Not everyone knows this, but only approximately 0.01% of books are made to be bought and set on a shelf. Only a very certain type of book deserves to stay with you forever, only the one that you can truly read over and over again, with notes scribbled in the margins and dog-eared pages and covers worn ragged by travel and love. The rest are to be passed along to friends.
What is a book? It’s a collection of ideas. And ideas are nothing if you don’t share them with at least one other person, and trust that they’ll share it with another, and trust that at some point those ideas will get caught up in the web of human of interaction, passed round and round until they are accepted as truth.
Fiction pieces aren’t stories. They’re thesis papers. They’re philosophies. Someone wrote that plot and developed that character in order to lead you through a specific train of thought, in order to make you understand what they think. They just happened to choose to present it in a medium slightly less dry than Plato’s works. NOT that they’re not also fantastic in their own right…
Why the book musings? I just finished a good one today—the kind of book that’s so good, you get unstuck in time, concerned with nothing but soaking up every nuance of the piece until…wow, it’s 10 o’ clock and you haven’t gotten off the couch since you finished your homework and ate dinner. It was called The God of Animals and it (teenage reading euphemism in 3…2…) really put my life in perspective.
And in case you’re wondering…I will be passing it on. This one has already made the rounds through my family and will now be introduced to a teacher…hopefully to be passed along once again.
1 comment:
Plato's works are FABULOUS, thank you very much. *glances at her copy of The Symposium and pats it reassuringly* But I agree with what you said about a fiction book being a thesis. It's a thesis of character most of the time for me. Like "hey, don't forget that some people think this way" or sometimes it raises the question of "is it BETTER to live this way?".
And I agree with your ideas on communication. I wrote a whole AP Comp essay on that! You'll have to read it sometime. XD
Love!
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