One of the main things I love about books is that you can lose yourself in them. You can become a new person- either a character in the book or someone all your own. You can fall in love with characters, feel what they feel, see what they see. You can go on adventures in far away places or even not-so-far-away places. You can meet new people, taste new foods, or explore new worlds that don’t even exist in real life. Books are an ever-expanding sea of people, places, and ideas.
Another thing I love about books is that you can find yourself in them. You can read a single line in a book and relate to it in a way no one else can. For example, a character in a book could reveal something of themselves and this could prompt you to realize something about yourself. This happened to me recently as I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. In reading about one of the characters, I learned that she and I are very alike. In reading more of her story I have come to understand better why I am the way I am. It’s sort of hard to explain.
All in all, books are ourselves, hidden between the pages, that we uncover by reading.
Some quotes that I think sum this up nicely:
- When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before. ~Clifton Fadiman
- My view is that the right book has to reach you at the right time, and no person can be reached by every book. Literature is supposed to be beautiful and/or necessary—so if at a given time you don’t either enjoy or need a certain book, then you should read something else, and not feel guilty about it. ~Elif Batuman
The Sequestered Nooks 