Reading Habits

Posted by Prashant C. Trikannad

© Prashant C. Trikannad

Reading Habits #7: How do you treat your books?

“My spine is hurting,” the paperback said from the bed. “I think I may have torn something.”

“A page or two, perhaps," said the hardback sandwiched between a Dostoyevsky and a George Eliot on the bookshelf. "What happened?"

“Slept badly, I guess.”

“Wide open and face up, or down?” the hardback inquired politely.

“Wide open and face down. That’s the third night in a row I've been mishandled. This morning I heard the birds singing outside the window and when I opened my eyes I couldn't see a thing. It was pitch black. I panicked. I thought I’d gone blind. And then, suddenly, there was a dazzling light. I saw that the housemaid had lifted the pillow.”

“So you spent the night under a pillow.”

“Yes, I did. To be honest with you, I actually liked it. It was cozy and warm. The pillow was white, clean, and smelled of lilies.

“Lilies?” the hardback raised his eyebrows. “Who did you say you were?”

“I never said who I was. Anyway, since you are asking now, the name’s Scruffy. And you are?

“The Mapmaker. I belong to Frank G. Slaughter,” the hardback said. “Why lilies?”

“Oh, I don't know, I like flowers.”

The hardback straightened up. “I know who you are. You are Paul Gallico’s, aren't you? The same fellow whose Poseidon Adventure short-changed you.”

“He did not short-change me!” the paperback said, indignantly. “I came way before Poseidon. Had it not been for the movie…”

“Are you feeling better?” The Mapmaker, who was also a peacemaker, quickly changed the topic.

“Why, what’s wrong with me?”

“You said your back was hurting.”

“Oh yes, I did, and it’s still hurting and that’s because I was lying open and spreadeagled all night. It’s easy for you stiff-backs. Look at Fyodor next to you, straight as a ramrod.”

The Mapmaker was about to say something nasty but let it pass. Instead, he said quietly, “Who’s reading you, Scruffy?”

“Some college kid who doesn't know how to read me or treat me. You’re fortunate his mother is reading you. She cares for you, doesn't she?”

“She certainly does, like she cares for her plants, her cats, her children, and her husband. So how does this kid treat you?”

“Well, last night and the night before and the night before that I was flopped over his sweaty and smelly face for like an hour, maybe more, and then he picked me up and shoved me under his pillow.”

“The same pillow that smells like lilies?”

“The same pillow. Thank god, the housemaid changes the cover every morning.”

“How much has he read of you?”

“Seventeen pages! Can you believe it? I’m only 288 and I’m very funny and he’s been at me for two weeks. Why doesn't the kid just give up on me?,” Scruffy wailed.

“Scruffy, 288 is a lot for a kid who hasn't read much. I mean, you're not the best or easiest of reads.”

“And I suppose you are, Mr. Mapmaker, with your navigational nose for latitudes and longitudes,” he snarled.

“Scruffy, I’m more than latitudes and…”

“That’s not all,” Scruffy cut in rudely. “Look at me, I’m torn, I’m dog-eared, I've been nibbled at, I’m shapeless, I've been scribbled all over, and I feel like I've been dipped in ketchup. This is NO WAY to treat a book or read a book,” he shouted hysterically. 'Tell me, Mr. Navigator, would you treat your maps like this?”


“I'm not just a navigator,” the Mapmaker hissed under his breath. He stared at Scruffy and muttered to himself, “Why am I talking to a monkey?” He folded up his jackets, rested his head against Eliot's shoulder, and closed his eyes.

Reading Habits #6: Reading on the railway

8.20 am: I miss the 8.15 local by a few minutes. I am on platform No.2 at Andheri station waiting to board the 8.23 local to Churchgate in the south. I remove my earphones and my tablet from my bag—do I listen to music or do I read? As I make up my mind the loudspeaker crackles to life and I hear a familiar but depressing voice: “The slow train arriving on platform No.2 at 23 minutes past eight has been cancelled. Inconvenience caused to passengers is highly regretted.”

The lifeline of Mumbai.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

8.25 am: The next local is at 8.36 am. Will it be on time? Is it even scheduled today? My fingers are crossed. I put away the earphones and open the tablet and tap on the book reader, to page 42 of A Noose for the Desperado by Clifton Adams. I read about 19-year old rebel gunman Talbert ‘Tall’ Cameron's daring takeover of a band of outlaws in Ocotillo, a shady town in Arizona, and his plan to ambush a train smuggling silver across the Mexican border. The loudspeaker crackles again, this time with a repetitive public warning—“Overhead wires are charged at 25,000 volts. Travelling on rooftop is highly dangerous. Passengers are requested not to travel on rooftop.”

8.41 am: The 8.36 enters the platform. Even as it comes to a halt, commuters rush into the train and occupy all the seats. When the dust settles the arriving passengers get off the local and rush to the staircase. I enter the coach and stand in the aisle with my back to the stainless steel partition. As the train pulls out at 8.45, nine minutes late but early for once, I hear the loudspeaker intone, "The slow train arriving on platform No.2 at 57 minutes past eight has been cancelled. Inconvenience caused to passengers is highly regretted."

8.48: I look around the compartment. I spot a couple of known faces and we nod at each other. A few commuters are dozing off. Some are reading newspapers. Still others are fiddling with their mobile phones. Two people are reading books, one Dan Brown's Inferno and the other the Indian epic Ramayana. I put away my tab and listen to music; I plug into Elvis Presley. It will be some other singer on the return journey in the evening.

Inside the first-class coach of the 9 am Bandra-Churchgate local.
© Prashant C. Trikannad 

8.57 am: Three stations later, the train pulls into Bandra. I alight and walk across to the other side of the same platform and hop into the 9 am Bandra local. It is almost empty. I find a window seat. I open a book, AN.AL – The Origins, by Indian writer Athul Demarco and read the last chapter so I can review it. Some people get in and I look up and acknowledge their greetings. Only two men are reading anything at all; the rest are doing nothing, looking nowhere, in particular.

9.09 am: At Dadar, a major station, scores of transit commuters with haversacks and shoulder bags crash into the first-class coach and stand in the aisle so they can get off at the next two stations, the city's new business districts. After just two pages of Demarco’s novel, I lose interest, not in the book but in reading further. I reopen the tab and play a game of chess with alien software; I lose badly. 

The local leaves Marines Lines.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

9.35 am: Marine Lines, the last station before Churchgate. Before I alight I put away my book and my tab safely. I step on to the platform, walk out of the station, and proceed to my office a few blocks away, with Losing My Religion by REM playing in my ears.

And I wonder why I don’t read eno

Reading Habits #5: The Ten Commandments

And Apollo spoke all these words, saying, I am the god of knowledge and intellect who brought you out of ignorance, out of illiteracy, out of apathy.

The Ten Commandments of Moses
by Anton Losenko
© Wikimedia Commons

You shall have no other pursuits, neither movies or music nor chess, before books.

You shall not bow down to more than three books at a time; for we the authors of the three books would be annoyed if you leave them half-read.

You shall not take the name of the writer in vain; for the writer will not hold you guiltless for taking his name in vain but not reading his book.

Six days you shall read, and do all your writing. But the seventh day is the Sabbath: in it you shall not do any work, except read again.

  Honoryour books and your comics so that your days may be long upon the land of bookstores and libraries that Apollo is giving you.

You shall not tear, mutilate, fold, and dog-ear your books, nor write or scribble on them.

You shall not commit adultery and remain loyal to your books.

You shall not steal someone else’s books or buy more than you can read, nor hoard them. 

You shall not bear false witness against your fellow readers and bloggers.

You shall not covet your fellow-blogger’s bookshelf, or his books, or his blog, or his posts, or his style, or his hits and visits, or anything that is your fellow blogger’s.

Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr., 1924

Reading Habits #4: Author, Writer, Novel, Book

Read what you can, when you can, wherever you can.

Are you reading a novel or a book and is it written by an author or a writer? As questions go, this is an unintelligent one, I admit. Do not answer if you think I’m insulting yours. Still, I’m curious. I spent my formative years thinking novels were written by authors and books were penned by writers. One was fiction, the other non-fiction. I read them that way. 

The line between novels and books and authors and writers—assuming there really was one—got blurred around the turn of the century when novels came to be increasingly referred to as books written by people who could be either authors or writers. Over the years the internet, and specifically blogs, has more or less obliterated the line that, I suspect, only I could see. Now I often refer to a work of fiction as a book. It sounds more cerebral. Inversely, non-fiction can never be a novel. It will always remain a book.

Looking back, I used to think that anything that told a fictitious story was a novel. All paperbacks, be it pulp or popular fiction, fell in that category. Everything else was a book, such as a book on history or economics, a book of stamps or coins, a record book or a book of account, the Bhagavad Gita or the Bible, a dictionary or an encyclopaedia, a rule book, a book of recipes, and so on and so forth.

Yet, there were grey areas, like Shakespeare, the Classics, and humour. The Twelve Works of the famous bard was a book, a volume actually. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is more a book than a novel. And P.G. Wodehouse wrote humourous stories and books. Although works of fiction, they are best referred to as books.

My thinking, thus, may have been the result of the disdain with which novels were looked upon, outside of the family. “Oh, you’re reading a novel. Which one?” And when you showed the cover, “You’re reading a Chase, I see. Have you read Nehru’s Discovery of India? You’ll learn much from this brilliantly written book.” You'd think I was reading erotica.

The dilemma hasn't resolved fully when I think of The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and Harry Potter by Rowling. Novel or book, author or writer? I think I’ll just sit quietly and read.


Noted author James Reasoner has written an interesting post on his Favourite Reading Spots over at his blog Rough Edges.

Reading Habits #3: Do book excerpts influence you?

Until the last decade, Indian newspapers and magazines used to reproduce excerpts from a book reviewed by a critic, both appearing on the same page. I’d first read the extract in the small box and if I liked it, I’d proceed to the review, though most of the time I didn’t read it. The extract was enough to help me decide whether to read the book or not.

The reason I enjoyed reading the excerpts first and not the review was the author’s writing style which to this day influences my decision to read fiction, except now I also read the reviews.

While the blurb on the back of a book can goad me into reading a book, it is the opening lines or random paragraphs within that have a special appeal for me. In bookstores, I frequently riffle through a book to see if I’m going to like it. I agree it’s strange that I should choose to read a book without knowing what it is about.

Today, Indian periodicals no longer carry short excerpts. The monolithic online review factory has taken care of that. Instead, they take permission from the publisher to reproduce an entire meaningful chapter from a new book, usually non-fiction, and carry it across centre spread marked “Exclusive Extracts”. I have no patience to read it. It also puts me off the book.

Would you read a novel based on an excerpt? I think not.

Reading Habits #2: Do you have a plan?

I'd like to think I do, but I don't. I read all kinds of books. There is no proper system or pattern. I read almost everyday though the number of pages may vary. There are times when I don't read anything at all. This lack of discipline in my reading habit is responsible for the fewer books I read every month. Where others read as many as eight to 10 books, sometimes more, a month and even review them, I'm unreasonably ecstatic if I read more than five books. So far that has happened only once this year.

A major drawback in this attitude towards reading is half-read books. On last count I'd three unfinished books. However, I'm confident that I'll get them out of the way by Diwali in November.

The reason I didn't complete these books is because I probably got tired of them and picked up something more fast paced. In recent memory, two books I read over a long period of time were Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I quite forgot that I was reading them. They are some of the finest books I've read.

One of my biggest challenges is which books to read and from which category. I can never decide. I vacillate between mystery, western, espionage, war, thriller, humour, classic, and general fiction, like one giant pendulum. The moment my left hand picks up a mystery, my right is already edging towards a western. I want to read them all...at the same time. And I'm not even talking about non-fiction.

There's an even bigger dilemma: will I ever read the books I want to read before I die? Not without a plan.

Perhaps, I can make my task easier by looking up 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, a literary reference book compiled by more than 100 literary critics worldwide and edited by Peter Boxall, Professor of English at Sussex University. I discovered this book online yesterday. I think it covers fiction in all the important genres. 50, 100 or 1,001... whatever the listings I still have to read the books and the sooner I start the better for my  book reading score.

What about you? Do you have a reading plan?

Reading Habits #1: 5 Questions

Q. How do you review a book? Do you take notes as you read the book and then review it? Or do you read the book first and then write about it from memory? 

My answer: I don't take notes as I read because I don't know how to. The first and last time I tried I almost wrote down the entire book. I didn't know what to leave out. Taking down notes, for a book review or a newspaper report, is an art. I have better luck with the latter.

Q. Do you jump descriptions of places and landscapes and read just the operative part? 

My answer  Never, not even if the lengthy descriptions threaten to put me to sleep. I can sail through a detailed sketch of the Indus Valley Civilization, the Mojave Desert or the Savannah with ease. The first dozen-odd pages of Hawaii by James A. Michener is a good place to test your patience, or the lack of it. An uncle of mine used to read westerns inside of an hour: he'd only read parts with action and dialogue and skip everything else.

Q. Are you equally comfortable reading a physical book and an ebook?  

My answer  Both work for me though one disadvantage in an e-reader is that you can't flip back pages as easily as you can in a paperback. Sometimes I need to go back a few pages to reacquaint myself with a character or incident, especially since I read three books at a time. With an e-reader you don't know how far back to go.

Q. Do you read books by the same author back to back? 

My answer  I often have, with P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance; but same-author books can get monotonous. I have recently put an end to this practice. Now I read authors 2, 3, 4 & 5 before going back to author 1.

Q. Do you read a book from start to finish or do you pick up another book midway? 

My answer  Since I read three books at a time I can't afford to be bored and pick up a fourth or fifth book. However, I'm tardy in finishing the classics. It took me over a month to read up The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I remember forgetting all about Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I picked it up again six months after I started reading it and found I hadn't even reached page 200.

What are your reading peeves?