One More Book

   I just love books... I don't know why, but it has always been so. There are people who brand me as a bookworm and hate me for it but that's just the way I'm.. I can't help it. I love the smell of books, their covers, their titles (not all), sometimes the style of writing, sometimes the story or the suspense, sometimes a particular character or a couple, and yet other times, the place where the story is set. I love authors.. I admire them for the work they have published; even those that are not that good (I believe people should admire them even more because they had the guts to publish whatever rubbish they have written!!).

   So, there is this dilemma: which is my favourite book? Normally, I name a few books I have read and add that I like many others too. But if God gave me the chance to read one more book, just one more, then which book will I read? Of course, being a devout Muslim, the last book that I would ever like to read is The Holy Qur'an. But if the choice is one more book before The Qur'an, then I will have a hard time deciding which book to read.

  I'm crazy about harry Potter series ( I love J.K.Rowling's way of writing, how she includes humour even in the most serious situations) but then I've read them so often that I almost now them by heart. So there's no point reading them one last time. Then there is Letter from Peking by Pearl.S.Buck. But that too is almost as familiar to me as Harry Potter. I like most of the books by Orhan Pamuk, Erich Segal and John Grisham, but as my very last book? The answer is no. Curfewed Night is a book I like very much, but then, it is not fiction- I would be too sad knowing that as I read, people elsewhere are suffering those atrocities. And if I were to choose Khaled Hosseini's book, that would be a dilemma in itself- I still can't make up my mind whether I like The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns the most. And there's the fact that there are a lot of books that I haven't read yet (The Good Earth, The Collaborator,etc), and lots yet to be published or released, and still others not yet written.

   So, what can I do? The truth is that I will not be able to decide which book I like so much so that I would choose it to be the last book I would ever read, even if I was given another lifetime!