I’d wanted to write about fiction for a while. Most of my reading tends to be fiction of some sort, which has almost always invited the occasional inquiry (why?) coupled with an almost always unsolicited recommendation for Sapiens. The fault has probably been mine so far – it’s not something I’ve thought particularly seriously about, and therefore the discursive replies I usually conjure up don’t really help either. So I’m going to attempt and work something coherent out, but this is still going to be exploratory for me as well.

Like most people who tend to read from an early age, I too started off with the popular fantasy titles of the early 2000s. Although I think I’ve outgrown them now, I still harbour a soft spot for some of those books I had read during my own formative years – perhaps because they were seminal in developing this habit that’s largely stayed constant throughout and helped me tons. I did flirt briefly with the usual autobiographies handed out during high school, but preferred instead to read poetry and fiction (from coursework, and otherwise) much more during that time. Reading fiction – particularly fantasy and YA stuff – was sort of an easy escape for me; so while the school faculty should have perhaps intervened and asked me to partake in activities more befitting of a teenage boy, they instead chose to honour me with the “Voracious Reader” title – at a time when I didn’t quite know what voracious meant.

My relationship with fiction graduated (and possibly matured) after entering college. At the time of going into my undergraduate studies, I had expected to mostly spend my waking hours figuring out computers; so of course I was delighted after finding out that an entire humanities track for literature and philosophy was on offer. This gave me (a) an escape and (b) a legitimate reason to be lost in books during a regular semester. Of course, I was still reading (mostly) made up stories, but there had been a thematic shift. No longer was I reading about grander worlds with complex magical systems, nor embarking on long arduous journeys and preparing myself for the grand battle. I found modernist fiction arguably more sombre, based in and on everyday plights than the monomyth. Anachronistic period dramas that sometimes delved in the human psyche left me intrigued, to say the least. I also found that some of these authors were experi