Hot Topic: Do You Read?

Date a girl who reads, they all say. As superficial as that may sound—to reject women who don't like to read—it actually makes sense. Reading isn't about good stories. It's not a competition of how fast you can read and how thick the pages are. It's not about reading for the sake of being seen as a reader. Reading is about getting lost. It's about living life in someone else's shoes. It's about battling Voldemort or running in the 75th Hunger Games. It's about being in Kabul fighting the despotic Taliban. It's crying over the death of a character whom you have known so well that you could call her your best friend.

Let's get to it:

Reading a book has a lot to do with emotional connection. It teaches you compassion and sympathy. Most of all, it imparts wisdom and knowledge. The intricate thoughts of a character become yours. You learn the perspective and battles of a single mother in her early 20's. You can live as a lawyer suing your best friend. You have been everywhere and everyone, because for the few hours you read, you no longer exist inside your own skin. Good books, more than anything, will reincarnate your very being into someone you could never be.

I can tell you stories about where I have been and what I have done, and none of it's true. But it's real to me. I can tell you that I was at a prestigious boarding school where I met the love of my life who broke my heart. It might not be true but it sure as hell feels like it.

The difference between books and movies is that although the emotional connection of a film can be obtained, it is only half of what books can give you. This is why I always read the book before I watch the film adaptation—because I want to know the ins and outs of Lisbeth Salander's life in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I want to know her. Be her. Cry with her. Watching a film, you have received the displeasure of seeing the characters picked carefully by biased casting directors. But reading a book with the simple description of, "he was 6' and had golden hair," could propel you into a list of faces your mind could conjure up. He might be your very own creation or he might be Chris Hemsworth. The character becomes yours. The house is your construction. You have cleverly built the nondescript neighborhood in which your character grew up in. You create and you see. You read and you feel. You become the author of the book.

Not many kids read now, though. Because films are so easily accessible that they think books are the more taxing version of films. That's true. But books give you unparalleled skills. You write better, that's for one, and because English is my second language (arguable at this point, but I'll still go with Indonesian being my mother tongue), reading helped me so much in terms of grammar and vocabulary. I think that's why kids now are so self-absorbed. They've never cried over the death of a cancer patient all the way in Minnesota. They've never clutched a book so close to their hearts that they could feel the heartbeat of the character pulsing against theirs. They've never built a world and have it destroyed by Death Eaters.

I went on a date the other day and when I asked him if he reads, he replied with a simple, "no" as if he was proud of being bereft of limitless knowledge. I knew at that point that the rest of the day would be dull, and I was right. Because I couldn't share with him my worlds. I couldn't talk about the time I went to Jalalabad or the time my friend died in a car crash. I have lived in different cities and have taken road trips with friends who don't exist, and if I can't tell you about the time I hunted down Margo Roth Spiegelman to New York then there isn't much to talk about. 

Reading is about escaping. It's about being taken by the hand by an author—dead or alive—and led into a series of misadventures.

I read because I want to love and feel loved. I read to smell the pages which is a reminder that there are places I haven't been to. I read because I want to go to Europe with Robert Langdon. I read because I've never been to Hokkaido and Murakami describes it so well that I might as well have been under a tree admiring the view. I read to live life in the 1920's and sleep alongside Hemingway.

People say you can only live once, and to them I say, read a book.