There's nothing like a book...

...to make you feel better. It doesn't have to be a great book either. Just one that you can read and enjoy. For me, it has to be a book, and not online text. It is very hard for me to read things online. At least it is hard for me to read anything that is more than a page or two. It seems to be a different process.

I love the smell and feel of books. When I see one that strikes an interest in me, it feels like a large, undrunk cup of really good coffee. Or a wedge of decadent cake. It's sensual. I am about to tuck into that book (as the Brits say about really good and comforting food).

Right now I am reading _Brick Lane_ by Monica Ali. It reminds me a bit of _Jasmine_ by Bharati Mukherjee. The plots themselves only share the general geographical area from which the protagonists come (even though they are from different countries, religions, and cultures) and an immigrant experience in a Western country. But they have other things in common, such as the sense of fate and (perhaps a more Eastern tendency to) to see your life as a tale rather than a series of events. Both have legends about their protagonists early in the novel. Creation legends.

One of the differences I seem to see right away is that the protagonist of _Jasmine_ (I hesitate to call her Jasmine) had a more fluid identity and Nazneen of _Brick Lane_ seems very rigid in her understanding of herself (despite her resignation to allow fate to take its course). Maybe this sense will change as I get further in the book.

I wish I had brought over _Jasmine_ so I could re-read it after I finished _Brick Lane_, but I think I gave it away before I moved. It's been a few years since I've read it, and I wonder how it would feel now while I am going through my own experience with immigration (albeit to a culture that was the main root of my own culture).

So here I am, reviewing a book I haven't even halfway finished. I guess it is because it's the only media that you can really get into someone's mind. A film might more easily show how someone views the world, but it's more difficult for a film maker to show the thought process around the vision. And it's a more leisurely process, allowing for reflection and comparisons that happen during the process of reading.

I often wonder what makes me a "reader" when others in my family were not. I wonder about this more often now that we are looking to having children. How do I foster a love of reading in my children? Why do I want to? Do I truly see this as more beneficial than say a love of really good film, television (and yes, I believe there is good television), music, or an ability to live fully in the present and learn from our surroundings? Am I an intellectual snob for thinking a book is better than a good conversation?

When I try to read long works online and get restless and frustrated, I think I feel a bit of the things that people who do not tend to read books feel when they are forced to read books. Deep down I know it shouldn't matter if I am reading something off pages bound in a book or something in my browser window, but it does matter to me. It feels more clinical, more glaring, less organic. When I try to reason it out, I realise that none of that makes any sense. I am in love with the process of reading much more than I am in love with the language and art of good prose.