Dear Reading, Hello Again!

Not too long ago, I remember being possessed by books. Summer vacations were defined not by video-gaming or tv-watching. The idiot box was the least of our worries (read, obsessions). We would travel 400 odd kilometres to our grandparents' house, and all cousins in the city would immediately hop in for slumber parties. Nerd parties, by today's standards, if you may! I'd have with me, nine or ten Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and some Oxford fiction publications, and so would a cousin of mine. All night, he'd read my books and I'd read his. We would follow it up by comparing notes, ranking the best from the worst, and saying why, deriving morals and lessons, suggesting improvements to storylines to tap that creative spark in us!

Ah, creativity! Why have we forgotten the art of reading, let alone writing. I don't recall how, when and why, but I too fell victim to this act of juggling we call living. The electronic waves took over the printed word, and I saw myself recommending Hollywood flicks to friends. My childhood buddies - Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, Franklin W. Dixon and company - had left the building, or perhaps, I had shown them the way out.

It was not until recently, that the avid reader in me was revived, thanks to - ironically - technology. Let's face it. The television and the world wide web, since long ago, have become an inseparable part of our being. The Google Reader caught my fancy, and a month later, I've recommended about 50 odd readings to several friends of mine. I had forgotten what a thrill it was to read and grow - in thought, understanding and creativity - simultaneously. What the Google Reader does, like many other RSS Feed portals/sites, is to bring all your readings of interest over the net, on one page. It highlights the new and updated, every time you log in. Things are so mad that without organization in our lives, we are as good with resources at hand, as we would be, without them. I would shirk from opening up websites of interest (except obsessive logins to facebook and gmail) simply because I'd find it hard to recall and then visit all of them regularly. And in a matter of days, I'd have such a backlog to look into, that I'd choose to stay away altogether. The Google Reader organized this for me. Now, all I need to do is to point my browser to one page; the rest is all done for me. And I'm not even being charged for it, so no possibility of a personal credit crunch either!

Read away!

Copyright (c) 2008 Saadia Malik