Recently, I contacted some of my favorite authors, publishers, and other book-blog-worldly people to find out the answer to the question we ALL want to know:
What do YOU love about books?
To my surprise, I actually received some answers!
“A good book is like a system upgrade for your brain and a software upgrade for your heart.”
Jamie Ford, author of Songs of Willow Frost and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“I guess I love the way books can comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
Koren Zailckas, author of Mother, Mother
“That they are passports into another mind, another soul.”
Junot Diaz, author of This is How You Lose Her & The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“I love the sense of discovery embedded in a great book, of being transported to a place or vision or idea I never would have found on my own. I love the Aha! moment.”
Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Garbology
“I love that books and stories shepherd me into sleep and dreams every night. I’ve been a bedtime reader my whole life. There is something almost sacred about the quiet time when I shut out the real world and enter the land of imagination, where I can follow a character to any corner of the world.”
Meg Medina, author of Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass
“I love that books can take me places far away from my day-to-day and introduce me to so many interesting and often inspiring people.”
Ana Paula de Lima, at Touchstone Books
“The thing I love about books is how they can transport you to a different time and place, in a complete and mentally persuasive way that can’t be done with visual media.”
Jason Pettus, Owner of CCLaP
“What I love most about books is the way their words whisk you away while the turning of their pages keeps you grounded.”
Lori Hettler, Marketing Director, CCLaP
“I love books because through them I can experience other places both real and not, without leaving the comfort of my own home. But mostly I love them simply because I love stories.”
Suey, co-head of Bloggiesta
“I considered answering this question with one word, ESCAPE, but then I realized the truth is much more complex than that. I do use books as an escape, certainly, but I also love them for the way they bring people together, in the form of book clubs and the book blogging community.
Books have given me a career and my dream of having my own business and working from home. Books have widened my social circle in real life and online. Books have deepened my relationships with my kids, when they were babes in my lap and even now as teenagers. Books have taken me places I have never been, taught me things, made me think, helped me work out complex emotions, amused me, lifted my spirits, calmed me down, fired me up.
When someone tells me they’re not into books, I always think (and sometimes say), “Maybe you just haven’t found the right book.” And my next thought inevitably is, “Please, let me help you with that!”
I’m a book matchmaker; it’s what I do best. I love books.”
Lisa Munley, co-founder of TLC Book Tours
“I love a book even before I even know if it contains a good story! It is the potential that rests in your hand – the promise of an experience you’ve not had before. Remember the old TV commercial for a soaking bath soap? “Calgon… Take me away!” 🙂 There, I’ve dated myself, but that sense of wonder wells up each time I caress the cover of a book with which I have yet had the opportunity to visit.
A book serves as a portal to another place, time, or circumstance that can suspend our own lives, distract us, and entertain. With my chosen genre of historical fiction for both the twin sisters of reading and writing, I also hope to learn something among the entertainment – call it ‘edu-tainment’ ! 🙂 More significantly, books provide a mirror where fine writers can depict society, it’s ills & virtues, and the conflict & response of the individual within the parameters of that culture, then hold up that mirror for the reader to examine themselves.
Not only the ‘hows’ of the weaving of a character through the maze of the book (the entertainment certainly), but also in the mirror, rests the hazy ‘whys.’ If we, as readers now, can see hints reflected as to the ‘whys’ of life within any story, and pause to reflect as a result of that book, we take a significant step as human beings as the search for ‘why’ rests beneath the cloak that covers all our shoulders.
Oh yes, I love a good book…”
David-Michael Harding, author of How Angels Die, Cherokee Talisman, & The Cats of Savone
What do YOU love about books?
Did you write a book love-ish post for this week?
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