Post #2: What is a book?

A book is a new dimension; from the moment you open to the first page you are opening a portal to an entirely new world. Books allow the gates of our imagination open and new ideas, thoughts, and wonders to flood in. Think of it like a flower: you have to plant the seeds, water and care for the seedling then after time it blooms into a beautiful flower. To me this relates to books, you have to plant the seeds of imagination in your head then as you read through you are nursing the idea, giving it life and setting the stage for the book to blossom into something wonderfully unique. Books are alive, they are real, and I feel that people often overlook that fact.

                Author Victor LaValle is one of those people, in the book The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books he states, “They’re no more divine than a toaster. They are massed-produced items, sold in (occasionally) mass quantities.” I was stunned after I read that statement, how could someone possibly think that? A book is someone heart splashed onto the pages, they willing put themselves out there for the world to judge and he has the nerve to more or less throw their hard work back in their faces.

Then there are others like Joe Meno, Nancy Jo Sales, and Tom Piazza who also contributed to The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books who share my point of view. Nancy Jo Sales says “There’s something about the physicality of a book, the way it looks and feels and even smells… that makes it a living, breathing companion (who like yourself, is actually dying.” I don’t think I have ever heard a statement I agreed with more fully than this. Last year our local book store went out of business and I know many more will soon follow. EBooks and tablets have taken over and they are destroying the uniqueness of actually owning a real book. “Somebody else might have held the book, and valued it. Maybe they made notes in the margin, and kept it and handed it down to their children… I mean, you can give somebody a book; it has weight, it’s a gesture of faith in the future” (Piazza, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books).

For that reason I stand behind the book.

Post #1: Why I Read

     That moment when you turn to the first page in a new book and the real world starts to dissolve around you. A new reality starts to from the words printed on the page and you find yourself being swept into a thrilling tale with characters that come to life with some help from your imagination. Books are a perfect place to escape reality, to get lost in problems that aren't yours, to feel the rush of excitement as they complete a task, or cry as a character comes to their unlikely end. Books can fit any mood and tell any tale. There is no limit to what you can read; the laws of life do not restrain what is written on the pages, magic is real and people can fly.

      When the mundane routine of life get to be too much for me I love being able to escape into a new world where anything can be possible and if it get to be too much I can close the book. I am in control, the characters look like I want them too as do all the building.  And this is why I read.