Life extension systems
At the awards lunch for the Philippine Star and National Bookstore’s “My Favorite Book” contest at Le Souffle, the jurors were asked to talk about their own favorite books. I was about to go with my default settings—The Catcher In The Rye, The Great Gatsby—but the more I thought about the question the less decisive I got. I’ve read a bunch of books since Catcher and Gatsby and loved them. There’s A Sport And A Pastime by James Salter, Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot took me a year to get through, but I loved it. And Persuasion and Dune. I love Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the Old Testament, The Ogre by Michel Tournier. Catch-22 knocked me flat, as did The Age Of Innocence. Why do I have to choose? It’s like being asked to choose which one of my cats I would save from the gas chamber.
I got to thinking: Why do I read? That seemed an easier question. And I figured that I read because I only have one life and much as I love it, I don’t like the limitation. So I read books, especially novels, for the extra lives. By my reckoning, a good novel is an extra life lived. I’ve never fled Moscow at the approach of Napoleon’s army, but I know what that’s like. As a child I never met an escaped prisoner at a graveyard and helped him get away, but I know what that’s like. I didn’t personally fight in the Trojan War, figure out a way to end it, then spend ten years meeting cyclops, sirens, witches who turned my crew into swine, before getting home, but I remember the experience as if I’d lived it. That’s why I read books. Don’t make me choose one.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 11th, 2009 at 05:43
Hi Jessica,
I thought this review might amuse you: http://www.the-iss.com/2009/03/great_works_in_evil_literature.php
Cheers.
March 11th, 2009 at 09:04
By far, this is the best reason why people should read books.
March 11th, 2009 at 17:22
agree! reading books give us the freedom to see the other world that we could not possibly see in reality. It’s an extension of our limited lives.
http://fjordz-hiraya.blogspot.com
March 11th, 2009 at 22:29
I agree with you. Reading is my stress reliever! I read all sorts of books (well, except those self-help books, am beyond helping:-)!) and buy them and buy them and now like you, I have quite a backlog! Sometimes, I get so inside the book I read that I had to mentally shake myself to reality. For instance, I so like Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels that when I went to Scotland, I half-expected to see John Rebus himself drinking when I went to a pub! As I am always on the look out for books to read, I got ideas from you about books to read and I thank you!
March 11th, 2009 at 23:01
I love this post. I read books for the out-of-body experience. Nothing else brings me to a state of complete obliviousness to my surroundings for hours on end. When I put a good book down, I blink and take a moment to re-orient myself to the here and now. I also find myself in awe of the mind that picks a word with infinite care, puts another one beside it, then another, and so on until that string of perfectly-chosen words forms a sentence that soars. In the hands of a master, words have magical powers.
March 12th, 2009 at 09:13
Yep, I never say my favorite book. I categorize them into books i love and books that made great impact. those i love make me laugh, cry, angry, fall in love, and my imagination wonder and wander. those that made great impact are those that made me go in a daze for several days fearing my head is not screwed on tight enough.
March 13th, 2009 at 00:03
Sure, I’d love to think that novels take me to different worlds, catching a glimpse of other people’s lives and all that stuff, but I kinda just read to escape.
And maybe I’m being a tad too cynical, but except for my girlfriend, books are the only companions that I can trust.
How else can I explain finishing Infinite Jest in six weeks?
Nuts.