Books: a novel way to learn

 

“Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life.” Sidney Sheldon

I read an article the other day that estimated a trip to another planet one single light-year away, using current technology, would take about 4,000 years. While there were road trips in my childhood that might have felt like forty centuries, that’s an unbelievably long time between pit stops. How many times would a child have to ask, “Are we there, yet?” before the Captain of the starship would jettison them into the deep, dark voids of space?

Fortunately, I have been to the far corners of the universe and beyond many times in my few decades on earth, courtesy of those rectangular blocks of wood commonly called books.

I was never a great reader in school, and often struggled to keep pace with reading assignments. I don’t suffer from dyslexia or other reading disorders. I’m simply a slow reader; I always have been. Admittedly, school textbooks are seldom written in a riveting style of prose. The calculus of algebra was unfathomable and incalculable to my gray matter. Social Studies stunted my capacity to socialize the way I’d hoped to, and science textbooks managed to do the impossible in that they made time, itself, stand still.

Nevertheless, there were some books that restored a sense of life and vitality that the vampiric codices required by the school system sucked out. They were located in a special section of the library; they were called novels. 

For me, Science Fiction latched onto a few of those brain cells that still had the cellular equivalence of pulse and respiration. I came, I looked, and I found titles that grabbed my attention; suddenly, a mad scientist somewhere cried out, “He’s alive. He’s alive!”

Sometimes people denigrate fiction as being unreal or fake. And sure, fiction may be untrue in the sense of it relaying events that haven’t happened. But fiction can still be true and brutally honest, like To Kill a Mockingbird. 

A novel is a story told through the imagination of its author. Now, I’ll admit that romance novels are a genre that almost gives the lie to what I just said. They may be great escapist fare for some folks and trash to me, and yet one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. 

Who am I to judge the story of a lady who falls in love with some dude with washboard abs, chiseled jawline, soft eyes and a long-flowing mane, while my protagonists explore strange new worlds and wrestle with extra-terrestrial baddies? 

The point is that stories invite us to see the world through the eyes of those who are not us, whose life experiences are different from our own. Good writers pour themselves into those stories; we experience their struggles, their questions, their dilemmas. As we read, we find our perspectives affirmed or challenged, and sometimes changed or even broken. 

Book clubs often help us find books we’d avoid if left to our own devices. 

Right now I am walking in the shoes of a black man who is writing a letter to his son (Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates). I am walking alongside Detective Inspector Konrad Sejer, investigating the murder of a mother and her toddler in a dumpy trailer in a small town in Norway (Hell Fire, Karin Fossum). I’m sitting beside a historian, leafing my way through ancient scrolls, deciphering inscriptions on tiny shards of pottery (Why the Bible Began, Jacob Wright). 

I have discovered that books, even those considered “escapist fare,” are a way to burst the bubbles into which we often wrap ourselves. Books allow us to stop and ponder what we’re reading. Unlike movies that whip along, or pundits that natter on endlessly on the telly, books allow us time to think, to process, and to discover a world that lies beyond our own line of sight. 

I find that critically important, especially in these days where so few are able to think beyond the depth of a meme about anything. Libraries are where the brains of the universe are stored. I commend reading to all of you here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)