Let’s talk about books! No, I don’t mean the ebooks you’ve got hoarded away on your Kindle or the audiobooks that keep you company during your daily commute. I’m talking about actual, physical books – the ones with those crackly spines and delicious smells, where you have to actually turn pages and can leave mysterious notes scribbled in the margins. Yes, those lovely little relics of the past. And when it comes to these quaint artifacts, we’ve all been there: a title caught our eye while we were perusing the shelves of our local bookshop, we brought it home with us full of anticipation, and then…we forgot about it.
Let me take you on a journey back to November 27, 2015, when one particular book found itself shelved as “to-read” in someone’s home library. A treasure waiting to be discovered, it languished for years, unopened, neglected, but still hopeful.
Fast-forward to April 7, 2023 – an unsuspecting Tuesday, by all accounts – when the winds of fate decided to change course. Our intrepid reader, fueled by a newfound resolution (perhaps they got inspired by an insightful online article?) picked up the forgotten gem and embarked on a daring literary adventure. They decided to start reading, not once, but twice! How committed!
And can you believe it? The very next day, April 8, 2023, they finished reading the entire thing. Was it a captivating page-turner, or was our determined reader just hell-bent on finishing something they started? We’ll never know, but what’s important is that our literary protagonist decided to finish reading not just once, but again, on the same day!
It just goes to show that no matter how many years go by, books have a way of waiting for us, biding their time, and enticing us with their promises of adventure, romance, or maybe just the chance to take a little trip away from the chaos of the everyday. So, the next time you find a dusty old book you bought ages ago, tucked away on a neglected corner of your bookshelf, consider giving it a shot. It just might surprise you, and hey – you never know when you’ll end up with two ‘start reading’ and two ‘finish reading’ entries in your book tracking history.
In a world of high-speed digital connections, binge-watching Netflix, and never-ending Twitter feeds, the humble book, in all its physical glory, still has its place. Sometimes it just takes a bit longer than we’d like to admit to make our way back to them, but that’s okay. They’ve got all the time in the world to wait for us – and, chances are, once we do start reading, we might just find ourselves finishing them twice as quickly.