MONTHLY THEME (1): BOOK LISTS
For the few of you who regularly follow my posts, you have probably realized that I talk strictly about books, and rarely anything personal about myself. But today, in this new month, and in this new year, I decided to do something new. Talking about your own struggles and challenges, your own achievements and triumphs is as important as talking about those of characters. After all, we are all part of a story, our own.
The last month has been difficult and unpredictable for me. My emotions were running rampant, and they always showed up in extremes. There were days when I’d feel happy and content, okay with going with the flow. There were days when I’d feel like a control freak, wanting to do everything my way, and becoming severely distressed when unplanned things happened. There were days when I woke up with a deep urge to contemplate my life and think about the larger questions surrounding our life-really corny stuff basically. There were days when I felt restless, wanting to escape and get out, but of what, and go where, I had no idea. And there were the severely bad days, where nothing seemed to be going right, and I would go to bed hating myself and wake up the next day feeling like I was coming down from some major partying, and wanting to scream and yell at somebody one moment, and sit on the floor and bawl my eyes out the next.
Throughout this roller coaster ride, one thing has sustained me and helped regulate my mood, to bring it down from the extremes. I’m sure you can guess-books. Over the years, I have collected many books, all of them with different stories, protagonists, time periods and settings. After a few days, I fell into a kind of comforting routine. Whenever I was feeling something extremely strongly and I felt that I wouldn’t be able to handle it, I’d simply pick out a book that matched my mood, and sit down with a blanket, some dim lighting and occasionally a juice box, and lose myself in it. It never mattered whether or not I had read that particular book before, and if I had, how many times. If I had read it before, I reveled in the comfort of an old friend, who you know well, but still love to be with. If I hadn’t, it meant I had one more name ready to cross off my to-read list. And no matter what the situation, I always realized at the end that by the time I had finished the book, the world didn’t seem to be such a confusing place anymore. I drew a lot of comfort from thinking that, one day just like the characters, I would find my place in the world and in my own life.
Drawing inspiration from that, over the next month, I am going to be coming up with a new collection of books to read, filled with lists for every mood and every situation. So, stay tuned, and watch this space, as I dish out more and more books from the never-ending reading list of a bookworm.
Stay happy, stay reading!
