A good read indeed!

Whats your favourite kind of book? Does it have to be one of those gripping, edge of the seat, un-put-downable-unless-your-in-a-life-and-death-situation kind of book for you to get interested, or are you one of those read-when-i'm-free-run-along-at-a-casual-pace type of book reader? I mean that if you had to choose between the Da Vinci Code and the Great Expectations (supposing you haven't read either), which would it be? Personally I'd go for the former because slow paced books bore me very quickly.

Of course there are those books that are on everyone's must read list and whose reputation precedes them by a mile, Lord of the Rings being a very good example of such a book. Though when I read it myself, I found it too lengthy, tiring and making me wish that the whole bunch of good doers would get a move on for god's sake! At this point all the LOTR fans would rise up in protest saying that I had no real appreciation of the beauty and majesty of this extremely famous series of books. I would like to counter by saying that I have read other mythologies like Fire and Ice and Sword of Truth, that are big reads by themselves and though they may not stand shoulder to shoulder to LOTR for intricate detail, they hold their own when compared by standards of not boring the reader to death before anything significant happens.

So what does make for a good read then? There are other genres of course like sci-fi, thrillers, mystery, biographies, autobiographies, drama, comedy etc etc. But to keep the reader in me interested, the plot has to thicken quickly or else I'm liable to start looking elsewhere. Now there are some exceptions to this rule (aren't there always?), Gone with the Wind being the best example I could think of and such books, though not exactly a thrill-a-minute, still never fail to keep the reader hooked. A book I read recently, Anything for you, ma'am by Tushar Raheja, was a perfect example of the kind of story that doesn't give u a minute's time to think, forcing you to quickly grasp the events happening with and around the protagonist, at a pace some readers could find exhausting. But frankly I thought it was a great read and a great first effort by the author, for the same exact reason.

So why do I feel such a need to be kept on tenterhooks whenever I read a book? I completely blame our new age media, that has crippled me with a monster-sized Attention Deficit Disorder by feeding me more than I could handle since the minute I was delivered into this world of ours. Our food has to be fast, our news must be latest, our sports live and our lives itself a rat race. Honestly, does anyone realize how fast paced everything now is, how that poem Leisure by William Henry Davies is more relevant now than ever? Sometimes I wish I could take a moment to stand and stare, but everyone says I must run like a hare (not trying to be poetic). Now what was that old fable about the tortoise and the hare all about once again??