7.20.2011

The Power of Books

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I love to read. 
When I was young reading was more important to me than eating, a new book, food. 
I have lived a thousand lives, been on a hundred adventures, and saved the world more than once. 
When I find myself crying as I read a book I am not crying for the character. I am crying for myself because I am that person in the book. 
For a few hours at least I feel what they feel I see what they see and I want what they want. At least that's what happens when I read what I would characterize as a good book. 
I needed books when I was growing up. 
They kept me and I kept them. 
Mostly. 

The only problem that I had with books was that they always had an ending.
You can feel it as you become immersed into a world of wonder, their is a kinship between you and at least one other character and you are excited for the journey they take and worried for them at the same time, but with each page turn the book becomes lighter in your right hand and thicker in you left. The climax will happen and the end will come. 
Endings always left me somewhat flat and empty. 
It wasn't a feeling of is that it
More like a deflated balloon after it soars. 
I do sometimes still feel hungry for a good book, but endings don't leave me so empty anymore.
And I wonder if I wasn't really empty, because those books have stayed with me and changed me. Perhaps I just wasn't full yet. 

It's been many years since I finished the last book in the Harry Potter series, and this last weekend Nick and Stephanie and I went to see part 2 of movie 7.
(I was Winky, just so you know.) 
And while I loved the books, they were not the only ones that shaped my teenage years. 

Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favorite authors. 
She died earlier this year after battling cancer. 
I owe a lot to her and her stories for the imagination that they helped me develop and the choices I had to make, as I lived through her characters, in situations I'll never really have to face. 
If you have never read her books I am sorry. 
They are magical.
And it's not just that they are fantasy stories or her writing style is simple and beautiful. 
It's all of it and more for me.
Go and read The Homeward Bounders, The Time of the Ghost or The Dalemark Quartet.
Go beg for someone to lend you their copy, borrow it from your nearest library or buy it from a bookstore. They are worth it. 

Thank you for your books and letting me get to know you through them, Diana.

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Thanks for your nice words. I appreciate them so much.