Beginning of this year, Kavi (my wife) and I made a resolution to read four quality books that would improve our lives. Now, I must thank Kavi for giving my reading habits a new life. Back in my school and college years, I developed the habit of reading the daily newspaper for hours together. I was also open to reading any interesting articles available online. Still, I am what you call a sporadic reader. There are periods I do nothing but reading books. And then, there’d be phases where I forget I can read. The cycle continued. But, Kavi adores books, especially Tamil novels. She has devoured lots of books including all five volumes of the acclaimed historical Ponniyin Selvan. After marriage, through her constant expression of love for books and libraries, she rekindled in me the love for reading.

But, reading is an addictive habit. It sticks to you. Sometimes when I begin reading quality content, I go into a trance. In the twelve months since moving in together, I have read eight books – 4 non-fiction, 1 biography, and 2 crime thriller fiction. Here is the list in the order of my reading: Biography of Jayalalitha, Nothing lasts forever, Sapiens, The Power of Habit, Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, The Firm, Atomic habits, Ikigai, The 5am Club; I have read the last four books in the last two months. In this period, Kavi has read 5 books herself and doesn’t seem like stopping.

Along with the reading habit, we also cultivated a beautiful routine of sharing whatever we read between us. Upon reading incredible content, the urge to share it with each other became irresistible. It became a sort of favorite pastime as well. We spent hours each day talking about something new we have learned or a concept from the book we could relate to. This custom expanded and we began sharing the same with our parents and some close friends. To our delight, we started getting positive responses from them. Our friends were intrigued by what we tell them and some even bought books on our suggestion.

It was then that we wondered – why not share these with a larger audience? Kavi was already impressed with a YouTube channel that reviews books and in fact, we heard about Ikigai only through one of the episodes. Kavi and I decided to share our learnings with everyone we could. So, together we are starting a new series of blogs – The Book Talk. Each blog in this series would talk about one book. Please note, this would not be a critical review of the book. We strongly believe we are not qualified enough to review books critically. Also, we believe every book offers at least one good takeaway. So, there’s nothing like a bad book. We’ll try to keep it informal, informative & engaging. Consider this a TL;DR version of a book that’d inspire you enough to get a copy and read it yourself.

The first book we’d be writing about in our series is Ikigai. Stay tuned, keep checking this space for the upcoming blogs.

– That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet –