Reading is a phenomenal experience, whether you are diving for the very first time into a brand new book or striking over and over again into your old favorites. Be it the course book that teaches you lessons and chapters or the books, fictional or non-fictional, that gives you sweet and sour experience still dragging you into the path of success making you realize the lessons of life. Like many writers and avid readers have embellished their words, books happen to be a sweet form of magic, a safe place you can escape to, somewhere you can’t find anywhere else. It is also not inappropriate to say that books are the only true magic.

A book is a dream that you hold in your hand. It is something you can always look up to. Being carried away into your own imperfectly perfect world or finding out the truths and hidden aspects of this perfectly imperfect world. Making you learn yourself about the values or commanding you the law of nature and the binding force that is attracting you to this world. Reading always brings you into the journey of imagination which high tens all of your senses. You are always a book away from a good mood. I lose myself into the novels yet search myself over there, for a place where I fit perfectly and the imaginations that lead into.

We read books and highlight the lines that speak to us; we turn to poetry and learn the lines that become us. We are all hopeless people running after a long never-ending run, following everyone that crosses us, tracing every path of every influencer despite the fact we don’t know where they will lead us. We know what to do and what to say but the fact that matters the most is that we don’t have the know-how. We always hook up on something and instill it; in ourselves. That's what Books bring. The immense pleasure that floods away in your soul. That's whats books are always meant to be. Finding out the truth of the world, finding the truth of ourselves, the actual us whom we are, whom we don’t know even exists. That’s the meaning of reading. Mark Manson once quoted, “To live in the world is like wandering in the great library without touching any of the single books. Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily; often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice and another’s soul.

The true pleasure of reading comes to us when we get a book that makes us rush through our morning rituals- just so we can get back to those sweet pages. A book that starts with a small calm tide but draws us right in when we are about to give up. A book that makes our heartaches with the understanding that we realize. One that destroys & rebuilds you into someone we had always dreamt about. A book that keeps us awake until we see the world we were looking for, that’s the exact place we were seeking to build.

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, and became a better version of myself. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the healthy way of my attention deficit disorder to meditate. Reading is an escape; also the opposite of escape; where I feel so bonded with someone else’s imaginations after a long hectic day. Reading gives spiritual, intellectual, and serious pleasure. Reading is pure bliss.

Anjita Lamichhane is a grade XII student at Southwestern State College, Kathmandu.