Do you belong to that group whose eyes lit up immediately as soon as someone in the room mentions the name of a book? If yes, then welcome to the group that should be probably named as geeks according to those who hate reading. Do you remember getting scolded in your childhood by parents or teachers because of the disinterest in developing the reading habits? Those who took interest are most likely writing ‘Bibliophile’ now in their Insta bios.
Reading is such a thing. Some hate it from the core of their heart but those who love it are just crazy about it. They get more possessive for their books than their life partners. (Okay kidding!) But they would definitely choose books over humans any day. Crying their hearts out when a book ends and finding it difficult to move onto the next book is very commonly seen. And they have a whole process built around their love for reading and books. Let me take you through what usually starts with –
Stalking book(s) they wanna buy. Why just stalking? Because they already have a large stock of books that they haven’t read up and the new ones would only add up to their piled up corner.
The act of restraining oneself. They keep checking out online bookstores. In their weak moments, their guilt of not reading the existing ones does not let them step ahead of the ‘Add to my cart’ section.
But all of it comes to an end when they pass through a bookstore. Once a booklover sees a place that is jammed up with books, he/she has no control over oneself.
Have you ever seen a dog sniffing every other item? Imagine replacing the dog with a person and item with books. That’s what a book lover does in a bookstore and it even has a term for it – ‘Bibliosmia’. If a person’s first action after touching a book is smelling it like a drug-addict, then he/she is a bibliophile.
What you witness next would be the excitement taking over the guilt. Readers go crazy when they are around a large no. of books and all the promises of not spending recklessly on books are broken happily.
The process of exploring starts and all the book recommendations that a random book blogger suggested start floating in front of their eyes. Let’s not forget the book that their friend is reading or the one that is in the trending section. Wait, what about the books they have on the list from the times they were stalking? Yeah, they wanna have all of them now.
Quite obviously what comes out of that bookstore is a human with at least twenty-three books and of course, a whole new list of books to buy next time.
Not forgetting the part when they reach home, add up their new assets to the existing treasure, being momentarily happy for it because what hit them the next second is the feeling of ‘Tsundoku’ – the guilt of stocking up books and not getting the time to read them.
And the process starts again forming a never-ending circle.
Author: Khushboo Gangrade | khushboogangrade1998 at gmail.com
