seeking the warmth of the pages

I set out on a cold Monday morning on my bike on a 12km long ride through a sparsely crowded Bangalore, which is currently in its milder state due to the pandemic and the cold.

I had never used this route and having gone around circles a bit ( which is customary in Bangalore ), I finally found myself in front of Bookworm on Church Street.

Needless to say, shaking off the pandemic laden emptiness and cold, I entered the warm house of books. Books all around, shining with warm titles and covers, immediately makes one feel at home.

Since its been ages (or feels like) since I visited a book store, I spent quite a bit of time exploring the latest best sellers on prominent display. Since the store was almost deserted, one of the staff members came around asking if I was looking for anything specific.

I had just recently cleaned up and rebuilt my To-Read list in GoodReads and still had hundreds of books in my list. I wasn't sure if I would really read many of the newly added titles, so I cautiously read out names for him. Some of them were found tucked away, or had to be dug up. This went on for quite some time, until I had a very large bundle of books to carry.

But since my list was large, the books which were available were being brought forth. After a while of doing this, I finally decided to check out some new titles outside the list. I managed to pick a few small historical titles.

Then I dumped all the books on a table and sat to filter out mentally what I would like to read in short term and which ones I would anyway read in the long term. I finally ended just dropping just 2 out of the 20 odd books I had taken.

Phew, what a heavy load I ended up with. Even after shedding a few old books by returning them for 50% discount, the backpack was quite tightly packed. Then I rode all the way back home, marvelling on how I would read some of the titles.

Reaching home, I had the usual pile up after cleansing myself. My son made a 'building block' pile with the colourful books and then focussed on his new books, whereas I went ahead with arranging mine.

So I thinking I am loaded enough for quite some time with a variety of topics.