Why The Hitchhiker’s Guide continues to make you laugh after all these years

 

There’s science fiction and there’s science fiction. 

 

And then there’s the adorable, zany, laugh-out-loud fictional world created by Douglas Adams.

 

I recently re-read the late author’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—after more than 30 years. Not only did I find it fresh as ever, I liked it even more this time around. You can say I’ve grown up—or maybe down—a bit, I don’t know.

 

What I know for sure is that the crazy characters conjured up by Adams immediately cast their spell on you and wouldn’t let go without tickling you senseless. Merely reading the wacky names can send ripples of laughter down your spine.

 

Let’s try out a few:

 

Zaphod Beeblebrox.

 

Slartibartfast.

 

Vroomfondel.

 

Lunkwill and Fook.

 

Oh my dog, what a book!

 

I do not intend to make this post into a book review—there must be gazillions of them out there already.

 

What I’m doing here, instead, is picking out some of the most delicious excerpts and serving them up for your linguistic taste buds.

 

Now, this Zaphod guy is the President of the Galactic Government. Adams describes him as “roughly humanoid except for the extra head and third arm.” There’s a scene in which he is addressing a press conference to unveil a new starship. One particularly comic sentence about Zaphod’s peculiar body stands out:

 

“The robot camera homed in for a close-up on the more popular of his two heads and he waved again.” 

 

The more popular of his two heads…hahaha!

 

The Vogons from the planet Vogsphere depicted in the book are a weird lot. This passage about Vogon and other galactic poetry will have you in splits:

 

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

 

In case you are wondering about the worst poetry, Adams conferred that honor on a human:

 

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth. 

 

At one point, the protagonist of the book, Arthur Dent, is talking with Ford Prefect, his co-traveler from another planet, just before the duo is about to be thrown out from a Vogon spacecraft:

 

"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

 

"Why, what did she tell you?"

 

"I don't know, I didn't listen.”

 

As you can see, Douglas Adams’s ability to create humor out of thin air is nothing less than stellar—pun intended.

 

And it’s not all mindless humor (though you wouldn’t mind it for the fun element): Adams sometimes takes digs at issues afflicting earthlings in the real world. Sample the satire about over-tourism spoiling the environment:

 

The introduction [to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] begins like this:

 

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on.

 

(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.)

 

Brilliantly imagined satire, isn’t it?

 

This one is an absolute favorite of mine. The scene is that Slartibartfast, a designer of planets, is met by Arthur Dent at a crater on the surface of Magrathea (where new planets are made on demand). A robot by the name of Marvin is also with Arthur but it is a bit far and Slartibartfast is not sure if the two of them are together.

 

He [Slartibartfast] pointed down into the crater.

 

"Is that robot yours?" he said.

 

"No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine."

 

Imagine a robot saying: “I’m mine”!

 

(For all you know, ChatGPT might soon disown being owned by Sam Altman or OpenAI!)

 

In the same scene, old Slartibartfast, too, delivers a snarky punch that will make you chuckle with delight.

 

“Come,” called the old man, “come now or you will be late.”

 

"Late?" said Arthur. "What for?"

 

"What is your name, human?"

 

"Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur.

 

"Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly. 

 

Besides the humor, you also marvel at how Adams describes certain things in his own unique way. The concept of bigness and infinity, for instance.

 

"I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you."

 

Arthur made nervous noises.

 

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly, "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight." The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

 

It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.

 

And here’s the last one for this post—another gem from Marvin, the robot aptly described as an “electronic sulking machine”:

 

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust.

 

"Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

 

"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came a muffled drone.

 

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

 

"Very depressed."

 

"What's up?"

 

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

 

I didn’t get this one on first reading, but then it dawned on me and I couldn’t help but smile.

 

That’s it for now, fellow earthlings. Do keep smiling and laughing.

 

Thank you for reading!

 

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital offers a beautiful window into the mind of an astronaut

 

At a time when Indians are celebrating the return to earth of Sunita Williams, my mind is still afloat with the thoughts of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
 
Don’t get me wrong: the space station I’m talking of is from Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker prize-winning novel.
 
And what an amazing book it is!
 
Like millions of Indians, I’ve enjoyed Williams’s videos of her extended stay on the ISS. But after reading Orbital, I can happily say that I’m “witness” to much more.
 
First and foremost, the wondrous, all-too-human thoughts of Anton, Pietro, Roman, Shaun, Chie, and Nell—whom Harvey has compared to the spaceship’s heart, mind, hands, soul, conscience, and breath.
 
But embodying what goes on in their minds and hearts, I suspect, is the author’s own voice. A voice so beautiful and enchanting that the Guardian called Orbital “an uplifting book, in every sense.” 
 
When I started reading the book, I picked up a pen to mark a few lines or paras I particularly liked. By the time I finished it, however, the markings engulfed much of this tiny treasure (it’s less than 140 pages but its scope and imagination are vast).
 
The best parts I liked concern the sheer beauty and uniqueness (thus far!) of the pale blue dot we call Planet Earth—our only home in a seemingly endless universe, not counting the astronauts’ occasional sojourns outside. And I completely second the spacefolk’s thoughts, echoed so poignantly by Harvey in her book, about how the humans’ non-Sapiens behavior is ruining it beyond repair.
 
When the astronauts arrive on the spaceship, the lights of the “night earth” impress them most. As Harvey writes: “From the space station’s distance mankind is a creature that comes out only at night. Mankind is the light of cities and illuminated filament of roads. By day, it’s gone…The night’s electric excess takes their breath.”
 
After a week or two of “city awe,” however, the astronauts’ senses begin to broaden and deepen and it’s “daytime earth” they come to love, the author notes. 
 
With the space station orbiting the earth at over 17,000 miles an hour, there’s a new daybreak for them every ninety minutes. And the kaleidoscopic play of night and day casts a mesmeric spell on how they observe the earth.
 
“It’s the humanless simplicity of land and sea. The way the planet seems to breathe, an animal unto itself. It’s the planet’s indifferent turning in indifferent space and the perfection of the sphere which transcends all language. It’s the black hole of the Pacific becoming field of gold or French Polynesia dotted below, the islands like cell samples, the atolls opal lozenges; then the spindle of Central America which drops away beneath them now to bring to view the Bahamas and Florida and the arc of smoking volcanoes on the Caribbean Plate. It’s Uzbekistan in an expanse of ochre and brown, the snowy mountainous beauty of Kyrgyzstan. The clean and brilliant Indian Ocean of blues untold. The apricot desert of Takla Makan traced about with the faint confluencing and parting lines of creek beds. It’s the diagonal beating path of the galaxy, an invitation to the shunning void.”
 
The love for a shifting, turning, breathing earth is also accompanied by the realization of how human choices and politics have wreaked havoc.
 
“Every swirling neon or red algal bloom in the polluted, warming, overfished Atlantic is crafted in large part by the hand of politics and human choices. Every retreating or retreated or disintegrating glacier, every granite shoulder of every mountain laid newly bare by snow that has never before melted, every scorched and blazing forest or bush…or the altered contour of a coastline where sea is reclaimed meter by painstaking meter and turned into land to house more and more people…or a vanishing mangrove forest in Mumbai, or the hundreds of acres of greenhouses whose plastic makes the entire southern tip of Spain white in the sun.”
 
When they look upon the earth, Harvey writes, the astronauts come to see the politics of want, of growing and getting—a “billion extrapolations of the urge for more.”
 
Inside the spacecraft, the astronauts go about their duties with mechanical precision—often marveling at the meaning of it all. They tend to mice and plants brought along for scientific experiments, do the chores of maintaining the ship, and engage in small talk like most people would do back here on earth.
 
On occasion, Harvey skillfully melds sensitive moments with the critical realities of living in the extraordinary environment of a spaceship. For instance, when Chie shares a memory of climbing a mountain with her mother (who recently expired in Japan while Chie is here on the station), Anton finds himself crying. His tears form four droplets which float away from his eyes—which he and Chie “catch in the palms of their hands.”
 
Liquids are not to be let loose on a spacecraft.
 
Harvey narrates the life and challenges of astronauts in a way that stays with you long after you have read her words.
 
“Up here in microgravity you’re a seabird on a warm day drifting, just drifting. What use are biceps, calves, strong shin bones; what use muscle mass? Legs are a thing of the past. But every day the six of them have to fight this urge to dissipate. They retreat inside their headphones and press weights and cycle nowhere at twenty-three times the speed of sound on a bike that has no seat or handlebars, just a set of pedals attached to a rig, and run eight miles inside a slick metal module with a close-up view of a turning planet.
 
Sometimes they wish for a cold stiff wind, blustery rain, autumn leaves, reddened fingers, muddy legs, a curious dog, a startled rabbit, a leaping sudden deer, a puddle in a pothole, soaked feet, a slight chill, a fellow runner, a shaft of sun.”
 
One of the astronauts, Shaun, once receives an editorial email asking his views about an imminent moon landing. The question posed is this: With this new era of space travel, how are we writing the future of humanity?
 
While Shaun answers the email in the customary and predictable way (“There’s perhaps never been so exciting and pivotal a time…”), he turns the question to his fellow-traveler, Pietro. The answer Pietro gives is more pointed (and perhaps apt, given our current situation): “With the gilded pens of billionaires, I guess.”
 
The gilded pens of billionaires indeed seem to be writing our future in space, perhaps without as much thought as should have gone into it. And often in a “tearing” hurry.
 
Which is why we must take a pause and go with Harvey on a considerate “Orbital trip”. The book doesn’t have all the answers—but at least it compels us to ask some questions that urgently need to be asked.
 

How CXOs Can Navigate the Heady Mix of AI, Crypto, Cloud...

Photo Imaging by Sanjay Gupta

If the recent hype around ChatGPT is anything to go by, the world seems to be reaching an inflection point in artificial intelligence (AI) and associated tools. (GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a large language model for generating text using deep learning.)

But AI is just one of several pathbreaking tech tools that CX and IT decision makers have at their disposal today to take their businesses to even higher levels of efficiency and agility. What will the future hold for contactless commerce and how is the customer experience being shaped and reshaped in retail? Should they experiment with the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and if so, how? What caveats lie ahead in a world pummeled by privacy challenges and user-trust issues?

Thankfully, insights from Harvard Business Review are at hand for CXOs to navigate the present with an eye on the future—in the form of a slim yet powerful guide of a book titled The Year in Tech 2023.

The book is neatly arranged into four sections with a view to providing some holistic crystal-gazing across a chosen set of emerging and mature technologies. The sections are named perceptively: The New Fundamentals (covering the metaverse, NFTs, stablecoins, contactless commerce, and the talent question); Fresh Takes on Mature Tech (the cloud, cookies, and ransomware); AI for the Rest of Us (data quality, no-code platforms, warehouse automation); and Trust Me (digital design choices and variation of digital trust around the world).

One of the best things about HBR’s content is its clarity and simplicity, and the same is reflected in this book—something that should be appreciated by the ever-pressed-for-time decision makers. And if they want to go in-depth into any topic that particularly interests them, there’s a ton of information on the web already.

Another highlight of the book is that it often seeks to present scenarios with an ethical lens. Socially responsible and forward-thinking enterprises will be able to benefit from such treatment.

Let me now give you a sampling of the insights gleaned from it.

One of my favorite passages is how the nature and function of the retail store will change dramatically in a contactless world [not fully contactless, I believe, but a mix determined by caution and convenience]. “It will become a space festooned with interactive displays and kiosks, virtual reality zones, and an array of robotic helpers, with fulfillment done from off-site warehouses or direct to the customer.”

A key factor in capitalizing on the opportunities and mitigating the risks, according to the book, will be the extent to which retailers can create “immersive, content-rich experiences that are highly personalized” for individual consumers.

Creating such personalized customer experiences will, of course, rely on the growing capabilities of AI tools. And while we are nowhere near generating $13 trillion of value each year (by 2030) predicted by the McKinsey Global Institute, the renewed interest in AI ever since ChatGPT broke onto the scene will only accelerate the competition among providers and the adoption among users.

Businesses of all sizes will play a role in such an accelerated adoption—and not just the Googles, Amazons, Facebooks, and Microsofts of the world who wield enormous compute and data power in their sprawling server farms.

The question is, How?

An interesting answer is given by Andrew Ng (of Baidu, Coursera, and Google Brain fame) in the chapter AI Doesn’t Have to be Too Expensive or Complicated. He posits that for far too long, much of the AI research was driven by software-centric development (also called model-centric development). In this model, the data is fixed and teams aim to optimize or invent new programs to learn well from the available data. Companies, especially tech giants, with large data sets used it to drive innovation. At AI’s current sophistication levels, however, argues Andrew, the bottleneck for many applications is getting the right data to feed to the software. In this context, it may be more fruitful to make sure companies have “good data” and not just “big data.”

This shift in approach implies that the data should be reasonably comprehensive in its coverage of important cases and labeled consistently. “Data is food for AI, and modern AI systems need not only calories, but also high-quality nutrition,” he writes. He calls the new model “data-centric AI development.”

To extend the benefit of AI to small and midsize businesses, no-code platforms that have been gaining traction of late will become increasingly important, the book notes in another chapter in the same section: “Where a team of engineers was once required to build a piece of software, now users with a web browser and an idea have the power to bring that idea to life themselves.” Most importantly, low-code platforms are making it possible to deploy AI without hiring “an army of expensive developers and data scientists.” (So ‘data scientist’ may not continue to be the sexiest job of the century after all!)

Among the mature technologies, the cloud will become even more compelling to business leaders in terms of embracing it for more workloads and use cases. The book cites how the cloud enabled the rapid development of the Covid-19 vaccine for Moderna, a relatively small firm compared to the pharma giants. Thanks to the flexibility and power of the cloud, Moderna was able to build and scale its operations on the cloud, and was able to “deliver its first clinical batch to the National Institutes of Health for phase one trial only 42 days after initial sequencing” of the virus.

Let’s switch back to an emerging star that continues to bewilder and bemuse CXOs across industries: the metaverse. For one, the book offers a relatively clearer definition of the metaverse: any digital experience on the internet that is persistent, immersive, three-dimensional, and virtual. Metaverse experiences enable people to play, work, connect, or buy (while the experiences are virtual, the things bought can be virtual or real).

Beyond the obvious use cases of gaming, virtual showrooms, and fashion shows, the book urges leaders to “look for applications” in less explored areas. “Almost every chief marketing officer already has made, or will soon make, a public commitment to sustainability-related environmental, social, and governance goals, and they will soon be measurable. What can you pilot in the metaverse that allows you to test more sustainable approaches to serving your customers?”

Such questioning by various stakeholders can open up the floodgates to innovative use cases of the metaverse and NFTs. The latter, driven by blockchain technology, have enabled a whole new range of ownership and trading activities in the digital realm.

Last but not the least, the book’s section on building and promoting digital trust, Trust Me, not only looks at interesting data on consumer attitudes and behaviors on digital trust around the globe, it stresses on the need for brands to make their design choices more carefully.

“When making design choices on a platform, managers should step back from short-term and narrow metrics like conversions and think through the broader questions about the value they create for their stakeholders,” it says. To get going, there are five questions brands must consider:

1. Are you transparent about prices and fees?
2. Do you make it easy to cancel your service?
3. Do you use default settings in a way that is genuinely helpful for customers?
4. Do you frame choices in a misleading way?
5. Do you create content that is addictive? [especially social media and video]

Most of the big tech platforms are routinely scrutinized and censured these days by regulators around the world for engaging in practices for short-term commercial gains that are harmful to consumers in the long term. We constantly hear of lawsuits, fines, and penalties.

However, businesses and brands that care for the long-term value they give to customers don’t have to wait for regulation to catch up—and make a fresh start themselves by following the best practices in developing digital trust and wellbeing. They can answer the above five questions honestly and take more proactive steps to protect consumers as well as their own reputation, and build lasting value for multiple stakeholders.

Thank you for reading and wish you all the best in treading the tech path in 2023 and beyond with caution, care, and accomplishment!

(Note: This post was first published on www.freshworks.com under a different headline and cover image.)

Taking Delight in What Makes Us Human

Unlike Ross Gay, who wrote The Book of Delights, his book of essayettes, in long hand, I typed this review of the book into the Microsoft Surface given to me delightfully by Freshworks when I joined the ‘love-your-software kudumba’ three years back. (Kudumba means family and it is Freshworks’ mission to make software people love to use.)

And while I agree with Ross on writing by hand being “a surprising and utter delight” I have taken as much delight, if not more, in sifting through his daily musings of whatever caught his fancy—and punching in these words on the laptop.

First, a little explanation of why this review and then I’ll share some delightful nuggets from the book, peppered (or sweetened, if sweet is your thing) with my own comments.

Ever since Freshworks chose ‘Delight made easy’ as our tagline, no mention of the word ‘delight’ escapes my attention. Plus, given that we have a thriving Freshworks Book Circle community of readers in our midst, I just grabbed Ross’s book from a bookstore on a recent visit as soon as the title caught my eye.

A few years back, on his forty-second birthday, Ross Gay, a professor of English at Indiana University and an award-winning poet-author, began the endeavor of writing one short essay each day about “something delightful.” By his own admission, he cheated some days and let them pass happily without writing. To use his terminology, he took delight in “blowing it off.”

But when he does get down to writing his thoughts and observations on any topic under the sun—varying from praying mantis and high-five from strangers to coffee without the saucer and airplane rituals—the result is a delight contagion spreading through whoever reads them. After an eyeful of reading, you are bound to change how you pay attention to the goings on in life around you. His delightful observations make you thoughtful and cheerful in equal measure.

The Book of Delights excels in noticing the joyous minutiae of existence and the connections that human beings make within their species as well as their surrounding abundance of thriving, pulsating life.

In his very first essayette (My Birthday, Kinda), Ross observed, among other things, a fly land on the handle of a cup of coffee. And it took him no time to tease the delight out of the spectacle. This is how he puts it: “A fly, its wings hauling all the light in the room, landing on the porcelain handle as if to say: ‘Notice the precise flare of this handle, as though designed for the romance between the thumb and index finger that holding a cup can be.” Coffee or tea lovers clutching their cuppas would approve.

In another piece (Hummingbird), he writes: “Once I saw a hummingbird perusing the red impatiens outside my building at school, and I walked slowly over to the planting, plucked one, and held it in my outstretched hand perfectly still, long enough that at least one student walking my way crossed the street so as not to get too close to me, until the blur of light did in fact dip its face into the meager sweet in my hand.”

How lucky and delightful the experience of feeding “the blur of light” (lovely expression!) out of one’s hand, I thought as I read the above passage (I must confess that my own experience of once trying to feed a squirrel out of my hand went awry, though the memory is still delightful and dear to me: the squirrel bit my hand before making off with the morsel). 

One of the key motifs in Ross’s book is that he always seems to be looking out for a nod, an acknowledgment, even a physical touch symbolizing kindness or appreciation in fellow human beings. Let me pull out two episodes that I particularly found noteworthy.

Once Ross was working on his computer in a coffee shop with his headphones on and swaying to a new De La Soul record when he found a teenage girl standing next to him, hand raised. And just as he looked up, confused, and pulled back his headphones, the girl said (presumptively): “Working on your paper?! Good job to you! High five!”

Ross high-fived with delight.

Then, in the essayette titled Tap Tap, he writes: “I take it as no small gesture of solidarity and, more to the point, love, or, even more to the point, tenderness, when the brother working as a flight attendant…walking backward in front of the cart, after putting my seltzer on my tray table, said, ‘There you go, man,’ and tapped my arm twice, tap, tap.”

Another observation I could immediately relate to, having seen it at multiple train and bus stations across India, came in the piece titled Sharing a Bag. In Ross’s words: “I adore it when I see two people…sharing the burden of a shopping bag or sack of laundry by each gripping one of the handles.”

The way Ross further describes how the two people usually lug the bag makes you break into a spontaneous chuckle, followed by a nod of human understanding: “It at first seems to encourage a kind of staggering, as the uninitiated, or the impatient, will try to walk at his own pace, the bag twisting this way and that, whacking shins or skidding along the ground. But as we mostly do, feeling the sack, which has become a kind of tether between us, we modulate our pace, even our sway and saunter—the good and sole rhythms we might swear we live by—to the one on the other side of the sack.”

As an aside, aren’t we all in the corporate world trying to modulate our pace, collaborating to carry and deliver the bag of goods (or goodies)?

The Book of Delights is a treasure trove of joyous observations, especially about the daily human experience and our shared bonds.

But before I bid you adieu, here’s one more tidbit which, I’m delighted to say, has a direct correlation with customer experience (though I believe one can find CX inspiration in a lot of Ross’s observations.)

Now, Ross doesn’t like to have a saucer with his coffee—the cup alone will do, thank you very much. So, in Coffee without the Saucer, he talks about how he once had to “rescue” his short Americano that was “wobbling precariously on the little saucer” by placing it squarely on the table. “Phew. And the spoon clanging the whole time. For Pete’s sake.” (You can almost feel the disgruntlement on his face.)

And then he recalls a delightful experience of “a saucerless administration of a small coffee drink” at an espresso place. He loves the place not only for the “very fine small coffee drinks they make” but also for the curiosity of one barista in particular, who “studies my face as I indulge.” 

“No saucer, right, she observed after one visit. I love her.”

Delight is made easy when you deliver what people love: whether coffee or software.

(This post was written for and first appeared on Freshworks.com.)

Why We Love Reading Books

 

Photo by Olia Danilevich from Pexels 

When it comes to books, many of us will identify with Francis Bacon’s famous saying, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” But there’s no denying that for those who “just love books,” they hold enormous power over us.

To this day, I have not come across a higher tribute to the power of a book than this line in Talks on the Gita by Vinoba Bhave: “I have received more nourishment from the Gita than my body has from my mother’s milk.”

The sheer love that Bhagavad Gita evinced in one of India’s well-known social reformers clearly shines through his heartfelt words. 

That line and the childlike simplicity of Vinoba’s interpretation of the Gita’s 18 chapters in the book (which was initially delivered as a series of talks) have remained with me through the years. Permanently digested and absorbed, as it were.

What makes books, books

Books can get us started on an inner journey, inspire us to become great leaders, prod us on to pick up or drop habits, teach something new, or simply entertain us for a while.

Some bestsellers, when they catch the fancy of a Hollywood director, turn into big blockbusters.

There’s something about the term “book” that inspires trust, attracts admiration or instills confidence. For one, a book on a given topic is much more elaborate and “serious sounding” than, say, a social post or an article—after all, someone committed months, years, or even decades, to researching and writing it. Besides, it allows readers to engage in a deeper exploration of something at their own pace, in the comfort of their own space.

Images of readers lost in books and holding their favorite cuppa can be found all around us. Some of them evoke nostalgia or even jealousy, usually in a nice way that makes you resolve to “catch up on your reading” in the not-too-distant future.

Alas, if only wishes were books!

Books may demand more in terms of your time compared to watching a film or listening to a podcast, but once they hook you in and grab you by the lapels of your curiosity and hunger for knowledge and understanding, you can hardly, to use a cliche, put them down. You also find it harder to forget the protagonists, storyline, lessons or insights from a book you really liked.

Again, it’s probably true that films or videos provide a bigger visual feast than books. But it’s also true that books give better wings to your imagination and, if I may dare say, a higher canvas to project your thoughts and ideas.

A look at some of the bestselling books of all time—across genres—enables us to appreciate the breadth of their scope and the depth of their impact. From the Bible to The Lord of the Rings, from Principia Mathematica to Das Kapital, from Romeo and Juliet to A Brief History of Time, from Think and Grow Rich to The Innovator’s Dilemma, from The Origin of Species to the Harry Potter series...books have not only captured much of human knowledge but also kept us going in our constant pursuit of happiness.

Let’s catch glimpses of what a few famous folks have said about books and reading:

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” – Gustave Flaubert

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” – Mark Twain

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” – Neil Gaiman

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney

“Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman

A book, to borrow a line from the poet John Keats, is a thing of beauty that is a joy for ever.

Three cheers to books, writers and readers!

(The above post was first published on Freshworks.com.)