30 day challenge : Reading 30 pages per day

Books - New Worlds

Rules of the challenge:

Read 30 pages every day. Only 30. Not less. Not more. For 30 days.

Why you should take this challenge:

• You get to imagine (and even hallucinate in some cases) a new world and forget about reality. You can live a 1000 lives- empathizing with each character and even developing a split personality or multiple personality disorder.
• Develop vocabulary.
• Learn some insults from the sassy characters.
• Get inspired by some character and try to change your life.
• Get depressed after watching the movie based on the book and wince at every scene thinking 'That's not how it happens in the books'. You can even say it aloud and annoy everyone.
• Spiral into darkness when your favorite character dies.
• Learn several new things including history.
• Become witty.
• Feel all sad when the book ends.
• 'There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book'. Copy patterns from the book into your real life.
• Books are the closest thing to worm holes to be in different places and different times.
• Go on a emotional roller coaster and have mood swings. People will learn to cope with it and slowly ask you "Which character died now?"
• Get new ideas.
• Train your brain to focus for long duration in this 3 second attention ads era.
• It's kind of meditation. You get to be in a trans state without the weed.
• As many fields are there to explore, as many books are written in each field. Choose your genre and enjoy.
• Read other genres and expand your perspective by making your brain uncomfortable.
• Get annoyed by reality.
• Put your brain to some work before it rusts.
• Become instant friends with people who love the same books as you do.
• To write.
• To tell stories.

Now you may ask, why read when I will obviously forget it after 5 or 10 years?

That's like asking why eat food which won't last in my body after some years. That food after getting digested and processed became you by getting converted to cells or something biological.

That book you read now will lay down some little foundation in your brain. You may not be able to recall the story line, but you will definitely have some take away from it.

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."

                                                                                          - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge"

                                                                                                            - Tyrion Lannister

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one"    

Caution: 

Life is short. If some book doesn't interest you after you have read half of it, put it down. There's no point in reading just for the sake of finishing the book.

There are bad books. There are entertaining books which offer nothing apart form entertainment. Reading such books once in a while may be okay, but reading only those kind of books is as good as watching daily soap.

Tips:

• Reading every day at the same time automatically triggers you to read.
• Read fiction: before bed. Read non-fiction: Mornings.
• Reading in no-people-zone helps if you are already struggling to focus.
• However busy you are, you will have time to read. Read in commute, limit your breaks and read, read on mobile- while waiting in queues,while brushing, while eating alone, read in office- when your 30 mins build is running. Find time.
• How to read in office? Copy +paste the PDF content to notepad++. PDFs are suspicious, but nobody suspects notepad. 
• Keep a bookmark from the current page to next 30 pages so that you will know where to stop.
• Earphones will keep the distractions and distracting people away.

Books I have read in 30 days:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Frankenstein
• Please look after mom
• The 4 hour work week (This has lot of reference sites in number of pages which I skipped)
• Catch 22.......still reading.

For people who love to read books, this may not seem like a challenge. But there is a catch. The key here is to read 30 pages every single day. Not more than that. The idea here is to build a system or habit of reading every day. But only for limited time. Not so much that you forget and ditch your job and other responsibilities. I am a person who actually dreamed of becoming some kind of librarian so that I will have access to thousand of books and I can spend all my time reading books. There was a time when I was too engrossed in reading that my then-to-be-husband complained that I am not spending enough time with him. I was reading books everywhere. That's all I did till I completed the books. That's how obsessed I get with books. That was the reason I actually took a break from reading.

So I failed this challenge actually :-|. As I read more than 30 pages on several days.

But I also faced a challenge in doing this every day. Sometimes I was too tired from work and I couldn't focus. 

Also reading 20 pages went smooth. But after 20, I felt like taking a break. I realized for the first time that I am not able to read 30 pages at a stretch. I guess this is happening only now. My attention span has become that of a squirrel's. 

My favorite book that inspires me to read more is "The Book Thief". If you are new to reading, then I would recommend to start with this. It's a book about this little girl who finds joy in books during World War. It increases your love for books.

Comment below if you want to take this challenge :)