Every once in a while, I get the crazy notion that I want to
write a book. Then, of course, I get an assignment to write a 20-page paper and
I come to my senses rather quickly. This passing fancy stems not from a love of
writing, but because I love reading so much.
I recently started reading a book around midnight in the hopes
that it would exhaust my mind enough to sleep. I finished the book around 5 am,
and while I was exhausted the next day, I can’t necessarily say that I regret
it. It’s not the first time I’ve pulled an all-nighter reading a book, nor is
it the first time that I’ve made poor choices regarding books. As a child, I
remember hiding in closets and under stairs with a book and a flashlight for
hours when I should have been cleaning the garage or helping in the yard.
People often say to me that they have no time for reading, and
while I probably wouldn’t recommend my overnight read-a-thon approach to other
people, I would take a good book over any other form of entertainment. W.
Somerset Maugham said that, “The only important thing in a book is the meaning
that it has for you.” I have so many books that are truly a part of my life and
have shaped me as I’ve grown. They have been my companions, my friends, my
escape when life seems to be too much. At any given time, I’ll be listening to
an audiobook, reading a book on my Kindle app, and have at least two physical
books lying around the house that I’ll pick up when I have a moment.
This is my favorite Norman Rockwell drawing – it depicts how
I feel when I read a book. Inside a book is a world that I’ve never explored,
and suddenly anything is possible. It’s almost like stepping inside someone
else’s head for a few hours and broadening my understand to a point of view
that I could never have, because I see everything through the lens of my own
experience.
The book Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel that depicts a
society where books are illegal. While this concept is clearly horrific in and
of itself for me, what was more disturbing was the process of how this society
got there. When someone reads a book, they suddenly know something that someone
who hasn’t read it doesn’t know. In an effort to make things “fair,” they
slowly go shortening books and concepts, reducing them to soundbites on a
television so that there is total knowledge equality. In our world where
everyone is more concerned about being politically correct than being kind and
intelligent, I feel this has frightening implications for our future.
 |
| A favorite gift. |
That’s all for tonight. Got to finish that crazy-long paper
early tomorrow morning. And there’s still 15 pages before my chapter ends.
