Hello bookworms, do you ever get that sentiment during a book where you just know it’ll make an impact? You don’t know how, or why exactly, and how you will change, but the book is so particular, perhaps only unique to you, making it even more perfect. How does one move on? As a reader, I’ve been blessed enough to experience this more than once, but it’s a feeling that is still so rare; you know it when it happens. Especially since I know the rare occurrence, it makes the reading experience even more distinctive, almost like a fever dream.

When I feel like this, it makes me want to change. Not in the wrong way, where I feel dissatisfied with who I am or how I operate. But it fuels me. Lights a fire, one that is so similar to the adrenaline I get after a run. Whether it be a temporary one or not, I think that’s up to the individual and what they take from that fleeting moment. I can compare myself to a headless chicken, minus the panicked and cowardly state. More so, the sense of acting so haphazardly, looking around in a manner beyond the norm. For me, this happened most recently following my reading of Norwegian Wood. It put certain things into such a perspective that I understood how everyone perceives everything similarly yet differently. Nothing is ever “wrong,” nor is anything ever “right.” It’s just life, in it’s whole.

So when I trace this feeling down to its core, I think it’s because it makes me feel alive. It makes me feel human. And that is something I wouldn’t trade for the world. It makes me feel understood. Both like others and so unlike, cementing my beliefs and contesting them, reassuring and questioning me.

It’s mostly the sense of reassurance. Because look at them, look at these characters, read what they feel, how similar it is to you, your doubts, your fears. They can’t be so scary if I can imitate them even a little on paper, right?

It’s also amusing how we obtain this sense of wonder and curiosity. It’s almost like we are outside our body, wondering HOW one book could drastically change your perspective. It’s almost like it hasn’t. I don’t think anything holds that much power. To truly change who you are. I assume such drastic changes can occur, but the individual must do them. So, we only get a moment of awareness before returning to what we’ve always known.

Another feeling about reading I ADORE is that when you get so lost in one, you almost feel as though you wrote it. It’s not even that my brain is unaware of the fact that I haven’t published this. It’s just that I’m convinced there must be some external factor, a little goddess, an angel, that sent this book to me. Wrote it for me. They introduced it to me somehow, leading to me holding it. Sometimes, I find a specific book is so definitive of the essence of my soul that perhaps I wouldn’t even be able to write it. It only makes sense that someone else wrote it for me. Make sense?

When I get into reading slumps, more than the frustration of simply being unable to read are the feelings that come with it. Missing getting lost in a novel, I settle for books that are “just okay”; you forget what it’s supposed to feel like, just like anything else in life.

Reading makes life beautiful to me. I love so many things about life and the earth. But oddly enough, when I get lost in a book and read sentences that make me feel alive, it enhances every other experience I’ve ever felt. When I read the words that my favourite authors, the masters of their craft, compose. When I read a sentence so beautifully written, it genuinely makes me want to cry. I feel so joyful. I can relate to whatever they are referring to, or I know I want to go out and live it. I know life can be as beautiful as they describe it. And it is. I know this.

This is the oddest post I’ve maybe ever written. I may say this each time, but this was quite a haphazard brain dump. I just wanted to let the universe know how much I appreciate the presence of books. Don’t take them away from me…pretty please.

Thanks for reading ★