What Is a Good Book for You?

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What is a good book?

Is it one where you get so engrossed within its pages that you can’t help but go on reading until the very end?

Perhaps that is one sign of it. And I guess too many books have tried to be that way that sometimes I felt I couldn’t breathe anymore in between the pages.

When you want so badly to see the end that you couldn’t live in the present moment, is it still a good sign?

But arriving at the end is often not my intention when reading.

When I read a book, I usually want to take my time. I want to savor every minute of reading it.

And if a book is good enough for me, sometimes I would deliberately delay in reading it.

No, I don’t want it to end yet! Let me live still within its pages!

Such is my relationship with a good story that I would like to go on reading forever if I could.

And for truly exceptional books, maybe there is even that possibility.

That even after reaching the end, all is not yet over.

I can start the book again, and it would tell me another story. Something familiar but a bit different this time.

This time, I would learn something new. I would dive a little deeper.

And then I would see things I have never seen before!

I can read a truly good book over and over and never get tired of it.

How could I get tired of something that I have learned to love?

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”― Oscar Wilde