I grew up amongst books, with reading as virtually my biggest hobby. As a child, picture story books and colorful fairy tales were my most cherished gifts all around the year, for all occasions. Even on television, I loved watching the Mickey and Donald show on Sunday and the serialized version of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, because I was fascinated to see on screen, the characters from my books. As I started going to school, the source of my reading material increased - from books that parents and relatives lovingly chose and bought for me. I also entered the world of the school library. I borrowed Enid Blyton’s stories from the library and devoured them with great ardor.
My love for books was seen and appreciated by my relatives also, and they helped me to discover more and more topics to read and relish. When I was 11 yrs old, my “bua” got me my first Nancy Drew books and I was immediately hooked. Summer vacations were spent in reading all of the Nancy Drew collection and then I moved onto Hardy Boys, but I remained in love with the all-girl-amateur-detective squad. With age, my love for mystery stories and thrillers was supplemented with the discovery of Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes. Once again, books defined other areas of my interest, for example, I avidly watched the Sherlock Holmes series on television.
The more I read, the more I needed. My hunger was insatiable. My parents, being University teachers of English literature, had a number of books in their collection also. I started intruding into their book shelf. As a teenager, I read “The Guide” and the many books by R.K. Narayan, “Kanthapura” and “The Serpent and the Rope” by Raja Rao, “Collected Stories and Poems of Rabindra Nath Tagore”, “Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea”, “Anita Desai’s The Village by the Sea”, Short Stories of Ruskin Bond, Classic English Literature, and I even tried to read Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth. There are no prizes for guessing that during this phase of my life, I would wait to watch “The Malgudi Days”, and my favorite Hindi movie was “Guide”. Needless to say, some of the most intrinsic concepts of these writings were lost to me, and I had to revisit this vast treasure of literature again at a later stage, to savor and cherish the actual depth of these books.
It’s also interesting how my parents kept a keen watch on what I was reading. I remember this incident when my mother kept “Shobha De’s Snapshots” under lock and key in her almirah. I was perturbed and even angry with her for hiding a book from me, but years later when I finally read the book, I realized the need for guardianship at an impressionable age. One of my cousins introduced me to Mills and Boons and also shared some from her collection with me. I read those, too, and my teenaged mind found the books interesting but somewhere deep down I knew that these books didn’t provide any value-add. My mother was also never happy with my Mills and Boons collection and slowly I gave away those books, and returned to my world of more respectable books and authors.
Years have gone by and my love for books has grown by leaps and bounds, and I have slowly (and painstakingly) developed my own collection of books. I feel extremely happy and privileged when people admire my reading choice and collection of books. I have developed a reading habit that extends to a wide variety of subjects - esoteric philosophy, psychology, fiction, thrillers, extraterrestrial life, new age and spiritual literature, history and religion, and even social and political reading including autobiographies. One area for which I have not been able to develop a liking is self-help books, though I have read a fair share of those too, before writing them off. My love for reading has also embraced articles, blogs, news items and book reviews on the internet. In fact, I read a lot of book reviews before purchasing a book.
Talking about book purchases, this weekend, hubby gifted me a Om Book Shop gift voucher to purchase books worth Rs 500. We went to the bookshop and I spent a lot of time in going through the book racks. However, most of the books were too highly priced. I realized that I had been spoiled by the roadside bookseller and his pirated copies of bestsellers and also by shopping websites like www.indiaplaza.in that provide original books at discounted prices. Somehow, buying a book at MRP seemed extravagant and it in fact stole the fun of buying a book.
I had to redeem the voucher so I bought three books and paid the additional cost in cash. But I decided that my best book-buying experience is after I scourge the internet for reader/publisher reviews, select a book based on the reviews, go to the local roadside bookseller and see if the book is available, else my final stop is at the website that sells books with discounts and/or with free shipping. After all, it’s not just reading but the entire activities surrounding book-acquisition that makes it a worthwhile experience.
You can view my entire collection of books at: http://www.shelfari.com/Aneesha
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barath Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 6:11 pmThat was a very good post! a food for thought. can associate with most of the post!!! been a reader and basically growing up with books, MY journey started from Champak, Tinkle, Gokulam, Chandamama, amar chitra Katha, Enid Blyton, Hardy boys, a Bit of mills and boon @ 16 (dont ask why the hell i read that) Also Chase, But mom was kind of strict me reading Harold robbins, for which once she was badly tempered me at the sight of reading him, hiding it in my text and the only way to get away with those boring lectures is M&B in the class rooms. got kind of bored with that, then Novels started with TEll ME YOUR DREAMS!!! and then gave up those pulp fictions and started with classics, My first being Oliver twist! i cried for him throught teh book, and then came Graet expectations, I ‘m not sure if iunderstood that well, but its been a special book for me, then started with various authors, Paulo coelho, Nicholas Sparks, Robin cook, cricton, HArry potter series,
Then discovered the joy of reading in the mother tongue, With that I had access to many of the regional writers, especially M T Vasudeva Nair, Mahaswetha Devi, Amritha Preetam, Mahesh Dattani plays, Vijay Tendulkar, Taslima Nasreen. and also other language others. Now trying different authors. Now down with African Litearture. If you get a chance do read Chinua Achebe’s THE AFRICAN TRILOGY did. and also Toni Morrison,
R K Narayan had been my most favorite. The magic he weaved with Malgudi. God I love him… You kind of develop an healthy view of the trivial things in life… who wouldnt get nostalgic when they read malgudi days, Swami and friends… And The English teacher. Kind of makes me sad reading your post and recollecting memories of growing up with books…
All in ALl! that was a ,lovely post! made me quite nostalgic…… A long way to go in my reading worls. Hope I could freeze time, so that i can read a bit of everything….
felinemusings Says:
August 7th, 2008 at 10:00 pm@Barath - even I was very nostalgic while writing this post and I could have rambled on and on, and there are so many names missing from the list and genre of books I have read - but the world of books is too vast to fit into a blog
We can only capture some amazing memories and names in the mind’s eye 
Amit Gupta Says:
August 8th, 2008 at 4:12 amIt just feels like how it happened with me, though I never read M&B, eh!
And I read Nancy Drew as well but liked Hardy Boys better! 
And I inherited the passion for reading; before his illness my dad has been a voracious reader all his life. When I was a kid, there used be a big wooden cupboard full of his favourite books & I tell you, that cupboard was chock full of books & then one day he found out that termites had destroyed just about all of the books!
But I started it all with comics, they were my most favoured things to read besides my english literature course books in school & (later on)Hardy Boys. I wrote about my comic book adventures sometime back! What about you? Read any comic books?
felinemusings Says:
August 8th, 2008 at 8:24 am@Amit, Yes, I did read a fair share of comic books, mostly gifted by my cousins from overseas - archies and garfield being the most common. Papa also introduced me to Chacha Chowdhary :-). I also read a lot of champak - in both Hindi and English - but I was more of a Noddy and other Enid Blyton characters fan
And I loved Russian Fairy tales with Ivan, the pretty peasant girl, the Tsar and Baba Yaga as the main characters!!!!
Amit Gupta Says:
August 8th, 2008 at 1:27 pmI think I remember those Russian characters myself, I got one of those books long time back, I think it was my dad who got it for me!
snigdha Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 10:46 amHi Ansy,
The love for books for me also started at a young age. Dad always had a huge collection of books from novels to self helps to hobby books. I strated with fairy tales, detective stories in Bangla, then moved on to Diamond comics like chacha chowdhry, biloo, pinky. Used to read comic strips in magazined and NEWS Papers. Then started Tinkle, Archies, Champak, Nandan, Surbhi, MAD. The list just goes on and on. In fact we all can sit for hours and talk about the crazy comic books that we used to read and to tell you the truth for me it was Nancy Friday and not Nancy Drew
BTW How was your birthday? I called you, smsed you and we all wished you on the iTravellers thread but you did not revert. Waiting to hear your B Day story
how many b day bumps did M give you :-P?
felinemusings Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 5:08 pm@Snigs, thanks a lot for ur b’day wishes. I spent a very quiet b’day at home. Manish and I had taken the day off and we both spent it sans mobiles and laptops after we the customary family wishes came thru! It was raining cats and dogs that day and we couldnt do much all thru the day. In the evening we went for some shopping and manish gifted me a pair of earrings and a pair of tiny earstuds for the upper peircing that I got done recently. We had a bite at Nirulas. The next day we went out for Delhi-Darshan and visited Lotus temple and Isckon temple and had an Italian lunch. So the twosome spilled the celebration over the next day also :-). Sunday was a typical “get-the-house-tidy” day and madly busy
Amit Gupta Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 5:11 pmHey, you didn’t even acknowledge the b’day wish that I sent, not fair!
felinemusings Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 6:06 pm@Amit, sorry dost - pls dont take it to heart. I really appreciate your concern and wishes for me and I was actually missing the time when you guys landed at my place at midnight. Its actually so much fun with a group, and I was later actually thinking that I should have planned something with the group ….