July in Books

“The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.” — Marcel Proust

This is so cliche, but I find it scary to think that an average Pole reads below one book a year. Given that a typical person works 8 hours a day, then even if you add 3 hours for daily chores, 2 hours for eating or commuting, 1 hour for sports and 8 hours for sleep, you have 2 hours left. Possibly, most people spend it in front of a TV, a choice that I do not want to judge or criticise — “live and let live”. Still, I consider my voracious appetite for books a game-changer in my life and as a result, I would like to encourage everyone to either commit some part of their free time to reading, or put on an audiobook while doing sports or daily chores. I do both (set up time *just* for reading and listen to audiobooks while doing other stuff). In turn, I feel like I am living more lives than just my own, which is very enticing for me given that I have always had plentiful ideas for life and I cannot physically fulfil all those plans at once. The books that I have read this month are a particularly good example of how reading lets you put yourself into others’ shoes and gain exquisite knowledge at a cost of a…