Saturday, August 8, 2009
Isn't it strange how books work? Not how they are made or anything like that, but how they work on the readers' imaginations, how they invoke feelings within us. I'm not talking about the kind of books that relay facts, like a math book or an english book. It's the kind of books that tell us stories, the kinds that we can relate to, where the characters seem so real to us, as if they were friends who we just haven't seen for a long time. I'm talking about the kind of books that draw us into a time and place that, though this particular event may not have happened to us in "real life," it is as real to us now as our breath is.
And the best part is, they stay with us even after we close the cover. The good ones, the amazing ones are forever in us, waiting to be remembered. Everyone us of has a book from our childhood which will pop into our heads at some point. Mine was Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I read that so many times, when I looked at the library card, my number (1234, easist ever) was the, if not majority then, significant minority of the numbers presented. I can't really remember too much of the story, to tell the truth. But when I am watching Animal Planet and something about a crocodile comes on, I'll remember a picture that was in the book, at the point in the story when they are discovering that near the middle of the world, there is a lost world where dinosaurs still exist. The picture is of a giant dinosaur-crocodile coming into a huge cave and just barely fitting into the opening. Then there is, of course, the next love of my life: Harry Potter. By the time I realized what they were, what a gem they were, there were three out I believe, but I was still ahead of the pack. In a way, Harry Potter will always signify my childhood. I was maybe 8 when I started reading them, ten at the absolute most. So there was some time for my letter to appear by owl. When I was eleven, I realized it probably wasn't going to happen. That I was a muggle. I say it like I actually believe that Harry is real, but that is the making of an excellent book. I felt like I was part of it, but invisible. In a way, it is like observing a LARP, no one can talk to you, but you know everything because you can go anywhere you want.
Anyway, the thing that made me think all of this was My Sister's Keeper. I mean the book, not the movie. I don't think I've cried that hard since maybe Little Women when Jo didn't marry Laurie. I highly recommend it if you want a good cry and be totally immersed into a world that, hopefully, you've never actually experienced yourself. And to be honest, it sort of made me re-realize why I love to read. I recently told someone that there hasn't been a book since Harry Potter ended that carried me so far into the story, into the characters to feel like they are living a life I should have lived. I'm not saying that My Sister's Keeper made me wish my sister had cancer, but it made me feel like these people were my friends, that they're pain was mine.
And that, my darlings, is the beauty of a good book.
