Book Dropper

Now that I have gotten used to navigating around Orkut, everyone has decided to move to Facebook. As if writing and reading scraps wasn't enough trouble for me, the sheer amount of applications available to add or delete in Facebook is overwhelming. Sometimes I just can't make sense of all these social networking sites. Every other week I get invitations from someone using Naseeb, MySpace, Tagged or Linkedin to add him or her. Call me retarded, Luddite, regressive mullah (that would be taking it too far though) but I find staying in touch through emails or messenger more to my liking.

I did try to fiddle with a few applications on Facebook. The only application that I could relate to was 'Iread' because I am fond of reading. Using it turned out to be one hell of an exercise: finding books and then adding them as Read, Reading it, Wanna Read it or Wont read it followed by check box if I own a copy and rating it on a scale of 5 stars and a short review if possible. After adding three or four books, it felt like a chore and I had had enough. However, it made me think which books I want to add because it will reflect on type of image I want to portray. Should I put Da Vinci Code which every Tom, Dick and Harry has read or at least watched the movie but is considered pop fiction or should I put Midnight's Children which may portray me as a high brow reader? I could have added Satanic Verses but that would have been too controversial and might result in my spending more time on Facebook than I intended replying to outraged messages from family and friends and thanking the occasional supportive ones on finally coming out of the closet as a liberal thinker...or reader.

I love reading since I was a kid. Against wishes of my parents (who wanted me to focus more on studies) I read fiction both in Urdu as well as English all through school and high school such as Ishtiaq Ahmed, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum, occasional Harold Robbins but never John Grisham. In college I tried to delve into heavier fiction such as Nasim Hijazi, Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Rings (the movie hadn't come out till then) and Shahabnama (rite of passage before university) etc. But after starting my career of 12 hours a day, six days a week I gave up reading. The effect was such that after five years of working, my reading was reduced to skimming business pages for only such news that have an effect on my year end bonus.

Fortunately, afterwards I went to London for higher study a period which lasted a year. My apartment was 30 minute tube (a.k.a subway a.k.a underground) ride from the school. Some might call it a bane spending one hour traveling to and fro from school. It was a boon because I re-picked up the reading habit. At first I had nothing to do during the whole journey. I tried reading newspaper over the shoulder of others but that was very desi and totally un-British (actually Brits hated this and didn't even disguise their displeasure). It was perfectly acceptable in Pakistan five years ago when I used to travel by W-11 bus to office and it still must be. In W-11 if the passenger is reading a newspaper, the person beside him also tries to read the same. Moreover, people behind his seat are also looking over his shoulder trying to read the headlines. And the guy standing beside his seat holding the overhead railing is also reading it. Moreover, they sometimes ask him to procrastinate the turning of the page till everyone has read all the headlines.

In London, a few people and especially kids always had books in their hands in the tube. So after a week when I got tired of looking over shoulders of others or staring people for half an hour, I decided to go to a Borders bookshop. As soon as I entered, to use a clichéd phrase, I felt like a boy in a candy store amazed, confused and indecisive about which candy to purchase. It reminded me of the college days when I used to go to Hyderi Market in Karachi where booksellers sold used books on carts. With only 10 rupees in my pocket for a book and choice of hundreds of books it was always tough to decide which book to buy.

I decided to buy 'Time Traveler’s Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger. Though I am not a romantic at all, the book's fresh story line gripped me. I had bought it to read during the train journey but I finished it on the second day, lying awake reading it till 4 in the morning. From then on, I was hooked on reading. Afterwards I bought a lot of books and read them during my daily journeys. Not all of them were as exciting as the first one. For example, I bought '100 years of solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Some might call it a master piece, yet I struggled to keep track of all the Arcadios and Aurelianos... I could not understand what all the fuss was about and as someone said title of the book was an apt description of my sex life.

Everyone has their own method of selecting books. I select them mostly by the reviews on the inside covers. I look for the ones which have the most reviews by diverse range of reviewers including literary magazines, newspaper columnists, and other authors and try to stay clear from No. 1 crime bestsellers. I also tried to go by reviews from common folks as provided on amazon.com but then I came across this review for Pervez Musharraf's "In the line of fire":

You all Indians writing fake reviews “GROW UP”, September 26, 2006
Reviewer: AA
First of all, I have a question for all hopeless and complexed Indians giving reviews on this book - How the heck you are reviewing on this book? How did you read this 300 page book in one day? The book was released on Monday 9/25/06. Another thing, please remember “THE TRUTH HURTS” especially to Indians as they cannot face the truth. This book is best seller in whole world not in USA. Mr. Musharraf tells the truth how America stop the Kargil as Indians were crying to USA to save them, how India is interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs creating terrorism.
Beside all this at least have some sense to face the truth? Mr. Musharrraf is the best leader in Sub-Continent. India is obsessed with Pakistan. Pakistani’s care less about India. This book is a blockbuster as it blows the cover on many aspects.
So in the end, Please buy this book…you will love it!!! Do not listen to these crazy Indians who have never in their life had anything good to say about anyone else in the world. They are killing innocent Muslims and their is a genocide in Kashmir.
Buy it, read it and make up your own mind….


After reading the review I could not stop laughing. I thought the AA for authors name stood for Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway I decided that amazon.com user reviews are not that reliable.

Alternatively, some books have writer's interview in the end. If you really like the author, you cannot go much wrong by reading your favorite author's favorite book. I really liked Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. The author had written two more books The Big Bang Theory and The History of Code Breaking. Moreover, in his book he had mentioned that Making of an Atomic Bomb (historical book) is amongst his favorite books. A colleague of mine was going to UK. I asked him to bring the three books for me. Upon seeing the books, his wife freaked out. She asked him to leave the books at home lest the authorities at Heathrow consider him a potential suicide bomber with books such as code breaking, bomb making and big bangs. He told me that all through his journey from Bristol to London, he kept looking in car's rear view mirror to see whether a police car was following him. In these precarious times, one should be careful of kind of books one reads or others think one reads. Next time, if I ask someone to bring a book for me from UK it would be God Delusion or a coffee table book or books with dust covers that match the curtains in case the police really catch up to me.

I am not a Harry Potter fan. Honestly speaking just could not bring myself to read any of the books or even watch the movie. However, my sisters are aficionados. On my last trip back home, I had to go to Liberty Books specially to reserve a book for them and asked my cousin to pick it up when it is released. He went to pick it up after it was released and on his way back he stopped at a shop in Tariq Road. He kept the book with him thinking that someone might try to steal it from his car. A woman around 30 finding the book in his hand came up to him and asked "Have you read the book?" My cousin not being much of a reader lied that "Yes. I have". Then she said "I could not bring myself to read the book. I am afraid that Harry Potter dies in the end". My cousin decided to take the lady out of her ordeal "I am sorry but he does die in the end but not before a heroic battle". The woman was flabbergasted. My cousin thinking that lady would make a scene, quickly walked out of the shop.

At my home, bookshelf occupies a whole wall and is full of books. There are books that couldn't make it to the shelf and are kept in cartons. Quite a few books have been borrowed from me and never returned. There is a friend of mine who is an avid book collector, I am not sure whether he reads them or not. Every time I would go to his house, I would find on his shelf prominently displayed any renowned book that he might have borrowed from me months ago. At one time Stanley Worlpert's Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan (limited first edition which I bought abroad long before Oxford University Pakistan decided to reprint them in Pakistan) occupying the top spot. Whenever I asked him to return the books to me, he would say that he hasn't read them. "But you have it for so many months. If you haven't read it in this time, you will never read it. Return it to me." He would say that "People visiting my home consider me well read and intellectual based on those books."

The same guy once asked his brother in US to send him some books on economics and foreign currencies. Like all books in West, it was printed on good paper with colorful graphs such that you actually wanted to read the books. What my friend did? He had those photocopied and kept the original under safe storage so that the book does not wear off. Obviously, the photocopied version looked dull so he could never bring himself to read the boring, black and white, low quality version of the book. I am sure he still has the original somewhere in safe storage or may be a bank locker.

I have some books on my shelf that I haven't read. But the reason is that I buy books in bulk and read one or a maximum of two books at a time. Probably in time, I will have read all the books. Last month, I was reading Black Swan by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. He says that there are two ways to look at your bookshelf. One is to look at the books you have read and consider yourself well read and a scholar or look at the books you haven't read and think that there is so much in this world you don't know. Till reading this view, I always thought about books in the former way. Now I am trying to look at it from the latter perspective.