When a Book Review Turned Into a Reader’s Reunion:
As a kid, I didn’t chase cricket balls – I chased bookshelves. While others packed snacks for vacations, I packed bookmarks. My school holidays were spent not at beaches, but buried in books – inside libraries where cupboards full of Gujarati literature stood like treasure chests.
From Dhumketu to Chandrakant Bakshi, from Premchand’s realism to Sharadchandra’s heartbreaks – I wasn’t just reading stories. I was unknowingly writing my own script.
Then came college – and with it, a shift. I graduated to English non-fiction. Management, marketing, advertising, psychology – if it had ideas, I wanted in.
Today, my bookshelf looks like a well-travelled intellectual buffet. You’ll find Edward Dr Bono beside Michael Gladwell, Ogilvy sharing space with Osho, and startup bibles parked next to biographies and life philosophy. From tech to tantra, branding to breakups – it’s a joyful mess of curiosity.
Books didn’t just pass my time – they passed on perspective.
And funny thing? When I re-read some of those same books 20 years later, I realised many life choices I made were probably ghostwritten by those very authors. Turns out, I am not just made of cells and soul… but also of sentences and stories.
Cut to yesterday. A packed room. A community of curious minds. And two books in the ring: “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This” and “A Whack on the Side of the Head” – a creative duel of copywriting and creativity.
Why these two books? Because in today’s world of noise, we need thinking, not just scrolling. And if you can’t outspend the competition, you’d better outthink them.
The session wasn’t just a review – it was a rendezvous with readers. Everyone came not just to listen, but to list.
From Yoval Noah Harari to Seth Godin, from Father Valles to Napoleon Hill, the room echoed with book names, big ideas, and beautiful confessions like:
“This book changed me. This line stayed with me. This one broke me. This one built me.”
It wasn’t a book review anymore. It was a soul buffet, where everyone brought a dish.
Old friends dropped by, new bonds were formed, and one truth was clear:
Reading is a solo act, but being in a tribe of readers? That’s where the magic multiplies.
We ended the evening with a shared promise – many more such evenings.
Because a single book can whisper. But a community of readers? That’s a chorus.
So here’s to the never-ending plot twist called learning…
To well-travelled pages that know more about us than our phones do.
To books with coffee stains and scribbled margins – proof of real conversations with paper.
To re-reading old lines with wiser eyes, relearning what life quietly teaches and rewriting the way we see the world.
Because in the library of life, the shelves are infinite – and the next favourite book is always just one read away.
And as every reader knows –
The book ends, but the story doesn’t.