Everyone, most of us, believe in New Year Resolutions— the promises we make to ourselves and to our loved ones. The changes we wish to see, the calm we need to seep into our daily life; don’t we ask and demand too much from ourselves… there is a rush, to do, to be, to achieve, to reach somewhere and we haven’t stopped and taken a pause to ponder over what after that?
If 2023 saw the advent of ChatGPT, AI, and some other innovations this year also has been a stark representation of discontent, instant gratification, booming anxiety, mad rush for everything bling, a long race to show and not to live.
Reading is a personal religion, one does it to nurture, strengthen and know the person one is and not a target list to be completed so that you can put your tongue out to the neighbour — “see I read 80/100 books this year.
Writers take arduous pain, soul searching, losing themselves for hours, days and years into the vagaries of mind, and bring out a universal feeling with their words. If writing is an art reading too is an art one needs to master.
As Harold Bloom says in his book How to Read and Why
“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”
The most soulful and unselfish act that you can do for yourself this year and for many more is Read and learn.
“ For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Those of you who are aspiring to be a writer, stop aspiring, start writing. Have you read that famous line from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
“I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.”
We all have stories to tell, the ones who begins gets to tell. With this I would like to thank you all for following and believing in Paperbacks Publishing.
Happy New Year
Prachi
Editor-In-Chief
Paperbacks Publishing House 