie and Hercule did. And I did it through them.

George Martin once said, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, "I've lived a thousand lives. I've loved a thousand loves. I've walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read"

Love, Ri.