Pace- reading and running

what is it about books that one reads? I find reading the most enjoyable thing to do.  give me  a good( by my standard) book and a cup of coffee and i am a happy puppy . ok i hate puppies or anythin four legged so not sure i would be happy to use happy n puppy in the same sentence. oh well, ya books. I have read a lot of books over the last year. especially the last 6 months. More than i have in the last 5 years. what are these books n y do i spend so muc time reading them. For one they are my tiny getaways. when i read i am one with a book. i am the omnipresent observer of the characters depicted by the author. At some point i even see though the author. I judge who the author is, at that moment. I care for and cry with the people in the book. I smell the food they eat and i feel their tiredness. Its a sort of alter -life i lead with them. Sometimes its educative to know about life and times of people. Sometimes its pure entertainment. for the duraton that i am reading, i am an artist pianting the scenes with careful details. i imagine everythin i read. And guess what! i read mostly books based in India. So i connect back to my roots sort-of. I think of my place and thats probably as much India i can get right now.
I just started reading suitable boy by vikram seth. the details!!! they r driving me crazy! jus about 60 pages into it and am beginning to like it.
I am very slow at reading. like i take 5 min to read 2 pages. but i njoy it. i am equally slow at running. i run 15km in 100 min. not fast enough. but i njoy running at that pace. i think i love this take it in slow, take it in completely philo right now.