Holly and Her Naughty eReader by Julianne Spencer

Author:Julianne Spencer [Spencer, Julianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Amazon: B00AMNNTIA
Published: 2012-12-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

I left Vivian’s office and drove aimlessly in the rental car for a while. I didn’t want to go back to the Wyndham without my Kindle. I felt like it would be a cold, empty place, and had no interest in arriving there until it was time for me to sleep.

I landed at a Barnes & Noble.

It felt like I was stepping into another life.

All these beautiful books—just eighteen months ago, a bookstore like this one was my favorite place in the world to be. But the Kindle had changed all of that, even before it had become a magic portal to a not-so-virtual realm of fantasy and play (lots of play, God I wanted to have it in my hands and be on my way to play with Christoph again).

I went to the literature section and pulled down a copy of Life of Pi. Flipping through the pages, feeling the soft paper on my fingers, looking at the font, I felt nostalgic for the first time I read the book in paperback. A young man cast away at sea with a motley crew of zoo animals as companions. An outrageous adventure that, along the way, makes us think about the biggest questions of all—that’s a fine, fine book.

I flipped to chapter 1 and read the first few sentences, wondering if I would find myself in the body of a young man from India.

Nothing happened though. Nothing other than the magic of reading a book. It was fun, actually, to let the words build an image in my mind, to enjoy the sound of their poetry. With my wacky Kindle, I wasn’t really reading this way anymore. I was getting entirely immersed in the world with all my senses, but in this old-school reading session on a paper page in an actual bookstore, I was having to do it the old fashioned way. I was having to use my imagination.

I spent a few more minutes reading Life of Pi, then I put it back on the shelf and kept browsing.

Water for Stone, The Night Circus, The Corrections, Gold—I spent an hour pulling down some of my favorite titles and letting the author have her way with me (or his). That’s how Stephen King described fiction writing: mind control. You sit down as a reader and consent to let the author take control of your thoughts for a time.

I like telling that one to my students. It gets them thinking about how amazing this thing is that we do. Books and reading, as well as all the other forms of art, are about mind control. We step away from the world we know for a time and let someone have at our thoughts. If that someone is skilled, we enjoy the experience and come away from it a little wiser about the human condition. Reading broadens our comprehension of the world. It allows us to see things more clearly from someone else’s point of view.

I tell my students that I became an English teacher because I wanted to bring about peace on earth.

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