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Christopher Farai Charamba The Reader
Reading is often a solitary act. One immerses himself/herself within the pages of the book they have in front of them and travel off to the world that the words create. I often find that reading can be quite therapeutic, a good way to get one’s mind off the stresses of their physical existence. This is perhaps why Christians are so drawn to the Bible. Aside from it containing the canon of their faith, reading the words on those biblical pages can be an uplifting experience for those who pick up the Holy Book.

I have a limited knowledge of Islam but I would assume that a similar experience exists for readers of the Quran.

Those who call themselves readers will attest to the fact that when they pick up a book, it is choosing personal time to be with oneself and one’s thoughts. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, no man is an island, meaning that as a reader seeking lone time, there are likely to be distractions that get in the way.

There are a number of things that people do that annoy readers like myself, often unintentionally, but still very upsetting. Though readers tend to be calm and reasonable individuals, we do not react in an untoward manner.

The first annoyance is of people who can see that one has chosen to engross themselves in a book, but come to make non-meaningful conversation. The equivalent for those who do not read would be someone coming to disturb you during a scene of your favourite film.

Reading is a very imaginative process and requires a level of concentration. Constantly breaking that concentration not only slows down the process of reading, but can also make the reader miss certain things.

Another thing that tends to get in the way of a reader’s solace is that of people who interrupt the reader with questions on what they are reading about, and expect them to narrate the book’s contents to them.

A solution to this would be to advise such people to visit the nearest Google page, as they would likely find a synopsis and reviews that can quench their curiosity.

It makes little sense to ask an individual to review a book they are yet to finish reading.

One pet peeve common to all readers is that of people who borrow books without returning them. Most, if not all readers have grand visions of owning a library that would qualify to be the eighth wonder of the world.

To achieve this, readers tend to be hoarders of books. They buy and stock books, some of which they have and will never read, but do so just to keep them. The word for this in Japanese is tsundoku, meaning someone who hoards books, specifically buying them, piling them up and not reading them.

When a person borrows a book, the condition is that it should be returned, however books tend to get borrowed indefinitely and the owner’s collection is left depleted, and a dream to rival the great libraries of Alexandria in Ancient Egypt or Timbuktu in Mali shat- tered.

The irony I suppose is that all readers, perhaps myself included, have been guilty of this crime as well.

A tip also for those who choose to borrow books is that they should be returned in the condition they were lent. It is quite draining to have a book returned in tatters or with stains, or with a broken spine.

One of my conditions when lending a book is that the borrower should at least have a bookmark to mark their pages. It is quite disrespectful to leave dog ears or a damaged spine in a book that you borrowed from its owner or the library.

In Shona the saying goes that “chisi chako masimba mashoma”, and loosely translated, little effort is put into that which is not yours.

When dealing with readers and their books such thinking should be set aside and the utmost respect be given to the words, pages and those who care for them.