How we can manage reading novels! ( Isn't that what you ask? )

Whenever i mention that I am a keen and weirdly active reader, the first question that someone pops up is how do I manage to read so much? Honestly, at first, I hated this question. I mean, it doesn't make sense. asking. Its almost like asking how do we watch television or how can we study for our exams. But then I understood that reading like a crazed person is something only a few people do. Its not all that common as I thought it to be.

So I am going to answer this universal question right here, for once and all. How do we readers manage to read so much. But just be prepared. Its difficult to explain. Or understand.

Do you have a passion? A feeling so strong that it literally takes your breath away? Do you have an addiction? Something you just cannot live without? Something you need, not just want. For us, its the books. We need books. We need to read. Its like an unjustified craze that we cannot shake off even if we try. Like men like sports. Like men detest chic-lit. Like drunkards love their alcohol. And like cracks need their kick.  Its just something we love, something we need to exist normally.

Besides reading is insightful. No, don't laugh, I'm serious. Believe it or not, we readers know what you're thinking right now. Not because we are mind reader, no. Because at some point, in some book, we have read the exact scene we are experiencing. We know what's going in your mind. We can read you, because we already have read you. We can empathize with a schizophrenic, or a person in love, a person who suffered heartbreak, and even an assassin. We can understand and reason why did they do what they did because we understand their desperation, we know how their minds work, we read and felt about their emotions.

Reading tells us about how the world works. I can sit in India and know all about the works of USA because the protagonist of my novel is a citizen there. I know how bad and merciless Afghanistan is, because the protagonist is a soldier. I know how difficult it is to live in poverty because the leading character of the novel fought and rose through it.

There are more than a billion reasons why I read like the world is coming to an end. Because we are humans. We are hungry for information. And books give us unlimited supply of information. We can be whatever we pick up. We can be doctor one day and a hired killer the other day. We can be a successful businessman whenever we want to and we can hunt for vampires, too. We have the liberty to be whatever we want to be, whatever we have ever wished to be. We can live the life we want to.

I know I sound like a totally deranged person but these are the few of the billion reasons why we love reading. Why we readers need our supply of books more than the next thing.