Books, reading them, and the Zeitgeist.

If I was caught in a book, when I was younger, I would always take it with me to social gatherings. Not only because I really wanted to know what happened on the next page, but also because it gave me an excuse to not socialize. I could hide behind my book. It caught a lot of people as very peculiar, I'd always have people ask me why I was reading in a room filled with people. Sometimes I even got asked if I was studying for a class or an exam. Their disbelief and astonishment was met by a very similar disbelief and astonishment. Surprise and confusion was met with similar surprise and confusion, as if I didn't understand the question. This is why I never really had a solid, or well thought out answer.

I don't know, I like reading books? I like this book? It's interesting? I like books?

As if failing at their first attempt, or not contempt with the answers they'd get, they would wander over to my Dad or Mum and ask them the same exact question. As if, for a second opinion, much like an unsatisfied patient. I often had no idea what my Dad or Mum said to them, I'd be hard to hear from behind my book.

My Dad never asked me to stop, though. Neither did my Mum, actually. They let me sit behind my book. I will always be grateful of them for that.

There's always time to get reinstated within a society that's never completely accepting and almost always judgmental of you, even after telling you to be yourself. But as we grow older, we drift further apart from our childhood and fairy tales and fiction doesn't appeal to us as much as it would to a child. During our childhood is when we truly submerge and are willing to be taken away by the world of stories other than our own, stranger and more romantic than our own.

I once attempted to read a book called  "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, which first put this idea in my head. Unfortunately, either in part due to the fact that I had other things going on in my life at that moment (I was on the plane to America for the first time,) or because I just didn't connect with little imaginary Sophie's world enough, (I'm not making a sly joke concerning Philosophy here, by the way,) I haven't gotten back to the book yet, and it's been around three years. There's this one part of the book that always stuck with me, though, so I'm going to put it here.

One morning, Mom, Dad and little Thomas, aged two or three, are having breakfast in the kitchen. After a while Mom gets up and goes over to the kitchen sink, and Dad--yes, Dad--flies up and floats around under the ceiling while Thomas sits watching. What do you think Thomas says? Perhaps he points up at his father and says: "Daddy's flying!" Thomas will certainly be astonished, but then he very often is. Dad does so many strange things that this business of a little flight over the breakfast table makes no difference to him. Every day Dad shaves with a funny machine, sometimes he climbs onto the roof and turns the TV aerial--or else he sticks his head under the hood of the car and comes up black in the face.

Now it's Mom's turn. She hears what Thomas says and turns around abruptly. How do you think she reacts to the sight of Dad floating nonchalantly over the kitchen table?

She drops the jam jar on the floor and screams with fright. She may even need medical attention once Dad has returned respectably to his chair. (He should have learned better table manners by now!) Why do you think Thomas and his mother react so differently?

It all has to do with habit. (Note this!) Mom has learned that people cannot fly. Thomas has not. He still isn't certain what you can and cannot do in this world.

But what about the world itself, Sophie? Do you think it can do what it does? The world is also floating in space. 

Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central—something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery. This is something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.

To be more precise: Although philosophical questions concern us all, we do not all become philosophers. For various reasons most people get so caught up in everyday affairs that their astonishment at the world gets pushed into the background. (They crawl deep into the rabbit’s fur, snuggle down comfortably, and stay there for the rest of their lives.) 

To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course.

This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable—bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. 

You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child.

As you've probably already deducted by now, it's a book about Philosophy. I picked it up because I was looking for a beginner's book that would work as an introduction to Philosophy. That's right, a book about Philosophy with the protagonist named Sophie. Isn't that quite clever?

A quick Google search later, and what do you know; you can actually grab a .pdf of the book here. I might actually go back to it myself after three years of first being introduced to it. I originally thought that I had left it here, in Riyadh, but after searching for it just now I can't find it. It's quite sad that half of the books that I've read in my lifetime are all bundled up in a cardboard box in Philly, left to a curious and unbeknownst fate.

This brings me to what I was originally going to post as a separate post; e-books.

I know people are constantly providing rebuttals, making a case for traditional paper based books. After that excerpt from Sophie's World about how we quite essentially stop willing to grow and experiment, or have an open-mind as we grow older, I think this would be a perfect time to make a case for e-books and e-book readers.

Consider my situation where I have been traveler for the better parts of the last 3 years. I've moved around and lived with 6 different people in 4 different houses and apartments. For the past 6 months, I've been in Riyadh with a general disorientation considering what the future holds concerning almost every aspect of my life. This has left me without all my belongings, including all my clothes, my beloved guitar, and most of all - my very prized possessions, my books.

However, most people don't realize that with the switch from paper to digital, we are making our data and information a lot more easier to carry and access. I can carry every book that I could possibly want with me across the globe, and wherever I go. Some would make the argument that we are constantly being bombarded with information as it is, what with social media and what not. But bear in mind that an e-book reader is in no way a tablet, or even a medium which would enable you to partake in your, most-probably, usual routine of useless noise trading over social networks. You can not send a tweet, and you are definitely not virtually poking anyone on an e-book reader. This might be one of my favorite things about them.

The e-ink display is a marvel of technology, and a very little talked about one at that. Not a lot of people seem to understand how an e-ink display works, and at the very thought of reading on an electronic device, dismiss the idea due to the strain they've been experiencing due to LCD displays all their lives. An e-ink display is in no way like a Liquid Crystal Display. For you to understand how it is both different and better, you would have to look at one yourself and experience them in all their glory first hand, or at the very least look up and image or video on YouTube*. The Kindle page on Amazon has both. On an e-ink display, the words "pop out" of the screen, and it causes no strain to your eyes.

The third most popular argument I've received when trying to convince an avid reader to try an e-book reader, is that they're so used to holding a book and turning pages, that the switch to pressing buttons would just not cut the mustard. Here's what I always tell them, though;

The great thing about reading books, is the aspect of switching realities, of being taken into the world of the narrator. This escape from reality is perhaps, non-arguably, one of the reasons and aspects that enable an object as "simple" as a book to hold our imaginations and attention for such long periods of time. Whilst reading a book, one is not aware that he is reading a book. For if he was aware that he was reading a book, he wouldn't be paying actual attention to the book. He wouldn't be walking in a forest or climbing a mountain with Frodo while reading The Lord of the Rings. He would be aware only of sitting or laying down, and holding a book.

This act of being immersed and lost in a book doesn't go away. It doesn't go away, even if we're reading something interesting on a computer. Right now for instance. Are you thinking about scrolling down using your keyboard or mouse, or were you gripping on to every word that I have written?

That is exactly why it doesn't matter, and why reading on an e-book reader is not as inferior as most people assume it would be.

My last argument is most often in relation to the zeitgeist, one of my favorite concepts and ideas.

zeit·geist/ˈtsītˌgīst/

The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

A German word, which my favorite way to describe, is by calling it the "spirit of the age," or the "spirit of the time."

To put it in the simplest of ways possible; before the television ever existed, no matter how you tried to explain the idea of a television to people, they'd look at you as if you were crazy.
Same exact thing with television. Same exact thing with the Wright brothers and them seemingly learning how to fly.

The skepticism or disbelief revolving around these revolutionary ideas did not stop any of these creations to not only go ahead and be invented, but to also quite literally change the history of mankind forever.

There perhaps is no need for me to go on after saying as much as I have, for I really don't want to insult anyone's intelligence. We are already living in times where the News, and Magazines, and even Comic Books are all being read on our LCDs'. (Which makes me wonder how publishing houses are still at it, I mean, sure, we all know of the crumble of bookstores like Borders, but why do people still make magazines?)

The ball has since long been set in motion, and even if you decide to forever swear off e-readers, the chances are strongly leaning towards the idea that your kids are all going to be reading on one. Let's also put it this way; just how many more trees are we going to cut down? Or rather, how many more trees can we afford to cut down?

We are fortunate to live in such exciting times, to witness this avalanche of exponential growth, even if we live in times of increased anxiety and are surrounded by an overwhelming noise of information.

What started off as a simple thought reminiscing my childhood and my love for reading seemingly grew and developed an identify of it's own, as the ideas and words kept coming to me and my hands kept typing them. This might, perhaps, even be my longest blog post to date. Not only because there's a huge excerpt from a book in the middle, because I genuinely feel that I've not only overcome, but also climbed on top of and hammered away this writer's block that had been ... well, blocking ... my thought process for what seems like a good while. As I already said, this was going to be two different posts, or so I had planned.

I'm planning on going back to reading books, and what a better time than when I feel like I'm starting to enjoy writing all over again.

Much love, to whoever read this.

For those who are fortunate enough to comprehend Urdu, I leave you with the random sillyness that is my sister:

@daanisharif I just saw this recipe for "Finnish pancakes" and I was like "Khattamm pancakes" hahahaa

* Fun fact: The squiggly lines under YouTube informing me of a spelling mistake only went away after I capitalized not only the "Y," but also the "T." Wow. Advertising is very ridiculous.