Hi, I am Sourabh Sharma! Although born in Bihar, I grew up in Amritsar. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the one book that had the greatest impact on my life.
The book, which happens to be my all-time favorite, is titled Ask Me Anything. This peach of a book is a fun account of every fact we might ever want to know. For general-knowledge freaks like me, it is as good as informative books can possibly get. I had actually stumbled upon this encyclopedia-like book at my father’s workplace, at the age of 15. It instantly caught my attention, and I decided to bring the book home.
I soon found myself reading it regularly. Surprisingly, it always seemed to have something new and interesting in store for me every time I gave it a read. It had a myriad of intriguing lists on wide-ranging subjects. Despite not being familiar with most of those themes, reading this book helped me get a better understanding of them. I especially enjoyed the part about dinosaurs and their awe-inspiring reign.
Interestingly, the more I read this book, the more I felt like sharing my newfound knowledge with my parents and friends. It felt really proud to be able to share all those tips, fun facts and information with my near and dear ones, who were often impressed by my enviable knowledge at such a young age.
It did not take the book long to become my favorite pastime. It is, after all, a treatise on a whole gamut of subjects ranging from science, history, space, earth, people, theology, transportation, society, countries, geography, and a lot more. To put things into perspective, the book was like a hardcover version of Google when I first stumbled upon it. As a die-hard believer in the adage ‘sharing is caring’, I would often lend the book to my friends, who were also impressed by its extensive contents.
I am 18 years old now, and I am still far from bored of it. Over time, I have moved on from dinosaurs to Vikings. Reading about the adventures and exploits of those matchless Scandinavian warriors was quite an experience. I even learned a bit of Runes, which was the writing system used by the Vikings. These letters were used to write several Germanic languages before Latin alphabets took over. The deities in the Norse mythology were equally impressive, with Odin (the god of war), Thor (the god of thunder, armed with a terrifying hammer), Loki (he was more of a trickster, driven by an uncanny habit of playing pranks on other deities as well as on his adversaries), Freyr (the god of peace and fertility), and Freya (the goddess of love and the twin sister of Freyr) catching my fancy.
The book obviously contains a lot of other fun facts as well, and I could probably write a novel on how much I loved them, but I’d leave that for another day. All in all, if you are someone who enjoys learning new stuff to broaden your horizons, then you must absolutely give this book a try.
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