The world is warming up like a microwave, Iraq is mired in chaos, a college student shot 32 people dead in Virginia. Who gives a damn about books any more?
And who could possibly have time to read one? The web entices us with endless newsfeeds, podcasts, blogs and chat rooms; with YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Wikipedia. Even people who visit Amazon.com don’t actually read the books. They snack on a buffet of user reviews and recommendations – then buy a memory foam pillow at a 35 per cent discount..
Bitter, bloody face-offs between reality and fantasy have traditionally been the special domain of books. Books tell us how life really is, but they also show us how to escape it, and create magical worlds to escape into. The fact that they can do both things at once has always given them a special claim on our hearts and minds. But now, it seems, the internet is usurping them. So, how can books fight back…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/come-dear-reader-fall-under-a-spell/2007/04/20/1176697087488.html
Sophie Gee’s first novel The Scandal of the Season will be published by Random House in May
Yes, I spend much of my spare time surfing the internet, and I’m a newly converted facebook addict, wikipedia is the new source of all knowledge and youtube gives me my kicks sometimes. But reading…. ahhhh that is another world entirely. To sink into a story, to totally lose consciousness of ones self and immerse one self into another character, another place, another world, another reality … for that you need a book! The smell and feel of paper, the pages and pages and pages of words, just words, no distractions, no pop up windows, no pictures to shatter the fantasy, just words crafted into sentences and paragraphs and a story that becomes a book, sometimes a series ….yes….it is like falling under a spell. Magic, beauty, love, bliss, escapism … call it what you will. Thank God for books!