My reading swims against the tide

Self-help and novels are the most popular book formats. So popular are they, in fact, that other genres like joke books, puzzle books, short story collections, poetry, are not even in the reference of most readers today. 

This was not a sudden 2025 trend. The popularity of these genres has been on the rise for a few years now. 

I did try the trend. After all, if so many people are finding value in it, there would be something, right? 

It is with no regret that I report the absolutely humiliating failure of that experiment. 

I have gone back, unabashedly, to poetry, short stories, jokes, and puzzles. 

And for what it's worth, here is why these genres are worth a shot: 

Fiction, like life, is multi-dimensional 

When Agatha Christie writes in a Marple story that gossip is the ultimate analysis of human nature, she hits home.. and hard!! When Miss Marple pronounces, in a simple way, "People, you see, are not that different from each other." and then conveniently uses the analogy of one case to solve another, you start to notice patterns in people. 

Fiction, by definition, has to be multi-dimensional. It has to cover the navarasas of human experience and emotion. The same poem forces two people to view the world in diametrically opposite ways. 

Its quick 

From the age of 14, i made a simple rule - if a story is longer than 200 pages, I cannot read it. The only exception to that rule was The Count of Monte Cristo. Every other long story that was started was abandoned, unsurprisingly, within the first 50 pages. Because that circumambulatory style of storytelling does not work for me. 

Poetry works best because it says a lot in a very few words and like most class assignments, leaves most of the thinking as homework for the reader. 

Fiction forces you to think for yourself. The answers are not given. Only the events. What happens next? has to filled in by us. 

Take this example: 

यदि कोई तुम्हारे लिए 

कविताएँ लिखता है 

तो या तो तुमने 

उसे बहुत अधिक प्रेम दिया है 

या बहुत अधिक दुख। 

- I stayed with this poem for 2 days.  

Bias alert: Poetry is the blood that flows through the veins of my soul. 

It fights distraction 

It is not possible for most of us to stay away from our phones for more than 20 minutes. The days of books being read late into the night are... sadly, a distant memory. 

Most people now buy books, a very few read a very few of those bought books. 

So, if you are looking to start reading or have reached a reading lull, I highly recommend a joke book. Or poetry. Or anything in the short format. Even short stories. Or Zen stories - they are under a page each, and each story leaves one thinking. Again.