Judging A Book

Sun, May 11 12:05 AM

Can a book change your life? I've been thinking about this for a while. These days, wherever you go, whoever you meet, whatever you read, you are confronted with the stories of people who insist that their lives were never the same after reading a particular tome.

Of late, the most popular of these titles seems to be The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. And given its risible premise, that is more of a miracle than any change the book may (or may not) bring in anyone's life.

In case, you have been living on Mars - or Venus in the case of the ladies (lest anyone accuse me of letting my essential reading go) - let me explain what this is. The 'Secret' that Byrne talks about is based upon what is called the principle of attraction.

Shorn of all the balderdash that surrounds it, this essentially says that to get something you must really, really want it. If you wish for it, visualise it, open your heart to it, it will be yours in due course.

Simple? Yes. Stupid? Oh my God, don't even get me started.

And yet, the world seems to be awash with people who swear that their lives have been transformed - for the better, of course - ever since they embraced the principles enshrined in the book. Given that they seem genuinely happy, in some cases genuinely transformed, it seems churlish to quibble - and yet, how can you not? Which brings me back to my question.

Can a book really change your life? My relationship with books has always been a fairly intimate one, and yet I would hesitate to make that claim on my own behalf. Sure, I have read my share of books which forced me to think about life's big questions, some which compelled me to re-think my lazily held opinions, and yet others that overturned my belief system on its head.

No, don't worry, I'm not going to roll out the usual suspects. You know, the books that every generation discovers in college with a fresh flash of recognition and claims for its own: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand; The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.

I devoured all of the above and many more cast in the same mould. But I can't say that any of these books changed my life in any significant way.

Yes, they made me - then a gangly teenager - aware that there was a world out there that I knew very little about. Yes, they made me want to go out and explore it for myself.

But life-changing? No, I think not. And yet the world is full of people who swear by the life-altering qualities of certain books.

All of them couldn't be completely wrong, so what am I missing? I went trawling through the self-help sections of a few bookshops to look for the answers to this question. Maybe if I leafed through some of these I would have a better idea as to what everyone was going on about.

But a week later (and many thousand of rupees poorer), I was no nearer finding any answers. The only thing I had found - and dutifully chuckled over - were some interesting titles, each one trying harder than the other, hoping to hook readers with a funny one-liner or pithy pun.

The Break-up Survival Kit. Get A Grip - Overcoming Stress and Thriving at the Workplace.

How to Stop Backing Down and Start Talking Back. No! How One Simple Word Can Transform Your Life (yes, here we go again and #8230;).

And then there was my personal favorite. Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down: 101 Strategies to Laugh Your Way From Repudiation to Happiness.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in the redeeming qualities of literature as much as the other person.

Like most other people I seek refuge in books when real life tends to get me down. I find comfort in old reads during times of stress.

And there are times when I have gone t books to seek answers to questions that are bothering me. Nor am I alone in this.

The Tibetan Book of Dead has been a source of great solace to several friends of mine who have lost an elderly parent or have had to come to terms with the untimely death of a younger member of the family. Conversations With God (Neale Donald) is another book that has helped millions all over the world tide over a personal crisis of faith.

But would I say that these books have really changed them? Or would it be more accurate to say that they went looking for answers in a book when their lives were changing anyway? The jury is still out on that one.

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