Books are man's best friend and talented actor Sadiya Siddiqui who stars in ‘Saath Phere' and ‘Saathi Re' goes to prove this adage. So strong is her obsession with reading that she claims to carry a book with her wherever she goes and tries to make time on the sets for reading.

"I read books of genres encompassing mysteries, psychology, health, anatomy, history, philosophy and religion. But I can't stand mushy romance like Mills and Boons, not that I'm against it, but I like mature love stories," says Sadiya.

Sadiya is intrigued with the way a human mind functions and that was the reason behind her choosing to do her masters in psychology and not literature. She likes to read books based on the human psyche. Her best books have been "I never promised you a Rose Garden" by Joanne Greenberg, "100 years of solitude" by Gabriel Marquis, and she has also read most of the Urdu classics.

Sadiya's encounter with reading started when she was a school girl. It all began with her love for comics like Superman and Batman and gradually moving onto murder mysteries and detective stories. Sadiya was such a voracious reader that she would read an entire novel in a day.

Sadiya is an ace scuba diver, she is looking forward to link her diving passion to her reading by penning short stories relating to ocean pollution and its background would be a love story between two scuba divers.

"I'm very enthusiastic reader but due to my busy schedule I'm hard pressed for time and writing the short stories is also in the pipe line but looking at my work load it'll take a considerable amount of time.

I squeeze in time between shoots to read but I can't fully concentrate on it and so I read only thin books now which I can possibly complete in a day or two," chirps Sadiya.