January 14, 2014

About the joy of reading, and getting older

During the last few years I've started reading many books in all areas I'm interested on. Not only technology related, but also drama, history, and even comics.

Reading was not pleasant for me for a while. I tried and tried during my teenage to be interested in books, because my brothers were avid readers, but I couldn't. I couldn't share their taste or interest for books, not even the intensity they have for them.

But after a while I began to try something different, reading at my own pace, try to not compete with them. This is not a race, it doesn't matter how many books you read and how fast you do it, reading is reading, the more value you get out of them the better for you it is.

I don't appreciate people having a huge cabinet full of books in his main room, we know, you are a reader, don't be so arrogant. I believe that an author's goal is to be read and understood, many times the message will be misinterpreted and even changed, but that depends on the reader.

Reading is now a pleasure for me, I read slowly, very slowly. Sometimes I had to go back and read again because of my messed up memory, but is worth it. The message gets stuck in my head forever, wrong or right, doesn't matter, the message is there, and because I took so much time to read it I do care about understanding what I read.

Now that I aged a little bit, it's hard to know what to read, there are some many things, so many ideas and stories, so many, so little time. A stupid problem when living in a society that needs more work than ever, but a problem after all.

I'm trying to read and read, to understand and do it with things that I think are interesting, not reading because a boss requires it, not reading because everybody's reading it. Read because you care about, if not, go watch a movie, there are multiple forms of storytelling right now, you don't have to be limited to a media. Go listen to some podcasts, watch some movies, listen to the radio, talk with people, listen to them, learn... that's the real joy :)