Reading

To read is to fly, it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries. It's our duty to install this passion of reading in our children. Keep them away from these game consoles. A reader lives a thousand lives. Many novels aspire to do nothing more than just amuse us but even then they have their place, we still have the opportunity to consider our own experiences then see them mirrored from other angles in the books we read. Refracted in different guises that society perhaps forbids us to take. A extension from the limited personal experiences and what we know from our own immediate circles, in the pages of a book we can empathise, love, hate and fear but know once we close that book we have escaped the situation. Novels disclose differing worlds, much deeper than we can ever venture in our own existence. We exercise our sympathies and other emotions beyond our sphere of our day to day humdrum life. We look at the paths we never took without the consequences we would face if we did.

Reading promotes insight into ourselves and others. The better the novel the richer the possibilities, the more dimensions of pleasure we experience.

To my son I say never stop reading, go on that adventure with Gangster Granny, ride of that giant peach with James, walk though the halls of Hogwarts with Harry, just never ever allow anyone to tell you to stop, always be a reader. Joy, sadness, heart break or your lowest ebb, books will never let you down, will never disappoint or reject you.