In the quiet morning hours, or as I fade off to sleep at night, I cuddle up with a good novel.
This book is my world, my quiet time away from the din and discordance of the everyday world, but it’s also a way to explore the world in imaginative new ways.
There’s nothing that beats it.
I get lost in worlds wholly created by an author, imagined but containing truths about life, incisively commenting about life, reproducing it in beautiful new ways, putting me in the mind of another human being, grabbing my heart and dragging it through the thrill of falling in love or the dull numbness of divorce or the fear of being found out, giving me the power of flight or omniscience or magic, confessing about guilty deeds and crimes and affairs, taking me into richly reimagined periods of history, helping me time travel and space travel and regular travel into new lands, showing me how other people live in helplessness, in slavery, in squalor, in power and luxury, in prostitution and presidency, making the mundane seem magical and the magical seem possible.
This is why I read.
Reading has been shown to make us more empathetic people, but it also helps us learn to sit still for long without distractions, and gives us a break from the pull of smartphones and the online world.
Reading is one of my favorite habits, and though once in a while I slip away from it, I always come back.
