A popular saying goes, “as food is to the body, books are to the soul”. The importance of books is highlighted in this statement.
A small baby is fed with nutritious food to turn it into a toddler, a little champ later, continuing into a teenager and then into an adult.
This process of growing up of the small tiny tot from a toddler into an adult was carefully monitored by his parents. This brings about the transformation to the body of the human being.
It is compulsorily done. But then, a balance between the body and soul of a person is only created when the same human being is further enriched with something that awakens his mind and triggers a healthy thought process from within.
This is done by reading books, books that infuse interest in a person’s mind, books that create awareness to the human body, books that bring about a transformation in the way we think and do things.
Such is the importance of books and the value created in a person’s life from reading those equals gaining a big treasure trove of knowledge.
A person begins to learn how to read and write around the age of four when he is still a toddler. At that stage, a small tiny tot holding a book correctly in his hand is in itself a big achievement.
Slowly, he begins to explore the colorful things inside the book by carelessly turning the pages and that arouses interest in the child.
Going further, he questions the pictures and illustrations provided in the book and try to know them. In the next step, he attempts to identify the contents of the book on his own.
With a little more familiarity, he starts loving the book and it becomes a prized possession in his hands.
The idea here is to see the underlying quality of books that have the capability of becoming one’s best friend if an open mind approaches it with its entirety.
Table of Contents
Book Reading – What it Means for us
Books can become man’s best friend, no doubt. Looking into the quality of books that make it a prized possession in many of our shelves and racks, it is clear that they have an inbuilt magnetism in them, which depends mainly on the contents within the book.
Books vary in shapes, sizes, structures, colors, etc. When we hold a book in our hand, we browse through its contents to see if it’s of interest to us or not.
Depending on our mind’s output we choose between exploring the book further or closing and putting it down. Any book in our possession is nothing less of an asset.
Every book has something or the other to offer to everyone, whether they associate themselves with it or not.
A book may be a careful compilation of one’s thoughts penned down by an author, a colorful throw of ideas and imaginations by a poet, a rendition of a beautiful story by a story-writer, a technical description in the form of a manual, text books for education, spiritual books for guiding humans in search of inner peace, religious books and texts, encyclopedias for references, dictionaries, thesaurus and the list is endless.
Books can be found in all varying hues and forms and they all have something in them to offer.
The Journey of a Book
When an author decides he wants to write a book, the birth of that book happens in the minds of that author and at stage, it is still not a book in actual terms, but the creative space of the author.
The author works within the framework of this creative space, expanding it with his ideas and giving it more life as he advances in his journey of writing.
In the words of a book itself, understanding its journey from scratch to the actual becoming of a book is easy to understand.
Going back to the stage where the author had decided to open down his thoughts in his creative space, an imaginary book springs in his mind and he fills each page of that imaginary book with the flow of his thoughts.
This may be replaced with technical facts or figures, in case the book is not intended to be a creative one, rather a text book with an educative purpose behind its creation.
Once the creative space is fully filled with the author’s ideas and thoughts, it occupies bigger space now and becomes an entity in the author’s mind. This entity needs to be given structure and format to fulfill the needs and looks that a book has.
For this, the author approaches a publisher who tries to organize the author’s writing, structures it according to publishing standards, adds more creativity according to its looks and finally brings it into a proper shape, finally delivering a ‘book’.
Before the book is actually published, the author is given choices in the form of templates for deciding on the looks and the presentation of the book, exactly the way the author wants it to be.
The journey does not end here. Multiple copies of the same book are generated and sent out for distribution. Distributors send it to different shops and exhibitions where the books actually get sold.
Understanding Books
A happy book is one which stays in good condition in the hands of its reader. The author of the book treats a book no less than his own child and takes every possible step to give it a proper life.
A book’s life begins at the hands of the author and continues its journey into a reader’s hand.
A respectable reader who takes care of his books as much as he does for other belongings has collections of happy books with him.
A reader who keeps a big collection of books with him, but leaves them without caring much, allowing dust to settle and thicken on them is known to have possession of sad books with him.
It pays to take care of our books. Every person right from his school days till he completes his education relies mainly on books to gather knowledge and achieve degrees.
To turn away from these books after achieving our laurels makes one remind of the sad state of the books which were once present at all times in our hands.
Libraries are found in cities, within schools and colleges to form an organized collection of books that support students in their students and supply requisite information for them.
On the same lines, if we were to organize books in our homes and keep them happy, the journey of a book would look much more pleasing!
What a Book has to tell us
Starting from an author’s creative space and ending in a structural entity called a book is a journey that is big and involves the efforts of many.
Books provide us guidance, they make us happy by presenting colorful thoughts, they change a dull mind and transform it into positive spaces by helping us to think and grow with them.
Books were written since time immemorial and they continued to be written even today.
Such is the popularity of books that even though we have the fastest search engines delivering data in micro seconds at our fingertips, people still like to hook on to books for their reading.
Reading as a passion may not be at a very big rate with the present generations, but the technological advancements haven’t been able to replace the attachment that a reader builds with the books he reads.
Any book that is published gives credit to the publisher in its initial pages for creating life for it.
The book thanks the author for filling life within the created book and finally settles down with the reader. The reader, out of choice buys a particular book.
The author wished for the book creation, the publisher turned it into reality helping the author realize his dream, but the actual success of the book is decided when more number of readers prefer to read the book.
This journey of a book is marked by many approvals and disapproval’s, but the book on its own stands a mute spectator to all these happenings and lights a hope within it to be loved and cared by someone who would treat it as his best friend.
A person may be facing loneliness in his life, but a book is said to have the power to ward off negative feelings providing him excellent company and a reliable shoulder to rest on.
Leave a Reply