Sometimes I think that I've managed to retain my love of books but lost my love of reading.
Then, I accidentally spend an entire evening turning the leaves of a novel from start to finish, without moving from my position for even an instant.
Some find reading a pleasant amusement. As though if one is reading, then one could just as easily be cleaning a bathroom. Therefore, a task list must be set for the reader.
I, however, am under the firm impression that reading is soul-making.
A book, however deep or shallow, however well or poorly written, however many commas I MUST put in, is inherently good. Let me rephrase. Reading a book, etc, etc.
To merely look at a book is to merely look at a beautiful woman or man. It is objectification, leaving no room for the development of character, nor the appreciation of such a character, literal or figurative.
To read a book means to allow yourself to leave your own mind and care, for the length of the pages, to care about the people who the author seems to care so much about.
In that span of time, you are a made into a better person simply because you are taken outside of yourself. For me, reading is essential to my nature not only because I crave anything that feeds my creative, imaginative self or, more "prudently" my intellectual self, but because I am selfish and think about myself and my little problems a lot.
Books get me outside of my own head and give me perspective, remind me that there is a whole lot more out there than my horseblinders of self allow me to see.
When I don't read, you can tell. When I don't write, you can tell. When I don't hang out with Jesus, you can tell. And for me, all three of those are intertwined.
I think and speak and act more sanely and more humanely when my stomach for good words has been fed.
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