What do you get out of reading?
What do you get out of reading? What's your payoff?
Stories have always been a way for me to escape. Escape boredom, escape sadness, escape the normal every day, escape the real world into a world of magic, adventure, of heroes and the possible. And not only that, but stories have always been so empowering and educational.
One of my favorite tropes in stories is friendships. And I'm not just talking the mc has a best friend that pops in to tell them how wonderful they are at a moment when they need it most. I'm talking stories where friendships are key.
One of the first series that I not only liked but loved was the Lord of the Rings series. Obviously, those books are wildly successful for many reasons--action, adventure, good versus evil, succeeding against all odds, interesting and witty characters, and more--and I loved them for these things as well, but what really sold me on those books were the friendships between the characters.
The friendships in those books were unlike any I'd read up until that point. These characters loved one another so much, they all ended up sacrificing so much for their friends, even, at times, in moments when it felt like all was lost or there was no point in their loyalty to one another, they stayed true. I now call stories like these platonic love stories.
Those friendships so resonated with me, that now, even twenty plus years after reading them, I still do my best to be that kind of friend. And to this day, I still love reading books that have those amazing types of friendships in them--not matter the genre.
But books can also help us to learn about the world. Many of us in 2020 have no idea what it's like to live through a world war, and hopefully, we never will, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't understand how those things happen and how they can influence our lives. Using Lord of the Rings as an example again, we are able to step into the shoes of these characters, and learn from people who are in situations very similar to that of a world war. Sure, LOTR is still very much a story to escape into, but it's not one you walk out of unchanged, which is part of the reason it, and so many other, millions of books, are so wonderful.
So for me, the best of books are ones that not only help me to escape, but also help me to grow as a person, and to learn about the world past, present, and future.
So, dear reader, what do you get out of reading? What's your payoff?
Stories have always been a way for me to escape. Escape boredom, escape sadness, escape the normal every day, escape the real world into a world of magic, adventure, of heroes and the possible. And not only that, but stories have always been so empowering and educational.
One of my favorite tropes in stories is friendships. And I'm not just talking the mc has a best friend that pops in to tell them how wonderful they are at a moment when they need it most. I'm talking stories where friendships are key.
One of the first series that I not only liked but loved was the Lord of the Rings series. Obviously, those books are wildly successful for many reasons--action, adventure, good versus evil, succeeding against all odds, interesting and witty characters, and more--and I loved them for these things as well, but what really sold me on those books were the friendships between the characters.
The friendships in those books were unlike any I'd read up until that point. These characters loved one another so much, they all ended up sacrificing so much for their friends, even, at times, in moments when it felt like all was lost or there was no point in their loyalty to one another, they stayed true. I now call stories like these platonic love stories.
Those friendships so resonated with me, that now, even twenty plus years after reading them, I still do my best to be that kind of friend. And to this day, I still love reading books that have those amazing types of friendships in them--not matter the genre.
But books can also help us to learn about the world. Many of us in 2020 have no idea what it's like to live through a world war, and hopefully, we never will, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't understand how those things happen and how they can influence our lives. Using Lord of the Rings as an example again, we are able to step into the shoes of these characters, and learn from people who are in situations very similar to that of a world war. Sure, LOTR is still very much a story to escape into, but it's not one you walk out of unchanged, which is part of the reason it, and so many other, millions of books, are so wonderful.
So for me, the best of books are ones that not only help me to escape, but also help me to grow as a person, and to learn about the world past, present, and future.
So, dear reader, what do you get out of reading? What's your payoff?
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