“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten
seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid
for in factories.”
There's nothing quite like spending a Friday night stretched out on the couch catching up on some Netflix. I've always been a bit of a film buff, and Netflix really helps me keep up with my favorite shows despite my increasingly hectic schedule. As much as I like watching movies when the end credits roll I don't feel the same way as I do when I close a book. When you read a book everything that happens, happens in your head not on a screen in front of you. You are forced to fill in the spaces between the words with your imagination, making the experience a very personal one. While Breaking Bad was an incredible experience, it was someone-else's experience.
Now enter the newest craze sweeping the nation! Books! They're wireless, have an infinite power supply, and are basically indestructible! Go ahead throw that sucker against the wall! or into your bubble bath! It'll be fine! You can bookmark, highlight, and even share it with friends (face to face contact required for sharing).
When I was a kid I read books constantly. As much as I liked watching cartoons they never felt the same way reading books did. I would sit with a book hidden under my desk with my eyes glued to the pages (a practice I continue to this day). When my teacher inevitably called me out for not paying attention I'd hastily dog-ear my page and sit up feeling like I just woke me up from an unexpected nap. I never got that feeling from a movie. The library was my safe haven, the one in my middle school was always my favorite. It was a large room, quiet but full of life if you knew where to look. It was here that I mastered the Dewey decimal system. The librarian there liked me and would often get books for me out of the teacher's collection which was usually off limits to students. I read a lot of the classics there and became a big fan of Poe and an even bigger fan of Doyle, so much so that I've since written multiple papers on the great detective.
Reading is what ultimately drove me into the comforting arms of writing. When I was in high school I spent many Friday and Saturday nights shut up in my room writing fantastic tales about heroes and heroines in far away lands. The dream of one day becoming an author planted itself in my head and I still haven't been able to shake it. I discovered my beloved Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Tolkin became an old friend that I revisit often. I took every assigned reading in stride and honed my taste in literature. (The Good Earth? No thanks. The Great Gatsby? Yes, I'll take two please) It was in high school when my habitual reading began to draw unwanted attention from my classmates. They would pause from relaying how totally wasted that weekend, or discussing how totally wasted they were going to get the coming weekend, to ask me why I was always so quiet and why I always had a book. Apparently my idea of mental stimulation was a bit different than theirs. They would begin to talk about me as if reading somehow impaired my hearing. When I finally got to college it was a fascination with Ender's Game that made a history professor suggest I consider writing as a major.
If I had grown up without haunting the library I'm not sure if I would have ended up where I am today. I am sure that if I hadn't read as much as I did I would not have the same mind. If I had only watched cartoons and sitcoms I would probably have willingly subjected myself to a life of mediocrity. George R. R. Martin once wrote,
"'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one.'"When you read the thoughts of the main character become your own. Their sadness and successes are yours to experience with them. It is impossible to get wrapped up in a book and have your mind wander. Those hundreds of lives I've lived through books have shown me what life can be. The lessons books teach reach a bit deeper than those taught in television shows. Those ideas that I learned from books I read as a kid still guide me. I firmly believe that if I didn't read I would have developed a "Target-esque" style of thinking and followed the crowd into mob-mentality. Jumping cheap trend to cheap trend with each changing season, never questioning quality. Letting someone else think for you is the easiest thing to do, but nothing worth doing was ever easy. Books are not dead, furthermore they will never die. They are simply becoming less popular. Maybe this is because in our volatile world we have enough to worry about in our single life without throwing the problems of thousands of other lives into the mix. Maybe we want to forget and slip into a sort of comatose complaisance through mindless sitcoms. Sometimes I need to shut down and let someone-else's imagination take me on an adventure, but if that was all I did I would never be able to create for myself.
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