Break Your Glass-Ceiling

                          How to Choose What to Read Next ?

Reading books is like climbing the stairs of multi story building when lift is out of order and you live on the top floor. You have to break a glass ceiling at every floor to enhance your vision and joy of being closer to your destination.

I reviewed my reading habits. I found that after every certain spell of time I lost interest in one genre and shifted to another. When saturation of one genre came something happened which broke the glass ceiling and I could rise to another level of understanding.

Here are books or authors at each level:

1.Comics—

2.Enid Blyton- Famous five series

3.Alice in wonderland, Alibaba, Arabian Tales, Sindbad, Marco Polo, Panchtantra, Little Prince, Gulliver’s Travels etc.

                                       1.  GLASS-CEILING

4.Romance books and love story--Mills and Boon (Mostly Girls)

5.Sci-fi fiction, Horror for boys, though it could be vice versa or both.

                                         2. GLASS-CEILING

6. Matured romantic books—Gone with the wind, Thorn bird, Sidney Sheldon,

7. Suspense and crime thrillers—James Hadley Chase, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham, Mario Puzo

                                          3. GLASS-CEILING

8. Books based on facts- Ken Follett, Irving Wallace, Wilbur Smith, Arthur Halley, James Clavell

9. Banned books —Lady Chatterley’s lover, Lolita, Nancy Friday, Anonymous

                                     4. GLASS-CEILING

10.Fiction with philosophy—Ayn Rand, Paulo Coelho, David Brown, Khaled Hosseini, Murakami, Aldus Huxley, George, Orwell. Saul Bellow  

11. Autobiographies—Benjamin Franklin,  Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi,

                                        5. GLASS-CEILING

           
12.  Classical Books—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare,   Jane Austin, Pearl Buck, Earnest Hemmingway, Somersaught Maugham, Bertrand Russel

13. Text books of Philosophy, Psychology, and History to understand literature.   

                                       6. GLASS-CEILING

14. Philosophical or Psychological Fiction—Robert M. Pirsig, Jostein Gaarder, Mark Haddon, J.M.Coetzee, Gabriel Garcia Marquezss,

15. Self-improvement Books-- Malcolm Gladwell, Robin Sharma, Rhonda Byrne

                                     7. GLASS-CEILING

16. Philosophical Fiction- Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Kafka, Hermann Hess,  

 17. Supernatural and spiritual literature- Harold Kushner, Dalai Lama, Swami Rama, Swami Yogananda, Richard Bach, Elizabeth Gilbert, Mitch Albom.


This list cannot be exhaustive. It is just to give you an idea how things change with the passage of time. If they have not changed for you since long then you are stuck at a glass ceiling and this is high time for you to pick up your next genre.

An Author, Salesman and artisanal Publisher

                                   When Author is also a Salesman

If you born as an author you are not far from being a salesman and artisanal Publishers.

In ancient time (only a few decade back) an author was only an author. He had a desire to share his dreams and views with others. He seldom bothered about commerce of his books.

Sophia Tolstaya wife of Leo Tolstoy took care of financial aspects of her husband’s work. She was also a copyist for Leo Tolstoy and wrote his great work “War and Peace” seven times from beginning to end.

Most of the authors now say that writing a book is only 20% component of the project. Rests 80% is getting it published and make it reach in the hands of a reader.

By the time your script is rejected by good number of publisher and Google is unable to provide you with a fresh list, you would start losing faith in your writing skill. The second good story that had germinated while writing your debut would be worst hit. You would be tempted to shelve that in a corner of mind for time being.

While waiting for more rejections you would contemplate an e-book and self published paperback. It may take a long time to comprehend the mechanism and mathematics of self published book. The only satisfaction you may draw is that your book saw the light of the day. It would not stir the literary world, as it would not reach in the hands of elite whose opinion matters in literary world.

Some authors write specific genre for specific clientele. Others want to ride the wave and write something that would sale. The idea is not the book but money is the ideal. They are always a winner. Anyone who knows how to surf a tide is winner. He may not be an author but he is winner of the game of which you are also a participant.

Even if you have written a book on “old age” publishers note would come requesting some youth material in it, because youth is the potential buyer. Publishing has become tough day by day. Publishers invest money expecting some returns. He does all the labor to establish you as a writer and when by chance if you are successful, you reap all the benefits of fame popularity and money.

I would suggest to all those who are reading this article “WRITE A BOOK”. Anyone can write at least one good book in his life. You have learnt your lessons of life and faced ups and downs, just sit on key board and pen (?) them down. That is the minimum you can do to make yourself immortal and preserve memories in the heart of your offspring.

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 Hoax of Self-Publishing

© Vipin Behari Goyal