Within its pages

The thing about books is that they’re real. And not in the sense that they aren’t a figment of my imagination. Not in the sense that they are, in fact, solid entities. No, books are even more real than that. When I pick up a book, whether it be fantasy or biography or even instruction that book comes alive to me. The girl who never really lived – I become her. I live her life, share her sorrows, and take pleasure in her joys. I see life as it was through the eyes of the WWII veteran. And the way outlined in the instruction becomes the only way to do it – unless, of course, I take the opposite point of view and argue with the book. But you see, that is exactly how it works!!! How does one argue with an object that is supposedly inanimate? How does one know and even become the little girl or the old man who may never have existed, and that I have certainly never met in the flesh? It’s because books have a life of their own. All they need is for a reader to come and open them up, and then they divulge all their secrets. Or at least enough to make us come back again and again. It does not matter if we come back to the same book or merely continue reading other books. Books are not selfish. They don’t envy the book that is worn to tatters because it has been so loved and read that it is falling apart. They all share in the joy we find in their worlds. Because they are alive.