The road less traveled 🎧

I am reading "Bridge Burning and Other Hobbies" by Kitty Flanagan at the moment. But what I'm reading has nothing to do with this post, where and how I'm reading it has everything to do with the reason I'm sitting down to write today. I'm reading this book with an app on my phone. And I have been reading books on my phone for over a year now. The reason? A big fat juicy convenience. If you were to ask my reading preference a year ago, I would have told you, without missing a heartbeat, that I preferred reading paperbacks more than ebooks. Today, I wouldn't be so fast in answering that question.

When I first started reading on the onset of my teenage, the only reading option I ever had was whatever I could get from the library at school. My parents never bought us books out of the school curriculum. Even though I went to one of the biggest schools in my country, and even though the library there used to feel massive, I had pretty much been through most of the books of my taste already so, when I finished high school and when I felt I could finally afford to actually buy books myself, I went to bookstores just to run my hands over the new books. I used to love how books felt under my hands. I remember having to wash my hands after my visits to bookstores (because of how dusty they used to end up). I used to prefer bought books over borrowed ones because I was a book hoarder and the problem with library books was that they couldn't be hoarded. When buying new books turned out to be expensive, I turned to second-hand bookstores where I could buy perfectly readable books at a very low cost. It was a win. I continued buying second-hand books even after I came to Australia. 

And then I had to go back to Nepal for an indefinite period of time. Although I have a good collection of books back home, I didn't want to buy any more books than which I could carry back to Australia. So, I started reading ebooks. At first, I did what I used to do before - download whatever I could find online. And then I discovered BorrowBox. I didn't know how it worked before, but circumstances led me to be more curious. And that curiosity has changed my life. 

So, let me tell you a little something about this app called Borrowbox. BorrowBox is this "download service that any particular library has subscribed to, designed and powered by Bolinda Digital. The service consists of a website and for most libraries also mobile apps for Apple and Android devices". So, the long and short of it is that it is "your future library, wherever you are, whenever you are, free." And as it happens, I love free books. But I also love to own them. However, here's the catch. Once you get over the obsessiveness to own stuffs all the time, you transcend to a place in your life where all you have is a desire to read and then a lot of boundaries are erased. I don't have to go buy a book at the store, I don't have to go borrow a book from the library, I don't have to go, period. All I have to do, is open this app, scroll through thousands of options, and download it to my device for a number of days. Yeah, the idea of borrowing a soft copy seemed ludicrous at first but trust me, I have also bought a soft copy of a book before so, borrowing seemed harmless. The discovery of this app has been nothing short of a miracle for me. I can find so many books in there and they have latest releases as well. And what book-looker won't say no to a library that they can carry around in their pocket? Only a daft one, or probably a very rich one.

And the thing is, I didn't know that my association with reading books on handheld devices would be long term. I just thought it was a temporary arrangement, something that I was doing simply because I had no other choice at that time. I still was of the mentality that I would eventually go back to reading real books once I came back to Sydney. And I did go book shopping from time to time, only I didn't find anything that appealed (given I bought my books from second-hand stores). Then one day, disaster struck. well, not an actual disaster but I like to remember that wretched day as the turning point in my life, one where I felt the ground move beneath my feet and transport me to a place from where returning back to normal felt impossible.

I had been reading "Small Great Things" by Jodi Picoult on my phone and that day I decided to go to the library. And while I was there, I decided to may be borrow the physical book and read that, instead of reading from the phone - go back to good old days. Turned out, good old days weren't so good anymore. Here's what happened - the book was bulky (some 500 pages, medium sized letters), I had to actually turn the pages (that required two hands) and I needed to bookmark the pages. Well, fuck. With an ebook, there's equality - a large book or a tiny book, both weigh the same, there's flexibility - night mode or traditional paper mode, large font size or a teeny tiny words. And with an audio book, you don't even have to worry about words starting to swim after hours and hours of reading. And guess what, with ebooks and audio books, there's anonymity too - I could be reading a children's book and you wouldn't even know. Yes, you might think I was listening to music or being addicted to social media and I wouldn't care. I didn't think I would ever say this; heck, I didn't, in my wildest imagination, even think I would think this - but I might never go back to reading paperback...well, unless someone gifts me a book, that is. 

I'm not here to advocate the superiority of ebooks and audio books over paperbacks, far from it. I'm here to simply acknowledge the fact that reading is learning, reading is exploring, reading is feeling, reading is living and whether you want to learn, explore, feel and live via words on paper, screen or words narrated by someone, it doesn't matter. You are meant to reach the same destination, you've just decided to take different routes. And while you're at it, why not enjoy both?