WORLD BOOK and COPYRIGHT DAY 23rd April 2013

                                  Biography Of my Outstanding Kind love of more than four decades

                                                    Balayogi- balayogiv@gmail.com

A special write up for WORLD BOOK and COPYRIGHT DAY 23^rd April 2013

Biography Of my Outstanding Kind love of more than four decades

Life is a constant process of learning or to be more precise unfolding the mystery as to who we are?

What is our role in the universe? What are the other species and things that exist and function in the universe?

What is their role?

How they exist?

What is our interaction and level of interdependence with everything around us?

Such unending questions and enquiries that seek answers and the answers that unravel the mysteries are all found in a place. So let us barge into our omniscient kingdom.

Fortunately all our senses, sensitivities and sensibilities are immensely powerful and infinitely potential to perceive many things.

However, ironically and unfortunately they are also  limited because of their physical frame i.e. we cannot smell a beautiful rose  a few kilometers away nor taste a food in a far away land.

It is in unraveling these beauties beyond the geographical constraints and revealing the splendors beyond the confines of psychological, ideological, cultural, social and religious conditionings, by making the mind and soul to help overcome the limitations of the physic, and unleash the potential of our senses that books play a significant role and make us realize that we are essentially a triad of body, mind and soul each manifesting in different ways and  in varying degrees within the same individual.

When we say book, visually it brings to mind only the printed version, the one that has no commercial breaks and uses no batteries.

But we must include any or all medium of dissemination of ideas, thoughts, opinions, stories, philosophies, facts, information, illustrations, pictures, imaginations etc either in oral form or written  form starting from the ancient stone engraved scripts to palm leaf manuscripts to latest electronic texts. [We can exclude audio visual media because that is different genre altogether].

Looked from this perspective, they were the first means of wider communication network and probably one thing that has contributed to the advancement human species and better understanding among human species.

It is through exchange and sharing of ideas and information human race has learned faster and better than other species.

It was perhaps the first best tool which helped human being to unite by breaking  the barriers of closed  cultural group, boundaries of political geography, fetters of different faiths and so on  by foraying  into different forms of social set ups and by  helping  human intellect immensely to appreciate life enhancing and soul enlightening ideas and ideologies through communication.

As breathing is the most vital connectivity between our self and the outer world for our physical life, so too are reading and listening for our mental, psychological  and sometimes spiritual life as well along with silence between reading and also the silence between words and sentences.

That’s why they are known as the medicine for the soul.

Books are the first, greatest and most useful discovery of human race and the best bridge connecting three major stations of chronology i.e. past, present and future.

Greg Weisman writes on this aspect, “The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present, and prisms reflected all possible futures. Books are lighthouses erected on the dark sea of time.” 

This whole write up will be spiced up with many quotes because I feel the same way the great author Montaigne used to say, “I quote others only the better to express myself”.

Besides Quotations in general articulate verbally with greater impact our feelings, ideas, thoughts, dreams, imaginations, desires, ambitions, beliefs etc.

Books are the most valuable wealth that humanity has inherited on earth.

They are the greatest source of inspiration and support in solitude.

When we extol so much we need also to know what books have done and can do?

In short initially all barriers of outer world are knocked off by them and they bring us out of our kainotophobia [fear of change] by beautifully orienting our perceptions in a kind and subtle way.

BOOKS act as beacon to our understanding of the outer world and occupy as the key to unlock many mysteries.

BOOKS  help us befriend outer world and acted as our ka [vital life force].

BOOKS bore into our inner self and became our kernel.

BOOKS become our companions and outpour knowledge to us.

BOOKS beckon our outstretched intellect with knowledge to sharpen it. 

By the way our outlook is kindled, the two ‘oo’ s in the word book probably indicate the two eyes [as Stefanos Livos calls them] that either in a way  see a new world or the world in a new way, BOOKS are thus the best outlook- changing omnipresent kindlers.

Books  absorb our attention aesthetically and artistically and act as an anodyne absolving our agitation and anger;

They take us into the greatest adventures without any physical danger; they accelerate our ambitions and achievements.

Books act as bridge to understand life from within and from outside;

Books form the basis for propagation and sustenance of religions, isms, cults, philosophies, political and economic ideologies and revolutions.

Can we imagine a religion without its scripture?

Can we imagine a philosopher without his printed works?

It was the writings of a Voltaire or a Marx that have created revolutions;

The printed speeches of Matin Luther King or writing of Mahatma Gandhi that changed the shape of history;

It is the recording of scientific discoveries of a Darwin or Einstein that have served science.

The best source to know the story of human development and progress of civilization is through books, as James Russell Lowell writes, “Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” 

With the advent of internet books are available aplenty and at the click of the mouse.

Books act as mirrors, as psychiatrists, as preachers, as philosophers, as explorers, as teachers, as scientists and as spiritual teachers.

Books break or bind blind beliefs and bring in a skeptical self inquiry or an institution.

Books can charge our life with new meanings and change our lives meaningfully, especially, by unpacking before us the wisdom of many lives i.e. the wisdom of the ages in a few pages;

Books can show us the experiences of many lives and thus gradually make us enjoy the benefit in a single life by providing the happiness of living many lives.

Arlaina Tibensky nicely puts it as, “Reading makes me feel like I've lived a thousand lives in addition to my own.” 

And Donalyn Miller too observes, “Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being.” 

Books have the capacity to rewind or fast forward our age and perception.

Books can challenge and even change our convictions and convert our cowardice into courage;

Books comfort us;

Books carry us through difficult times;

Books caress and cut through our consciousness.

Books create our character and characterize our creations and cater to our creativity;

Books carry on to color our experience and curl up in  our own cozy cocoon or carry us to contour- less, corner- less carefree canvass of continuing creation irrespective of whether it be cut by the  callow  censors or crowned and certified by the crowd; even copyrights cannot curtail the clandestine relationship between the author and the reader ;

Books challenge our conformed opinions, bring clarity to convictions, create cutting edge choices and help us to change for the better; they offer a buffet of choices to relish life. 

As Nora Ephron  says, “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”

Divine forces may have sculpted all creations but human beings have scripted creations and created scriptures whose impact is so powerful that even all the infinite Gods and their teachings have been made known to larger part of humanity only through printed scriptures.

In many aspects books are the atlas of life and map for living.

Deep thoughts, dear descriptions, dainty emotions, delightful poetry and designs, even  divinity etc, all have been rendered down the ages in delicate and delicious manner by this most powerful medium called words and books using merely a few alphabets and punctuations marks.

This medium has outsmarted and outwitted all other mediums of interaction and communication be it music, painting or film.

Very often the words in the form of lyrics, poetry, idea, thought, vision, story, history, and recorded data supply the material for other art forms.

The credit goes to literature as it has achieved extraordinary things as Boris Pasternak says, “Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.” 

Literature itself is a natural creative splendor which evolves according to its own dynamics unfettered by limitations of lexicon. Words, expressions, usage all play their part in that romance.   

This is because the words in a book are a combination of emotional, intellectual and spiritual activity all rolled into one, sometimes very aesthetic and appealing as well, and therefore the words get etched in our heart, head, and the soul.

The beauty is books outlive their authors and readers forever.

Reading books is not only one of the pleasantest journeys but destination and at times determines the very destiny of not only an individual but a whole society or a nation or the whole of humanity.

Henry David Thoreau puts it more powerfully in his wonderful book Walden, “A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.” 

Or as Caroline Gordon says, “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” 

Books can define, refine and redefine us and the world around us.

Books drive us in and out of details;

Books delve deeper into our dormant self;

Books divert us from despair;

Some books are doors to other worlds, to other characters, to other ideas, to another’s consciousness and some are doors to heaven.

Vera Nazarian writes, “Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.” 

Books  educate, excite, entertain, enlighten, engage and enlarge the mind, expand the range of our experiences as Anthony Burgess says, "The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind." 

Books enlarge our outlook, extend the extent of our understanding and render exquisite our expressions; they express not only the thoughts, ideas and voices of the author but a whole generation.

Books expose us to the inevitable facts and facets of life namely the dynamics of dainty dimensions of vast varieties, possibilities and confusing complexities and enlarge our understanding.

Books are fabulous food for the brain, faithful friends for the heart and fulfilling functionaries for the soul;

Books fulfill our need for instant freedom and freely fulfill our psychological needs, and they do all these in privacy.

Books can be fictional or factual or foraying into obscure sciences or forgone civilization, whatever they do they are fantastic, focused and firm fulcrum of fresh ideas and fine thoughts.

All great beliefs, discoveries, ideas, philosophies, religious edicts, revolutions, social and political forms etc have emerged, supported and survived only through powerful speeches and the written records.

Parents, teachers, relatives, neighbors, friends, colleagues, employees, business houses, offices, governments and  religious institutions each and everyone must start giving books as gift.

On many occasions like birthday parties, marriages, anniversaries start gifting books. This is written with no publisher or author in mind.

Many books make us humble and lead to honest appraisal of ourselves in terms of what we know, what we do not know and the necessity to learn more and more rather than bask in the presumptive world of our own limited scholarship; most great books are the holographic representations of the universe and universal self each manifesting part of the perception of life as a whole and each part equally capable of manifesting the whole perception of the totality of life.

When we read such books we feel that we have perceived the ultimate and everything but then we keep reading so many similar books each throwing light on some splendid aspect of the universal self in a new and spectacular way [speckle pattern of the hologram].

That’s why there are so many books unraveling the great mysteries of the ultimate single reality each in their unique version, voice and vocabulary, namely the various spiritual scriptures, as W.E. Channing puts it, “God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.”  

Many books that help us to lead life in a better way in specific contexts, the many self-help books;

Books which help us to delve deeper with a open mind into what constitutes reality, probing with unbiased reason and unfettered analysis, the various books on philosophy;

There are many books which help us to understand specific concepts of ultimate reality and the many religious scriptures. 

That’s why the more books we get in our life the more life we get from the books. 

No wonder that  Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” meaning “everything ends up in a book”.

And Thomas Carlyle too mentions “All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.” 

Similar sentiments are echoed by Barbara W.Tuchman too, “Books are the carriers of civilization.Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”  

Hermann Hesse expresses stronger sentiments, “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.” 

Books help and heal our hurt heart;

Books heap histories and help us understand the past.

As Charles kingsley says, “There is nothing more wonderful than a book. It may be a message to us from the dead, from human souls we never saw who lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet these little sheets of paper speak to us, arouse us, teach us, open our hearts and in turn open their hearts to us like brothers. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.” 

Books become intimate like irresistible lovers, initiate a relationship with our heart and mind and sometimes with our soul too;

Books immerse us with intense totality and total intensity into them;

Books inject ideas, influence, intoxicate, instigate, inform, improve, imbue us with importance and what is important, and impact in many more ways.

Books  help us to interact with many lives, both those who have lived in flesh and blood and left their imprints and the imagined characters and offer us the luxury of choosing from a wide range of characters to follow.

This aspect is well laid down by Amal El-Mohtar , “Coleridge wrote a poem called ‘The Eolian Harp,’ in which he explored the notion of music slumbering on its instrument. It's a gorgeous poem! It moves through thoughts and moods of the soul as if we're all but harps waiting for a breeze to pass through us to animate us.I feel the same way about art: that it is something that on many levels colonizes you gets inside you and changes you from the inside out.I find that happens with books, too. After I’ve read a book, for a couple of days afterwards I think in the patterns of the book’s writing, because the act of reading is an act of organizing your own thought process. If you are reading someone else’s writing, you have to organize your perception along someone else’s structure. So if I read a book by Terry Pratchett, a few days later there is still a little Terry Pratchettness to my thoughts. When I read something by Catherynne Valente, for quite a few days there is a kind of ‘jewelled’ quality to my thoughts. To read a book is to let someone else reach inside me and reorganise me. As a writer, I find it very difficult to start writing immediately after having read another writer's book. I have to digest it first, and let the influence pass…” 

Books  join us jubilantly with overall life.

We can survive without books but we cannot live without them;

Books do both i.e. analyze in detail and synthesize with diligence and hence, they lead to syncretism in ideology and in short they are symbiotic.

Julian Barnes writes in ‘A Life with Books’, “The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: 'Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and reading are not separate activities. The distinction is false (as it is when Yeats imagines a choice between 'perfection of the life, or of the work'). When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape—into different countries, mores, speech patterns—but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.”

And Daniel Pennac too writes, “We human being build houses because we`re alive but we write books because we` re mortal. We live in groups because we`re sociable but we read because we know we`re alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one`s place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.”

To know ourselves better we must first close ourselves with thought provoking books and then lose ourselves in them.

Perhaps Peter Ackyord echoes similar sentiments, “And when I was young, did I ever tell you, I always wanted to get inside a book and never come out again? I loved reading so much I wanted to be a part of it, and there were some books I could have stayed in forever.” 

Books are Livelihood for some, luxury for some, learning tools for some as Abraham Lincoln said “All I have learned, I learned from books” , love affairs for some and life itself for some.

Those who are contented with their life read books to relax, those who not contented with their life replenish their life with books and those who are not contented with one life but want to live many lives can experience that by living through the lives of different characters in books and through different ideas and suggestions of various authors reincarnating anew every time they read a new book, for everything reincarnates in books.

Gary Shteyngart writes about this effect of reading, “Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.” 

And C.S. Lewis too writes, “Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.” 

It is because genius lives in books as William Ellery Channing writes, “Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.” 

Books convey the memory and musings of millions of souls;

While all life is mortal those of books are immortal, a case of survival of the fittest.

News briefings on important topics, the culture of SMS texting, short duration films etc can they destroy the long narratives and detailed descriptions which form the main aspect of books?

Let us all be rest assured that they operate in a different domain and can never replace books, there can never be mere briefing on any major scientific discovery, thesis or religious preaching or sumptuous philosophy.

If at all any of the abbreviated format operators think that they can replace books then they are only trying to  put a huge elephant to death by tying it to an electrical chair, it will cause more damage than death.

Similarly some people are unduly worried about electronic versions of books as announcing the death knell of printed books but let us remember that electronic books are like seeing a beautiful natural scenery on screen and the physical printed book is having the pleasure of being next to it in person.

At the maximum we can flirt with electronic texts but firm lifelong love affairs take place only with physical books.

Electronic versions after tempting us initially will in fact force us to go in for a physical one.

Neither the liveliness of the printed books nor the love for them will ever vanish because they have an addictive influence as Terry W. Glaspey writes, “Let me begin with a heartfelt confession. I admit it. I am a biblioholic, one who loves books and whose life would seem incomplete without them. I am an addict, with a compulsive need to stop by nearly any bookstore I pass in order to get my fix. Books are an essential part of my life, the place where I have spent many unforgettable moments. For me, reading is one of the most enjoyable ways to pass a rainy afternoon or a leisurely summer day. I crave the knowledge and insights that truly great books bring into my life and can spend transported hours scouring used book stores for volumes which "I simply must have". I love the smell and feel of well-loved books and the look of a bookcase full of books waiting to be taken down and read.” 

Books oscillate between opposing opinions and offer opportunity to operate on our own terms;

Books offer us various scales of observation and frames of reference to perceive life both from the micro level and from the macro level. 

Ursula K. Le Guin points to this aspect in one of her works, “We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” 

Books prompt us to perceive properly by pruning our prejudices and presumptions;

In the cozy privacy books can provoke, pamper, please and make us philosophical and ponder over many things;

When book reading becomes a lifelong passion they promote our perception.

Books quench the thirst for thought provoking ideas, satisfy the hunger for higher knowledge and hyper imagination, uproot the evitable errors and leverages lucid understanding of uncertainties of life.

Books with their ever reverberating words are a refreshing refuge for the restless spirits and resources for the rejoicing souls;

Books reform and renew relationships;

Books recreate realities of forgone eras and relive those souls and thus immortalize the mortal;

There are those books that we read and those that read us;

Books reveal through appropriate expressions the inner recesses of our heart, renew through intellectual exchange  the process of our brain’s thinking and re- enter through creative content to access our soul’s spirits.

Some books seep into our souls and show us the hitherto unnoticed facets of our own self and others and the many unrealized hidden splendors by acting as our real guru;

Very often divine intervention seeps in as serendipity through a book in times of our happiness and sorrow and speaks to us in silence.

Miguel Serrano a Chilean diplomat and writer who has traveled widely in India studying Yoga, had a close friendship with Jung and Hesse at the end of their lives, writes in a book which was the outcome of his meetings and correspondence with them, titled C.G.Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Book of Two Friendships “As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.” 

Books shape our character and sharpen our intellect;

It is because books offer the greatest impact by turning out to be a two way traffic i.e. we get through them and they get through us. 

Anna Quindlen writes about this fact “In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” They take our soul to synchronize with its origin by making us sail through reality away from our illusions and they also take us into flights of hyper imagination away from too much of dry drudgery.

Books can supply as well as shatter superstitions; they sharpen our senses and sensibilities superbly as George R.R. Martin writes “a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge...That's why I read so much....” 

Books splendidly stimulate and sensationalize;

Books supply sensuous stories and sacred sermons with similar impact; they support us.

Sober, sensible, senseless, all sorts of matters sumptuously and smoothly slide into even our subconscious self through seductive, sweet, sharp, sensational and superb expressions and suitably selected vocabulary.

There are some books that appear and sound strange, surprising, startling, unique and vague at start then slowly they turn out be so familiar by pushing away all the dark clouds of our assumptive attitudes, conditioned minds, cluttered thoughts, presumptive and putative perceptions, making us see the bright sky of reality and truth as they are and as they should be understood; they can help us change our life, steady our life as well as study our life.

Books transport thoughts into us silently and implant them, suggest new thoughts.

Besides, Books also instigate us and transform us;

There are books that export us to different realms of life especially hitherto unexplored or different worlds altogether.

Books teach us without imposing;

Books touch our heart without expecting any reciprocation;

Books are a temple of thoughts between the temples of the forehead;

Books are hospitable hospitals to hurt hearts;

Books are a solace to the sorrowful souls;

When we open a good and thought provoking book they open up our mind and when we close them, their contents become close to us.

Books are neither cemeteries of thoughts, nor cauldrons of contradictions nor petrified symbolic statue nor  putrefied prejudices of the bygone ages but living philosophies, ideas popping up as per the reader’s wish “Dans les livres, il n'y a rien ou presque rien d'important: tout est dans la tête de la personne qui lit.” ― Jacques Poulin [ roughly translated “ In the books there is nothing or almost nothing important: everything is in the head{mind} of the person who reads”] and as Diane Setterfield says, “There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.” 

Books can treat us to and also tear apart traditions;

Books tactfully tuck in truths, trivia and taboos and trends all with the tacit approval;

Books thrill, terrify and take us to different realms; they take us on a tour from tradition to transition to transformation.

Books can be of use to us and also use us;

Books usher us into the unknown, unimaginable and unexplored territories of life and also unravel the utilities to understand the ubiquitous but hitherto unnoticed aspects of life;

There are some great books that are unique but as we read we start feeling they are universal because they make us realize that we are the whole universe, part of the universe and also important participant of the universe.

Books can validate our vindications and vindicate our evaluations;

Books can veer us towards our vital views of others and help us visit visions of enlightened souls;

Books can also very beautifully vindicate or vilify voluptuousness, vices and virtues all alike.

Wars and wraths of natural calamities have destroyed many things but not what have been implanted in the minds and souls of humanity through written words.

Books act as teachers, preachers, therapist, friends, relatives etc;

Books x-ray into the inner working of negative consciousness through depiction, delineation and description  of various characters and clearly caution us about the modus operandi of all the stealthy acts like hidden agendas, lurking suspicions, ulterior motives, invisible intentions, cryptic codes, surreptitious scheming and spying, cabal of conspirators, clandestine criminals, cunning corruptors, assignation of amorous people, meaning of furtive glances, arrière –pensée of astute operators, insidious intrusions, latent longings etc.

Reading personal life with all its original thinking, emotions and ideas along with reading the books together form the yin and yang of living.

Books zoom in the zeitgeist of various eras and zero into our recent and remote associations with them.

There is nothing that has not been or cannot be put in print except, ironically, the unique relationship that a book creates between the writer and every reader.

As Simon Cheshire says, “The relationship between a writer and a reader is utterly unique to those two individuals. The world that forms in your head as you read a book will be slightly different to that experienced by every other reader. Anywhere. Ever. Reading is very personal, a communication from one mind to another, something which can't be exactly copied, or replicated, or directly shared. If I read the work of, say, one of the great Victorian novelists, it's like a gift from the past, a momentary connection to another's thoughts. Their ideas are down on paper, to be picked up by me, over a century later. Writers can speak individually to readers across a year, or ten years, or a thousand. That's why I love books.” 

These moments of unique relationship between the reader and the writer can only be summed up by what Martin Luther King, Jr. Said, “Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

This reality of personal relationship that a reader develops with the book has been penned down by many authors, for example, Àngel Gonzàlez writes, “Suddenly the reader's eyes were filled with tears, and a loving voice whispered in his ear: -Why are you crying if everything in that book isn't true?- And the reader replied: -I know; but what I feel is real.” 

Parents must read and narrate to small children the great epics, stories, biographies etc as this could be the best investment and insurance for the child’s future. Strickland Gillilan wrote beautifully about this in his poem

‘The Reading Mother’

“ I had a mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea.
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth;
"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness lent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch.
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a Mother who read to me.”

And slowly but surely introduce them into the world of books and the art of reading.

Here I remember the words of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis “There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.” For, as Rick Holland observes the reality is, “The world belongs to those who read.”  

Here it would be better to remember the words of Ayn Rand, “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”  

Anyone writing about books cannot afford to miss Francis Bacon’s advice as to how to read, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested”,

and this verse by Edgar A. Guest,

“A Book 

“Now” - said a good book unto me -
“Open my pages and you shall see
Jewels of wisdom and treasures fine,
Gold and silver in every line,
And you may claim them if you but will
Open my pages and take your fill.

“Open my pages and run them o’er,
Take what you choose of my golden store.
Be you greedy, I shall not care -
All that you seize I shall gladly spare;
There is never a lock on my treasure doors,
Come - here are my jewels, make them yours!

“I am just a book on your mantel shelf,
But I can be part of your living self;
If only you’ll travel my pages through,
Then I will travel the world with you.
As two wines blended make better wine,
Blend your mind with these truths of mine.

“I’ll make you fitter to talk with men,
I’ll touch with silver the lines you pen,
I’ll lead you nearer the truth you seek,
I’ll strengthen you when your faith grows weak -
This place on your shelf is a prison cell,
Let me come into your mind to dwell!”