The Journey Through Books

My relationship with reading has always been a complicated one. When I had just moved to the United States, I struggled to keep up with the reading assignments I was supposed to do for school, and reading became a kind of chore which I mainly just tried to avoid. Then as my reading skills improved I started to become interested in some of the popular
teen novels like Harry Potter or Twilight. I devoured both of those. Still though, I don’t always read for pleasure; reading often feels like work. And that’s ok. That’s the main point. Reading doesn’t always have to bring pleasure to us in the stereotypical sense.
Reading serves a larger purpose in our lives. Books, at least good ones, should open our eyes to different aspects of the world which we would never otherwise be able to experience. Reading takes us on a journey to anywhere we want to go; maybe you read your way into the Civil War over summer break, then the French Revolution, and then all the way back to the Modern day struggles in the Middle East. And reading makes us feel things like the mixture of joy and despair and loneliness embedded in the pages of Cold Mountain. As readers, we become more mature, because we’ve exposed ourselves to thoughts, dilemmas, and terrors – all those things which happen each and every day around the world. Reading is not just leisure. Reading shows us the world we live in, whether good or bad, and the world that was in a way that expands our world view and makes us better citizens.

The first John Irving book I ever read was A Prayer for Owen Meany. I had peeked around in a couple of his other books before, but this was the first one I really had to analyze (and write twelve essays about). Of course, it’s John Irving, so there was large entertainment factor present (if you read his books you’ll know what I mean. If not, it may be better to
think twice first). But there’s a lot more to the book too. A Prayer for Owen Meany isn’t just about small boys with squeaky voices, it’s about the Vietnam War. It’s about the impact that a war can have on an individual, and about the power of loss – the complicated relationship between loss, unfairness, and faith. When you read a Prayer for Owen Meany you begin to understand the way a war could mess you up; the way fear and the confusion of growing up in the midst of a war can scar you and change the way you see things. That’s what makes reading more powerful, in a sense, than google and the encyclopedia. That’s why the exposure we get from reading books is so much stronger and realistic. The experience of reading is emotional. It illuminates past events and times in a
way we can relate to or understand. Does it really mean a lot to you when you read that there were about 58,000 casualties during Vietnam? You may find it shocking or kind of sad, but does it mean anything to you, just as a number. It means something when you truly understand the impact that these deaths have on people, on family members and best friends. So it means something to you when you engage in the emotions, the sadness and gloom that pervades over A Prayer for Owen Meany’s protagonist after the death of Owen
Meany. Those numbers suddenly carry more weight. Suddenly it’s not just a counting game, it’s associated with something much deeper and more personal.

And it’s not just A Prayer for Owen Meany that transports us to new places, it happens all the time. What about Night, a short book by Elie Wiesel that details his own experience of the Holocaust? I read this book in eighth grade and I read it again about two years ago. I love this book for its honesty and for the way in which it has added depth to my life by
showing me all sides of human nature. We will probably never live to see a Holocaust. That I am a million times grateful for. But we can learn from what happened during the Holocaust, not just in the sense that we memorize dates and names, but in the sense that we learn, through reading, about the loss, even the eventual numbness that Holocaust victims felt. These aren’t the kinds of emotions that someone can just tell us. These are emotions that we need to feel, in order to be able to comprehend the magnitude of something like the Holocaust. When Holocaust survivors write about how they felt, about the terror and confusion and loss. About what color the sky was and how the train smelled and what the food was like – That’s worth gold. It’s the gift we get from reading. An emotional experience and personal growth.

Reading can transform the way we think. It can open our eyes to the aspects of life and human nature that we might never be exposed to otherwise. When we read, we sit by ourselves and think. We devote our energy and thoughts to capture and understand the message that the author is trying to put forth. When we succeed, and when the author has done well, we are rewarded with a life experience, with a new way of seeing the world or a new insight about the way we humans are. Just like a “real experience” like the time you
lost a loved one and realized how much you cared or the time you succeeded at achieving a goal you had dedicated years to achieving, reading can give us some of these feelings. Reading may not actually be time travel, but it’s the best we’ve got right now. Read and it will make you wiser. You’ll know more about life, about things that have happened and people who have lived, and you’ll grow and be inspired. So choose a book – a good book, and open up to page 1.