Many of you might be knowing that I love reading books. I inculcated this habit in my daily life since I started my undergrad in 2006. When I started my journey in the university as an English literature student, I barely had any idea about the history of English literature apart than my school syllabus. Not ashamed of saying that, my school syllabus of English literature was truly outdated and pretty much boring.
Within a week after I commenced my undergrad, I realised that if I need to succeed as an English literature student, then I have to read books out of my curriculum which will widen my knowledge. Thankfully, I got a wonderful roommate, named Pratishtha (a true friend whom I consider elder sister to me) who helped me to be a better person, well read and a woman with lot of fantastic traits. That’s how she introduced me to the world of English literature and made me learn more with each passing day. Fast forward to 2023, here are about 5 books I read so far in this year. Not only I learnt, but I enjoyed reading them.
1. 8 Rules of Love by Jay Shetty
I’m sure, many of you know Jay Shetty as a motivational speaker and a successful podcaster. But he is a phenomenal author too. We all want to be loved and we all want to love. But nobody takes the opportunity to sit down with you and break down your journey in the world of love. Author didn’t present the concept of love as an eternal feeling which completes your life when you are with your soulmate. Rather, the author talked about self-love as an ultimate expression of love. His book is highly inspired by Vedic Wisdom and modern science of relationships, where he mentioned about all the stages of modern love and what’s his take on this. I feel, we have loads to learn from this book, in order to give and take love respectfully without hurting or using others like toys.
2. Manifest by Roxie Nafousi
Roxie Nafousi, herself is an inspiration to the Gen Zs. Her journey from a cocaine addicted girl in London to a bestseller author, is truly motivating. Her book literally made me feel that, I can do it, if she can. She also rose to popularity through Kourtney Kardashian’s wellness platform (POOSH). The minimalist cover page design and the simple one-word title of the book, caught my attention in the first place. With this fast pace life, we all are losing our minds and falling apart every now and then. That’s why “manifest” word is getting popular day by day. If you will check this word in the social media, you will find 7 million+ hashtags. In this book, Roxie narrated her journey blatantly to make her readers understand that manifestation is not impossible, and its very much possible.
3. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Mason
Mark Mason is one among the few black executives in The Wall Street. In this book, he is saying that its okay not to be okay at times. We all don’t need to be positive every single moment of our life. Humanly its not possible too. At times, we feel shattered, failed, dejected and sad. So instead of throwing all the emotions away, we should feel the down side too. Mason countered the age old “positive mindset” concept by saying “Fuck positivity”. Whereas we all feel that coddling and showing up for ourselves are the key to happiness, which he tagged as a wrong presentation. Its very important to know our limitations. He also praised that its okay to fail and we don’t need to be the winners all the time in every aspect of our life. So at times, giving some respite to ourselves from the rat race is an honest breather.
4. P.S I Love You by Cecelia Ahern
Though it’s a romantic book published back in 2003, I read it for the second time, because I feel its worth reading. It teaches you that how your life goes on. We lose our favourite people but that doesn’t mean we stop living. In December 2022, I lost my mother who was my all time and most favourite person in the world. She was suffering for a long time and seeing her pain, I literally started praying to the god for her smooth passing away from this world to that world. But I didn’t know how to accept this loss, I didn’t know how to overcome this grief. But her lessons always kept me going and that helped me to come out of my own shell. When I read this book for the first time few years back, I enjoyed reading it but couldn’t understand it completely. Now when I lost someone from my life, this book meant differently to me and made me believe that ‘life is beautiful’ even after losing your favourite person, the show must go on.
5. Don’t Worry by Shunmyo Masuno
Many of you might not be knowing that the author of this book is a Japanese monk and garden designer. Everyday is a stressful day, but Masuno taught simple 48 lessons to achieve calmness and let the stress go away from our life. We keep worrying about every tiny thing in our life, and at times we also worry about things happening in others’ life too. This book is written in five parts and each part is focusing on various stressful aspects of our life. Through this book, the author also tried to explain that nature has the strongest and the most beautiful healing properties, which either we are unaware of or we simply ignore to accept and implement.
Reading books taught me lot of things about life and about myself as well. It also gave me a deep insight within me as a person. Reading is not something only to spend time for me. To me, reading is a hobby where you spend time to learn something. Even if it is a fictional novel, it still teaches you something or the other. So don’t ignore reading and start inculcating this habit in your life. Read at least a page or two everyday and enlighten your inner self.