A Note On Why I Read

Why do I write a book review blog?  Aren't there enough of them in the world by now?  Do I really believe my opinions make a difference?  Surely, if you've stumbled across this blog, these thoughts might have flitted across your mind, as they have across my own.

I am a student at the moment, pursuing my Master's degree.  I'll not go into detail, but suffice it to say, it's not an enjoyable process.  It's hard.  It's soul-crushing and mind-numbing.  It reduces me to irrational frustration on a regular basis.  It could be worse, of course, but there are days that even being reminded of that fact makes me want to break things with wanton abandon.

So where does reading fit in?  As the Bard once wrote, "Aye.  There's the rub."  When I've had enough of statistical analysis and computer programming and journal articles and literature reviews and traffic and bus commutes and coming home to find my dog has, once again, chewed the spine off an overly expensive textbook, I know that I have an escape hatch.  A whole shelf of them, actually.  I can flip open a book and walk out of this world into another.  I can change my story.

We are creatures of story.  Think about it.  We revere actors and screenwriters, authors and playwrights.  We gather around campfires, dining tables, and water coolers to tell our own tales.  We text and Tweet, we email and post.  We tell stories.  It's all we ever do with our lives.  And if you think of it this way, as one big story, well, then what we read is just a part of it.  Middle Earth is the place you spend your weekends.  Narnia's the break room at work.  The time you stood, invisible, beside a beloved character and watched him grieve for lost love... is that time really any different from the time you spend listening to your sister tell about the night her husband walked out on her?  Think about it!  We're hearing a story, told by someone else.  The same parts of our brains are active, if you must think of it scientifically.  We feel in exactly the same way.  No wonder stories can make us weep and laugh and rave just as flesh and blood people can.  In those moments, how can any story be greater than any other?  How can anything be more real, or more worthy, than the story?

This is why I read.  I read to feel.  I read to know myself and to try to know others.  I read to learn what is inside of me and every other person, and what is outside of us, and strung between us like invisible, silky-sticky lines of spiderweb.  I read to get out of this world, and to get into it.  I read to know that the story in which I find myself when I open my eyes in the morning is just a chapter of this great big story in which we are all merely players.  And then I come here, to this blog, and I tell you, dear readers (if there are, indeed, readers of this blog), what I found.  "Here," I say.  "Let me tell you about this wonderful place that I went."  Or perhaps, "I took a trip this weekend into another book, and I don't intend to visit again."  Look where we are again, off on another story-telling adventure.  Here I have a chance to tell my stories, and to tell you about the tales of other tellers, wondrous tales that I could not hope to do justice, tales you'll just have to explore for yourself.  Perhaps this sounds pretentious.  "All one great story, etc. etc. etc."  But why not be just a little pretentious, dear readers?  You (yes, you!) are the greatest audience a storyteller ever had.  Without a listener, our words are sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Without someone to share with, we are trapped in our own stories, echoing around our own heads like prisoners, muttering lunatic monologues.  You are unique, dear readers.  Every adventure though a book is a singular experience, an all-night conversation with the author and the characters he or she has, with your help, brought to life.  It is an adventure you can never duplicate.  But you can tell us about it.  And I hope you will.

That is what I do.  I am a student of the universe, learning chapter by chapter in this story we're in, and sharing what I find for the sheer glee of being able to do so.  Join me, won't you?  Let's sit by the fire tonight and tell our stories.  We have all the time in the world.