I like to read.
I inhale books. When I read books, I am in the story like watching a movie, but it's real in ways that no movie could ever be. I struggle with heroes across barren wastelands and heaving seas. I fight dragons and Nazis and fires. I win women and have children, earn awards and degrees. I visit different planets and worlds and eras, swimming alongside single-celled organisms and whales and icthyosaurs, flying with seed pods as they scuttle across the sky, boiling in the fiery caverns of volcanoes... I have baked pastries, escaped gangsters, fought lawsuits, travelled to the furthest reaches of Rio Negro in the Amazon, rocketed to the moon, and been present at the very beginning and end of the universe itself. I have struggled against crushing poverty and ignorance, felt the lash of the taskmaster's whip, experienced the crushing lack of humanity in a Russian GULAG camp, stoked the fires at Auschwitz. I have felt my soul expand mightily with the great philosophers of past and current eras. I have felt the very hand of God Himself writing on my soul and heart, molding me into the kind of man He would have me become.
When I read, I escape the mundane. I am not of this world any longer. I surrender completely to the whims of the author.
I love everything about reading. The struggle to find a comfortable position. The weight of the book in my hands or resting on my chest. The bite of the cover into the flesh of my palms as I grip it for strength through the intense portions. The smell of mustiness and dust and everyone who has read the book before me (in the case of library books) or of the printing and glue and shipping container (in the case of new books). I think I prefer library books, because I feel like I am sharing the adventure with unknown faces, each of whom have touched these pages and have been touched by them. I see traces of them left on the pages as I turn: maybe finger prints, smudges, bits of food or chocolate, sometimes even blood. Far from being offended, I am touched by these traces of humanity - these people loved this book so much that they couldn't put it down for anything: food, cleaning, even bodily harm were all just distractions from the book. I want to feel and love those whose hands and hearts and souls have warmed the pages of this book.
I love libraries. I love to sit in the library and read. I can feel the spirits of the authors who struggled to put their thoughts down and send them out into the world. I love to watch people in the library - researchers, families looking for that perfect children's book, and other bibliophiles like me, lurking, observing, and loving. I love people who go to the library to read, taking off their shoes, sitting and immersing themselves in their books. These are my people. I wonder what they're reading and where they're going in their books. I like the gentle glances and half-smiles as we rest our eyes before plowing back into the book.
Plowing - that's an appropriate term. Turning over the soil, exposing newness and freshness and allowing new ideas and feelings and worlds to germinate. Because that's the power of books - they take us places that we may not feel comfortable but are irresistible and compelling and soul-enlarging. We can close the book and walk away, but the words are imprinted on our souls forever.
I inhale books. When I read books, I am in the story like watching a movie, but it's real in ways that no movie could ever be. I struggle with heroes across barren wastelands and heaving seas. I fight dragons and Nazis and fires. I win women and have children, earn awards and degrees. I visit different planets and worlds and eras, swimming alongside single-celled organisms and whales and icthyosaurs, flying with seed pods as they scuttle across the sky, boiling in the fiery caverns of volcanoes... I have baked pastries, escaped gangsters, fought lawsuits, travelled to the furthest reaches of Rio Negro in the Amazon, rocketed to the moon, and been present at the very beginning and end of the universe itself. I have struggled against crushing poverty and ignorance, felt the lash of the taskmaster's whip, experienced the crushing lack of humanity in a Russian GULAG camp, stoked the fires at Auschwitz. I have felt my soul expand mightily with the great philosophers of past and current eras. I have felt the very hand of God Himself writing on my soul and heart, molding me into the kind of man He would have me become.
When I read, I escape the mundane. I am not of this world any longer. I surrender completely to the whims of the author.
I love everything about reading. The struggle to find a comfortable position. The weight of the book in my hands or resting on my chest. The bite of the cover into the flesh of my palms as I grip it for strength through the intense portions. The smell of mustiness and dust and everyone who has read the book before me (in the case of library books) or of the printing and glue and shipping container (in the case of new books). I think I prefer library books, because I feel like I am sharing the adventure with unknown faces, each of whom have touched these pages and have been touched by them. I see traces of them left on the pages as I turn: maybe finger prints, smudges, bits of food or chocolate, sometimes even blood. Far from being offended, I am touched by these traces of humanity - these people loved this book so much that they couldn't put it down for anything: food, cleaning, even bodily harm were all just distractions from the book. I want to feel and love those whose hands and hearts and souls have warmed the pages of this book.
I love libraries. I love to sit in the library and read. I can feel the spirits of the authors who struggled to put their thoughts down and send them out into the world. I love to watch people in the library - researchers, families looking for that perfect children's book, and other bibliophiles like me, lurking, observing, and loving. I love people who go to the library to read, taking off their shoes, sitting and immersing themselves in their books. These are my people. I wonder what they're reading and where they're going in their books. I like the gentle glances and half-smiles as we rest our eyes before plowing back into the book.
Plowing - that's an appropriate term. Turning over the soil, exposing newness and freshness and allowing new ideas and feelings and worlds to germinate. Because that's the power of books - they take us places that we may not feel comfortable but are irresistible and compelling and soul-enlarging. We can close the book and walk away, but the words are imprinted on our souls forever.
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