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Saturday, October 14, 2023

Belligerently Virtuous

 



I have spent years and decades (in fact, much of my life) being rather secretive about my ethical stands. Reasons?
  • I wanted not scare people off.
  • I wanted to come across as modest and approachable.
  • I didn't want to be dismissed and persecuted as being prude.
  • I didn't want to invite criticism that I am showing off my virtues.
  • I didn't want to be misunderstood. For example, in multiple cases, my riding a bicycle to work, or not splurging on clothes has been openly interpreted as my miserliness or even poverty. I don't see anything wrong with being a poor man. But I have problems with something I am doing out of my choice being interpreted as something being done due to circumstances.
  • In this world of 'cancel culture', there's a fear that those who choose to feel threatened and offended by you, will someday call out a small perceived slip by you as a weapon to shoot you down. A person who has been open about his good deeds in the past is more vulnerable to cancellation, because on top of whatever charges are levelled against him at the moment, he lays himself open to charges of being a hypocrite owing to his earlier opposite image.

Over time, I have realised that the above line of thought was useless and caused much time in getting wasted? Wasted in what?
  • In caring about opinions which don't matter held by people who matter even less.
  • In not allowing, to be positively influenced by your actions, many who are open enough to feel inspired by anything good you do, rather than feeling threatened by you.

In summary, I do what I do because I think it's right to do it, not because I want others to praise me or even take to my ways. Having said that, getting praised or becoming a positive influence is acceptable, even desirable. It makes complete sense that, if you do something good with good intentions, you be open about it. And know that in doing so you are not being vain. In fact, those who say so are up to nothing good themselves than pulling down someone behaving well. This world indulges in unbridled voyeurism in lusting over images expressly intended to show off and make others feel deficient on account of money, physical beauty, exclusive attainment of sexual love and so on. And in this, they do not bat their moral eyelid. These buggers have no right to judge you if you are doing something good with your talent and intentions and are generous enough to share it with others.

In the Picture

This Thursday, I chose to travel by public transport bus to Airbus Takeoff. While their high official did a lot of talking about sustainability during the session, I did my little part to help sustainability. I took a bus (and enjoyed the ride) to and from the venue. I carried my own water bottle and refused to pick up the plastic packaged water bottle. A gentleman at the conference even tried to pick me on why I carry a plastic bottle and not a steel bottle.

Friday, August 18, 2023

Concern for Inclusion or a Marketing Ploy

 In discussions about professional products and services, there often is vehement shaming of any opinion that seems to require the user to up his ante and try to learn, understand and perceive something which he currently doesn't. Accessibility, inclusion and customer focus are used as weapons to counter any demand on the cunsumer's skilling up. We see ourselves falling for this ploy pretty quickly. To do so is very easy, convenient and most importantly safe (because talking about accessibility, inclusion and customer focus is socially acceptable behaviour). However, one must also be mindful when the concern is genuine and when it's driven by the deeper desire to keep people in the shackles of stupidity. If your business and your profits, and your personal wealth, depends on your customers' weakness, you have no right to banter about you concern for their limitation. You basically are interested in perpetuating the power you hold on them by keeping them stupid and unskilled so that you can keep using these to increase your own wealth.


I hope consumers of any product and service are mindful of this phenomenon. Beware! When the seller is talking about accessibility, inclusion and customer focus, it may be motivated by a pure selfish concern: to perpetuate their market by deepening your dependence on their offering.

Example:
MOOCs have been selling the idea hard that human attention span is 7 minutes or something, and that any form that puts a demand on the learner's attention for anything more is, by definition, not going to work. This is probably true for a lowest common denominator of learner population but is untrue in general. However, this aggressive repetition has ridded many of our learners from the little guilt for their waning attention. As a result, now, many of them don't even try to pay attention for anything longer than a few minutes thinking it's natural and conveniently pass on the blame of their wavering attention to the unengaging (read unentertaining) performance of the instructor or the inappropriate nature of the longer format of classroom lectures.

I don't want to dismiss the success of MOOCs as a purely evil thing. But a good portion of it can be attributed to the above idea which has been sold really hard by using the lip-service of influential pedagogues.

An unfortunate collateral damage of this phenomenon is the ability of the students to hold their attention for a longer time, a mental ability of great importance in a wide range of situations (e.g. engaging deep conversations, profound literature, classical music) where paying attention and patience leads to a growth, fulfilment and enjoyment unmatchable through instant gratification.


Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Humans and Operating Systems

 Multitasking is the act of switching between two or more tasks, both of which are in the middle of executing. If one task is waiting, say for some input from the environment, the operating system will switch to executing another for the time being, thus ensuring that the computing resources are utilised judiciously, and progress happens.


Human adults are often needed to multitask. When the currently executing task stalls or waits for some reason and you can't do much about it except wait, a human often experiences emotions that an OS can't. There's impatience. Theirs anxiety. If the result of this task failing are bad or disastrous, these emotions are particularly strong.

A human may have to switch away from this stalled task since there are other tasks running and waiting for your attention. They may meet a sad fate if they don't get your attention while you can give it to them. Switching to other waiting tasks is but the most logical thing to do, because that's what an operating system would do. But this is also one of the hardest skills to learn because humans are not operating systems.

Monday, June 26, 2023

Beauty of Mind and Beauty of Matter

It's been a constant grouse for me why it's easier for physically attractive people to get attention much more than for people who are mentally capable. For example, it's not uncommon for fashion models to have millions of followers on Instagram. Comparatively, an artist should consider himself fortunate if he can garner even a few thousand followers.

In fact, the attitude that the world seems to have for intellectuals (in which I include those who make their living using their mental capability; this would include teachers, scientists, creative professionals like artists, writers, film and theatre directors and even bureaucrats to some extent) is more than just lack of interest. Instead, I see a certain degree of animosity and intolerance too. The world around us as we see it is the product of the the thoughts and work of intellectuals. So, no one can simply ignore the existence of intellectual beings. However people seem to prefer having nothing to do with this aspect of their being, thus trying to restrict their relation to intellect as a transactional thing. Where intellectuals must be dealt with at a social level, they are boxed into stereotypes of being geeks, nerds, studious, scholars etc. amounting to grumpy, mean, serious, sever, belligerent to being socially inept and insufferable to some extent.

This animosity and unfair bias against intellectuals -- often known as anti-intellectualism -- placed vis-a-vis the enormous appetite that the world has for anything glamour has appeared very unfortunate to me to the extent of causing me great and enduring pain.

Here, I try to make peace with this predicament by trying to explain it based on psychology, to the I extent that I understand it.

So, I would like to distinguish virtues in terms of being associated with mind or matter. There are human qualities that cause immediate sensual pleasure. A beautiful body, apart from the neutral aesthetic angle, causes sexual titillation. Cooking done well leads to pleasurable eating. A beautiful painting or sketch leads to a visual treat for the viewer. A piece of music is nice to the ears whether one understands music or not. All these, I would like to call the experiences of the matter. Experiencing these involves no training or preparation.


A level above these involves aspirations, arguably a thing of the mind, with which we are born. Aspirations to look good, to be rich and influential, to be accepted and respected in our social surroundings -- these aspirations lead us to see beauty in things which otherwise may not be having any apparent beauty. For example, being rich draws looks of admiration because people aspire to be rich. Possessions -- cars, gadgets, house, properly jewellery, dresses -- receive compliments and admiring looks from those who wish to have these for themselves. Of course, as a rejoinder, let me add that it would not be completely correct to say that the above things of possession have no inherent beauty of their own: а house can be really pretty and grand; a car may be majestic, sleek, fast and powerful; a gadget may be sleek, a piece of jewellery or garment can be really fine. Yet, I would say that a large majority of humans aren't so concerned about how inherently beautiful these objects are -- at least not until they find them well within their financial reach -- but what it entails to possess them.

Collectively, the above two forms of admirations, I would like to categorise as those of the matter. They would evoke reactions from almost anyone, with or without any special training, education, talent or intelligence.

The other form of beauty is the beauty of mind. This form of beauty, in order to be admired, demands us to get into the semantics -- the structure and the kinetics -- of the object in question.

To sense this form of beauty one certainly needs to get into a state where he concerns himself as much with the process that creates the object of beauty as with the object itself. The process that created a piece of beauty is an arbitrarily deep thing. For example, to be able is sing a particular song, the singer must go through a prolonged and rigorous training in music. The poet must feel something extraordinary or something ordinary extraordinarily that he expresses through the song. The music composer, the orchestra and the singer must internalize the details of the song -- both the technical and the emotion to put together a performance powerful enough to grab the notice of the most insolent of hearts. While the song itself has the beauty of the matter, the process that creates it is unboundedly more beautiful. But it is accessible to the person only with his mind's eye open. 

Unfortunately, staying in a state where the mind's eye is open is not effortless in most cases. In fact, most of us spend only a small part of our conscious life in that wakeful state. For most part, we are in an unconscious state, a mist of insolence and apathy surrounding us. I suspect that for most unfortunate people, this wakeful state happens for a disappearingly small period of time. I am unprepared to believe that there are people who never experience this wakefulness. You may consider it my form of faith that says that each one of us is blessed with that spark of divinity that can be stoked into a blazing fire with the right kind of nurturing. But anyway, what's important here is that statistically most people have their mind's eyes closed. Hence, appreciation for the beauty of the mind is so difficult to find. Places like Facebook or Instagram are where most of us spend the moments when we are in no condition or mood to perceive anything that's not out on the surface or doesn't assert itself loudly.

Sometimes creators of the beauty of mind, in their frustration of not being able to garner are kind of popularity that those with the beauty of the matter do, try to assert themselves in all sorts of ways. Unfortunately, this hardly ever ends well. In most cases, they are judged as belligerent, that is, pushing their supremacy on others. One question is: is indeed this belligerence there? Hard to say if it's right to interpret this behaviour as belligerence. It's definitely born out of anger and frustration, and has an element of violence in it. But belligerence?Belligerence amounts to an act of aggression in an attempt to force someone to to do something without his consent. What is an overassertive creator of beauty of mind trying to force people to do by making a noise about his creation? It's hard to point out. It's often construed as an attempt to force people to acknowledge the superiority of such a person. This mayn't be the case though. Such a claim, if at all there (which I doubt it is) as vacuously true and is in no need of validation. If someone is wilfully denying this, it's clearly a mean act. For most creators, their so called belligerence is really an act of retaliation against this meanness. But interestingly, to begin with, the denial of the above acknowledgement doesn't originate from meanness, but from intellectual incapacity. When intellect is slumbering, where is the question of it seeing below the surface?

The other, even more unfortunate, way the creative mind asserts its presence to the intellectually asleep majority is by commodifying itself. 'Become so good that the brilliance of your goodness pierces through the thickest of the wall of intellectual slumber', that's the maxim. This commodification is the unfortunate mechanism that drives the commercial world. It legitimises consumerism which is the advanced state of intellectual slumber; and it legitimises the alienation caused by the non-interest in the deeply beautiful thing in favour of that whose beauty is shallow and of the material. It also normalises the claim that there's no fundamental difference between the beauty of the mind and that of the matter.


Before I close, I would like to return to the infinite potential of the experience involving the beauty of the mind. There is really no limit to what you are allowed to see and experience behind an act of creativity. In fact, it's completely legal to perceive things that even the creator may not have perceived. Experiencing the beauty of mind is an act of creation.

On a completely tangential note, this may provide at least a partial resolution to the following conundrum: 'Does a copy (probably produced mechanically) have the same beauty as the original creation? Beauty of matter: yes! Beauty of mind. no! Beauty of mind can't be copied. It can't be manufactured. Process of creation happens only once -- in the mind of the creator, in the mind of the experiencer. In fact, beauty of mind is not a thing, but a process. Ephemeral. Unique. Unreplicatable.

Final word: Beauty of mind is not meant to be popular in the manner the beauty of matter is. It is sacred, and trying to push it through the wall of the widely prevailing intellectual slumber may sometimes work, but often will break it, defile it, turning it into the beauty of matter.

Thursday, March 09, 2023

Dividing the Prize of Good Work

Can organisations consider transferring a part of the salary of their employees to their partners, family members, or anyone at home, who makes it possible for the employees to put in his or her hard work?

The world has run long enough with the assumption that an employer pays its employees their salary, and it's the responsibility of the employee to share the benefits with his/her family members. Clearly, had this been a sufficient mechanism for all benefits to trickle down equitably, the whole gender discrimination issue wouldn't have arisen. The fact is that the person who has a direct access to the finances has an upper hand in the outside world in various ways. This advantage plays out very distinctly over a long period.
Personally, having been a family man for a decade and a half, it's quite clear to me that neither of us -- my wife and I -- would have been able to flourish in our professional craft without the other stepping up to help at every step. Unfortunately, this invaluable help gets a fairly sad compensation as a mention in the thesis acknowledgement or as a 'thank you' in an award ceremony, however sincerely and emotionally spelt. We need to make the compensation more explicit.
There could be objections to the above idea that a spouse's devotion or a parent's love are invaluable and thinking of compensating them in financial terms is like devaluing them. I get that, and I don't want to be dismissive about it outright. However, undeniably, the current system has led to a long-term drift and needs some correction.
Also, this idea wouldn't directly correct many other issues, for example, the fact that some people will never get an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities in certain fields of endeavour due to this arrangement of division of labour. But, if we as a society take the task of estimating the financial value of handling a home and family, the issue of one feeling unrewarded and unacknowledged for his/her effort would be reduced to some extent, hopefully. It is likely that, in turn, everyone -- regardless of gender -- would feel motivated to contribute to domestic duties in the same way as to professional ones.
There's a trend to turn our workplaces into gender equitable spaces. This is a very good thing and should continue and strengthen by all means. But a dual force should also be created wherein men feel more encouraged to participate in managing home and family. It's definitely done in some of the developed economies, and it works. For example, some of the European countries like Sweden give paternity leave equal to the maternity leave, and that too a lot of it. This shows that the society there acknowledges the importance of nursing and raising a child, invests on it as a society and encourages men and women to participate equally in it.
A couple of points to tie up a few loose ends. Firstly, though I am thinking and writing about this subject around Women's Day, the matter is not about upliftment of women, or gender fairness. It's about fairness in general, which is gender/caste/race/class neutral virtue. This includes the interests of parents, caretakers and others who stand guard at home while a person goes out into the professional battlefield to earn bread and accolades. In the same vein, this thought has nothing to do with feminism, which is a sexist term in my opinion. Thinking like an ethical human being is an age-old idea, though put to use to a miserably insufficient extent. If feminism has done anything to help anyone do that, there're also evidence that it has brought up a generation of women (and men) who have misplaced notions of being knowledgeable about this issue and use it only to further strengthen their own privileges.
If our society considers itself a developed one, it should develop mechanisms of estimating the (economic) value of all contributions to the society; and, if possible, create channels through which credits and rewards flow to the people and places where they are due. I know, this may be a bit out of the way the world works. But to get important results, we should consider making fundamental/radical changes.

Saturday, August 13, 2022

Laal Singh Chadda - A Review

 Dressing up and driving out at night is not my idea of chilling out on a Friday night following a gruelling work week. This movie is a remake of a classic -- Forrest Gump. I have watched that movie many times, am a lifetime fan of that movie and of Tom Hanks. So, I was partly mentally preparing myself to feel disappointed on the remake, as is the case with most remakes. The ongoing trouble on social network about #boycottlaalsinghchadda was there somewhere. I can swear on anything you wish that this filth doesn't sway me this way or that at all. But we surely were worried that there could be trouble at the venue. There are plenty of precendents available to show that this concern is not unfounded.

Nevertheless, the tickets were prebooked. So, we went ...

One of the first and biggest things that the movie does different from most remakes is to proclaim aloud that it's a remake. It pays tribute the original work of art and takes on squarely the challenge of offering something over and beyond what the original does. To put it as mildly as I can: LSC doesn't fail.

This note doesn't intend to be a spoiler. So, no dramatics!

Very like Forrest Gump, the movie portrays a simpleton whose life exemplifies one of the purest ideals of our life: simplicity of heart paves way to great accomplishments: be it in love, war or profession. The ability, resilience and perseverence can and will follow if you learn the art of losing yourself in the experience. There's pervasive message in the movie which has a profound spiritual scent to it. And it does it through a thousand funny and sombre moments that leave you in splits, and sometime with a lump in your throat. But that's there in Forrest Gump too, portrayed as well if not better.

What do I get from the movie as an Indian? I could relook at the grandeur, vastness and beauty of my country: its terrestrial beauty, its cultural richness and plurality, the trials and tribulations through which it has emerged post independence, its moments of tragedy: Emergency, storming of Golden Temple, Indira Gandhi assassination and the carnage of Sikhs, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, on the one hand. On the other, its glorious moments of victory: be it in the '83 Cricket World Cup or at Kargil.

The screenplay and locales were natively and inimitably Indian. My music playlist, after years of having been locked up in the 60's and 70's, will have some new songs in them: Lyrical, profound and soothing to the ears.

So, there you go: my assessment of the movie for all its worth. Go watch it if you want to be entertained and touched by stellar acting, beautiful screenplay, picturesque picturisation, soothing music and the overall spiritual ambience the narrative sets up. Aamir Khan doesn't surprise me here. He has a long track record of having made movies which will make its millions of viewers reflect over good things: friendship (Dil Chahta Hai), impact of corruption on youth (Rang De Basanti), our attitude as a society towards learning disabilities (Taare Zameen Par), pursuit of excellence (3 Idiots), biopic of a forgotten wrestler (Dangal), looking at human society from an alien's (unbiased) eyes (PK) ... and I am sure I am missing many of them.

I remember many movies where our mythological characters have been made fun of. One example is the classic satire, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, where characters from Mahabharata were spoofed to the limit.

But if something he had tweeted years ago which you have been convinced to consider religiously offensive (in spite of the fact that we say much more severe things about our own religion, culture and country on a daily basis, and find nothing offensive about it), please #boycottlaalsinghchadda!

Friday, February 04, 2022

How to (re)Start Reading

WHY PEOPLE DON'T READ OR GIVE UP READING

The benefits of reading are beyond debate. Reading a book is like a free appointment for a chit chat with a great mind. Inputting good words and the thoughts they convey can produce pathways in your thoughts that never existed earlier. Just like various infrastructural facilities like roads, hotels, factories, etc. allow you to explore and use your country better, likewise, vocabulary, phrases, narratives and scenarios formed through habitual reading make it possible to think in newer ways, generate newer ideas, and learn new knowledge. This leads to more mental infrastructure getting created, resulting in a compounding effect.

And yet, not as many people benefit from reading habits as one would want.

  • Common laments are that people don't find time to read.
  • Reading is often found to be an effortful process.
  • The benefits accrued from such an effort is often deemed intangible if at all there.
  • Developing a regular habit of reading by dedicating a specific hour of the day doesn't work for those who maintain erratic hours. As a result the reading hours fall victims to the vagaries of an irregular lifestyle, and so does the habit of reading.
  • Not being able to read a book cover to cover leads to frustrations, triggering further avoidance and procrastination.
 Later in this article, I create a list of suggestions which may help you get started with your reading habit, or in case if you are facing a reader's block, in getting your lost reading habit back on track. The tips do so exactly by getting around some of the above issues. I will leave the discovery of the mapping the method to issue as an exercise for the reader.
 

A WORD ABOUT THE ADVISOR

I don't consider myself an expert in the subject of reading. To substantiate this, let me confess that up until recently, I used to average at about 4-5 books a year which is nothing impressive. Recently, for reasons I don't completely understand, I have jumped up a bit to about 8-10 books a year, which also is a very modest rate compared to what I find some other people being able to do. My son, for example, finishes reading a book every 3-4 days. He glides through 100s of pages, literally in a matter of hours. A friend of mine read an unbelievable 63 books last years; and such has been her rate steadily for years. Achieving such extreme speeds may require some special talents, skills and circumstances not all of us may be blessed with. Nor may all of us be so keen to clock up to such high reading rates.

Nevertheless, the point is made that I can claim not to be an expert in this subject of reading, at least going by the numbers. Yet, what may actually qualify me to advise on this topic is precisely the same reason. I am a struggler too. I have tasted the nectar and am surely hooked for life. So, while I know pretty well why a reading habit is such a powerful thing to develop, I sympathise with the difficulties faced by a beginner/struggler.

So, here are the tips:

GO FOR VARIETY

Try reading various types of books: novels, short-fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, science politics, ... Likewise, please give various languages a try. Since most of us have been educated in English medium, and since English has such an unfortunate aspirational angle to it, most of us default to English literature. When some are not able to connect with the content, they make the mistaken conclusion that reading is not their thing. However, Indian literature is equally rich. And even though we may not be very confident about our knowledge of, say, our mother tongue, when we start reading a book in that language, things may prove unexpectedly smooth, simply because this still is probably the language we converse in in our day-to-day life, and our thoughts may be tuned to the vocabulary and idioms of that language. Further, the scenarios, cultures and contexts may be far more familiar in books written by compatriots compared to books written by western authors. Anyway, short of the long: try Indian books too.

Everyone can't read all kinds of books. We are naturally conditioned to like certain topics, styles of presentation and languages more than certain others. To know our fit, we should try reading many kinds of books. Only after having developed some familiarity with one's tastes and distastes, should one start aiming to go deeper into a genre at the exclusion of other possibilities.

READING SPRINTS

Read in small bursts. Instead of making marathon sessions, go for short sprints. This has several benefits. Not having to commit a huge chunk of time to a reading session makes it look less daunting, and hence easier to do. Shorter gaps of 15-30 minutes are easier to find than 2-3 hour slots. Holding your attention for 15 minutes is a very doable target. All these make it easier to start reading every time, and that makes it more likely that you will sit down to read more frequently.

FREE YOURSELF OF BURDENS

We often carry certain unnecessary burdens in our head which block us from feeling rewarded every time we read a few paragraphs. Such continuous feeling of tiny rewards is very necessary to make reading a sustainable process. Hence, before starting to read a book, free yourself of the following burdens:

  • that you will read the whole book
  • that you will read in the same sequence as in the pages
  • that it's only after having read a book cover to cover that you get the benefits of reading it

Remember that each word you read brings in something new. Hence, the moment you pick up your book and start reading, you are already better off than when you hadn't started; your benefits have started piling, and you are progressing.

Likewise, if you have some preconceived notions about the proper method of reading a book, free yourself of that too. There is no such proper way of reading. Your way is the most proper. Just read!

BE HUNGRY

Read with focus and hunger. Mentally pause to wonder what the next chapter or paragraph is going to reveal. Launch on your reading sprint with one such question in mind, and with the goal of finding an answer to that question.

MINDFULNESS VERSUS ATTENTIVENESS

If you haven't ever thought about the difference between attentiveness and mindfulness, may be you would like to. While both are states of focus, attentiveness is a purely conscious process of sticking your thoughts on one subject, and hence is effortful by definition. It may work for sometime but will lead to fatigue before long. Mindfulness is the act of creating an experience of emotional oneness with what you are doing. When we are immersed in the experience instead of thinking about the act, focus automatically happens. The way I say this here may make it appear somewhat exotic. But, it's not. It happens to all of us at some point: for example, kids experience it when playing. Mindfulness doesn't exhaust you even after a period of intense focus and effort. And, with practice, therefore, mindfulness leads to increased focus for longer periods of time.

So, why do I mention mindfulness here? Because, like in all hard stuff to do, learning to be mindful leads to focus during reading. And focused reading leads to more learning and more immersive experience. Outcome: more enjoyable and rewarding reading.

HAVE A REASON

Identify a reason why you would like to read a book. Here, your wishing to develop a reading habit is not the kind of reason I am referring to. Suppose, you are struggling with time management and would like to improve there. That makes for a good reason to pick up a book on time management or personal organisation. Similarly, some topics you may be curious to about (may be due to pragmatic reasons, but may be not) can be learned by reading a book. I realise that for me the lure of being transported to places and times where I can't otherwise go (e.g. fastastic Middle-Earth of Tolkien, Faraway planets and galaxies of Arthur C. Clarke, Olden Victorian England of George Elliot and Jane Austen, pre-independence North Indian rural and urban settings of Premchand). The fact that our mind works hard in filling up the gaps left by the written words in describing the situation is one of the primary lures of reading as opposed to watching a movie/TV series.

DIFFERENT STROKES

Reading is a matter of skill. Like all other skills, it requires prolonged practice to learn and perfect. Unless you intend to stick to a limited palette of genres, you will realise that there are different kinds of reading styles to be employed for different kinds of texts. A novel needs a different method of reading as compared to a book on philosophy. Even among novels, a book by Joseph Conrad can't be read using a style of reading that you found useful in reading Stephen King. In fact, every book is a different species and needs a different treatment. A seasoned reader will be prompt in estimating the tone and timbre of the conversation a book is trying to strike, and will adjust his reading style accordingly.

Therefore, if a book you just picked up doesn't come across as as easy a read as the last book you read, don't despair. It may just need a bit of adjusting the reading style to start enjoying the book. This will prevent unnecessary feelings of failure that often lead to a break.

SUMMARY

I hope the above tips are found practical and helpful in case you feel you are beginning on book reading or are trying to resume it. While reading may not be everyone's cup of tea, I think, it can be enjoyed by more people than we find doing today, if they free themselves of some of the hangups and mental burdens they carry about the idea of reading.