I love to read.  Because I read so much in my professional life, I limit my recreational reading to novels and science fiction. When I am reading recreationally, I generally choose books that would be considered “light reading.”

I recently finished the novel, “How to Read a Book.” While it was easy prose to read, the book raised a lot of questions for me to consider. Several of which I want to share. For this blog I want to share the first question the author broached that made me sit back and think.

Why do people tell and listen to stories?

I thought about this question for a long time. What is it about a book that makes me want to read the story it tells? Or watch a movie or a television show?  For me I believe that it might be a way to escape the real world, for a while, and become part of someone else’s story.

I also believe that by reading, I am continuing to learn, in the most gentle of ways, about others’ experiences. For example, I have taken many classes about the Holocaust. I have recently read, however, several novels which occurred during the Holocaust. While the novels were fiction, they based on real events.  By reading these books, I learned much more about individual experiences during that horrific time in our history.

What are your thoughts?