How I Read, a Story Book

There's a big stock of unread books in my inventory, since Amazon.com did promos where three books only cost 15€, which in certain combination of books, had save me around 13€. So I bought six books and save quite a sum of Euro (or so I said to console myself about the purchase) but now I have a lot of unread books, not including those that I downloaded on my Kindle. Thus I try to gobble them all up so that they would not be left collecting dust, where I sit down to read almost everyday. While on the bus one day, I stared out the window but at the corner of my eye I saw a man reading a book. Why not read during commute, the question pops in the air.

bak kata orang bukan kedah tapi pulun nak cakap kedah, "tudia baq hang,  macam mana nak habis baca tu!"
read top two of the stack already.

I have a hard time reading on transport because it tends to make me dizzy, which is my main excuse. Main reason is though, I do not like reading interrupted. I don't like reading while waiting, because then I would have to look up once a while to see whether my number is called up. I don't even like reading while at the same time messaging/chatting because my reading has gaps in it. I like to read in one go. I find it more interesting and faster that way because when I read, I imagine the characters up. These characters then build up and act their parts, mouthing their dialogue as my eyes travel across the letters, all the way till the end of the book. I guess some people would call it imagining rather than reading, but that's how my mind works. So familiar books, like a trilogy/series such as the Harry Potter (book 6) only took 11 hours while short stories are a chore, because for every story, I need to re-imagine them up.

Back to the reading on commute, I began to rationalize, saying that not reading and staring out the window is not really that wasteful. I then began to pull quote from memory, such as "The man who believes everything he read, shouldn't read in the first place," and how Einstein values the power of thinking than the power of reading. I'm not sure those quotes are true, but they served my point.

I further rationalize that while staring, I can see a lot of things. Observe. Notice. Reflect. And imagine the things I'd miss if I bury my head in a book, while the bus passes a group of clowns! Memories are not from paper, they are felt through the skin, the sight and kept in the heart (I'm just being dramatic here, I know the brains store my memory and the heart pumps my calorie).

But then again, is it not that small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events while great minds concern themselves with ideas? So I stop myself of rebutting all imaginary opponents who advocates me to read during commute because in the end it is not how you read, or what you read but it is what you get from reading, or in a broader sense anything you do in life, that is important.
Some people might read Kafka but they still view the world from a seven year old while some might read Calvin and Hobbes yet saw the wisdom of life.

Some might read intermittently while some drank the story in one shot, yet both might walk away with a new understanding.

Lain padang, lain lalangnya.

p.s. I keep contradicting myself lately. Wonder what's gotten into me, or is it that I've just realized that?