THE ANATOMY OF A BOOKWORM
Being a bookworm. Life goals.
So, what makes someone a “Bookworm”?
Is it waking up till 3 AM to complete the climax of a story you can’t get enough of and as soon as it’s done, you are left with “heartbreak that time could never mend”? Is it the mystified consciousness travelling through the bookmarked pages and connotations of a novel written of a protagonist too gullible to understand that they exude “main character energy”? Or is it just the vibe of the “enemies turned to lovers” keeping your eyelashes engaged to waterworks and your heart intractable to how cruel the reality is?
According to my 2019 TBR list and thrift shop Wishlist, a Bookworm is not an end product, instead it is a by-product of a long processed metamorphosis. The metamorphosis which either develops itself, since the childhood or after being smitten by one of the classic literary masterpieces.
If I remember vividly, my first crash-crush was landed on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” in the back seat of my primary school bus fair. Coming back home, I submerged my imagination to the characters of a story which has never met my amateur cerebral potential before into its worst sub-pieces (even in my wildest dreams).
Though, this could give an inside picture of early age evolution, the actual metamorphosis of turning me into a full-fledged bibliophile came later, during my late teenage. It was a combo impact of Dickens’ David Copperfield and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
What gave away to me submitting to this pompous larger-than-life protagonistic act of Mr. Jay Gatsby was my superficial idea of a book.
A book is a generalized concept for a collection of written pages, compiled together to assess knowledge, information, history and interpretation of one subject or many. My most dreaded subjects, Physics and Organic Chemistry, are books. But, do I describe myself a bookworm, based on them? Assertively, NO.
Literature; novels; fiction; or more specifically, Sylvia Plath and Donna Tartt should be exemplified when defining my biblioaffair. In a sophisticated manner, Literature has a way of bringing your muted emotional intelligence to the stage of expression — hint : dramatic monologue, soliloquy or casually, the late night introspective sessions you have with yourself after you have sweated the enthusiasm of a pop concert.
In no sense, this article is to imply the characteristic difference between sciences and literature, though, I do recall the famous quote by John Keating (Robin Williams) from the movie Dead Poets Society : “And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
A wider understanding of the books one has read in a lifetime can speak volumes about how often a bookworm sustains the fall of existentialism by channeling the narratives and lessons deduced from the writers they have been reading. This deduction is only the peak of interpretive iceberg of emotional quotient of bookworms.
I ,once, had a literary threesome with Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, took alternate chances to immerse both state of minds, in a choreography of midnight snacks’ sessions. While Plath’s Daddy and Lady Lazarus resembled the lingering melancholy melody of Lana Del Rey, Dickinson’s I felt a Funeral in my brain kept me up all night.
A bookworm knows the shrill drill to manage the switching sides of Thomas Hardy’s despair and commemorate the tragic fall of Michael Henchard or Heathcliff’s disposition of Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. And, that’s why they dominate the intellectual pyramid of human kind. (I would bet all of my high hopes and Spotify playlists to prove anyone wrong who’d fight with me on this!)
So, here it goes…
Sip on this anatomical chart of what makes a bookworm and see if you have what it takes to be one.
P.s. : not intended for PDA.
