World Book Day: My Story about How Reading Changed My Life

    

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

                                                                                                                                       ----Jack London, an American novelist, journalist, social-activist and short-story writer whose works deal romantically with elemental struggles for survival.

And I have always believed in Mr. London's spectacular words that you don't need to wait for a moment to inspire you in a specified direction, instead, you need to find that inspiring moment all by yourself to define you.


And as part of the World Book Day campaign, I've been asked by MyVoucherCodes to tell my story about my inspiration, blogging and books.

Well my inspirational story- I mean like what inspired me to read literature is pretty uninspiring, since Austen or Hardy or Dickens never inspired me to drown myself in their classic words of wisdom and life, instead stories in general inspired me to read. To be precise, their world of fiction inspired me to read more and more books. Now you might think that I'm a delusional human being who judges a book by it's content of realism or fantasy element rather than judging them by their writing style or narrative. God! I did not know about those two things when I was young, so when I was a kid, Cinderella and Snow and Seven Dwarfs introduced me to a world where there is hope that everything will be better after a bad storm. And yes, fairytale inspired me to read more fairytale and believe in them, then came Dickens and C.S Lewis but I preferred C.S Lewis more, since his imaginative skill is mind-blowing and I could literally transport myself into his imaginative kingdom. Then came J.K.Rowling and from that time, I never had to look back, I was sure and confident that I want to lose myself into these fictional worlds which are far better than reality,since they taught me to have better perspective to tackle real-life problems or to just look at the difficult part of the reality with a new hope. And as I grew up, my taste of literature gradually changed. When I was a teenager, I read Jane Austen and Sidney Sheldon's juicy and gripping crime thrillers. When I went to college, I read almost anything and everything as long as it was fictional. No that doesn't mean, I only like to read Veronica Roth or J.K.Rowling, I also and equally like to read contemporary fiction like Paulo Coelho or Khaled Hosseini. So that's pretty much my inspiration story on the road to reading literature. But I had no idea about Cook, Rowling, Hardy, Woolf, Sheldon, Dickens could impact me so much that I would make them my obsession,

not because of their words but because of the world they wrote about, some were grim, dark, imperfect, whereas some were flawlessly perfect and gorgeous and enchanting like a paradise, but all had a same underlying meaning, it is bound to get better in the end, and if it's not better, then it's not the end, and the end is yet to come.

Now if I share my inspirational story about blogging, then I have to start from the beginning- I mean from the time, when I realized that my voice of opinion about any particular book that I read in the past weeks is not harmful, rather quite helpful for people who are willing to read the book. So it was in the last year of my college year, when I casually started reviewing about books on e-commerce websites like Amazon or Flipkart. And then Good reads happened, and that's my real inspiration to the world of blogging about literature, since Good reads taught me the importance and techniques of reviewing a book, like how only I have the power to make the book a good one or a bad one, and as I started reviewing, a window to the world of review requests opened up for me. Authors (especially self-published ones) started requesting me to review for them, and 6 months into reviewing books, I felt the urge to start up my own blog to take up reviewing and reading books more seriously and passionately.

And if I be honest with you, then I will say that my obsession with reading and getting free books inspired me to start a book blog. No I'm not selfish, bookworms who has this obsession over reading, they will agree with me on the fact about receiving free Advance Review Copies(ARC). And that's how my passion became my purpose which ultimately inspired me to do something which can change, well, not the whole world, but a community. And I think it holds true for not only about starting a book blog but about almost anything and everything that you want to do in this life time.

How Reading Changed My Life:

1. When I was a kid, reading books helped me to have better concentration on my studies. I found out that if you read everyday, you can focus on your studies with a better concentration power and will also help to remember things distinctly, and it so happened with me since my teachers always appreciated my memory power, and all thanks to reading books without which I couldn't have achieved that ability.

2. This is the best benefit that I got out of reading books- imaginative skill. Are you an aspiring writer? Do you want to be a famous painter? Then read a book everyday, since reading will help you evolve you thinking powers or rather say will evolve you the way you imagine things, a wanna-be writer/ a wanna-be painter/a wanna-be film-maker, no one can get away with their passion without reading, since reading helps you widen your horizon of thinking ability and gives wings to your imagination. And as for me, fantasy is the very definition of my existence.

3. Apart from reading makes you smarter and a better speaker and makes your vocabulary stronger, I would stress on the fact that how reading helps me to tackle with my frustration and stress. Yes, you're a smart person when you read, but did you know, that stress can be reduced and you can tame your anger and frustration level. A study shows that six minutes of reading a book can slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles with lower stress levels, and it always works with me. Since reading helps you forget about your anger or stress, it's so god damn addictive. Please read about the article which mentioned about this study here.

And yes, I ran after an inspiration, since inspiration never knocked on my door, I made my passion and obsession an inspiration in my life. And this is my story. So on this World Book Day, I urge you to read and maybe my story might not inspire you to grab a book, but it sure will give you a whole new meaning to the world of reading and blogging, meaning it's not as dull as you think, moreover, I can't even count how many lives I have lived so far because of reading, so my story will inspire you to live a thousand lives before you die.

So Happy World Book Day and Happy Reading!


In the comments below, do share with us what inspired you to the world of literature? And how reading impacted your life?