Books are a uniquely portable magic.Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I want to write about books today. I wanted to start with this quotation from Stephen King.
Books may well be the only true magic.
I agree with Alice Hoffman. The only true magic. Just think! What else can suddenly change the mood of a person. Being happy when you are unhappy, calming down when you are angry. When you take your book and start with that first page, you will travel to a different world. It takes us away from the world we live in and from when we live. We turn to other characters in a time of another life.
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.William Styron, Conversations with William Styron
Books presents us to experience of several lifes. Sometimes pages of a book take you to 1600s. You open your eyes in Istanbul, more precisely at that time in Kostantiniye. As you walk from Galata to Azapkapı, those stony roads sink your feet. The seagull voices ring in your ear as the boat goes over the Golden Horn. Gunpowder appears in front of you while you are fighting on European soil. You can get drunk in Balat's bowls while you come to your nose with a coal smell of a cigarette in Galata. You will be lost in the narrow and sloping streets of Karaköy. In short, you live in those lines, you are a part of the novel. Suddenly you are one of those people in the street. Or you meet a Robopsychologist for the first time in your life. It's like she tells you her story face to face. You dream about the robots. Are robots just a slave for us, or can robots be a comrade for us? you will try to answer the question in your mind. Pages again witness different lives. You try to solve a murder, you run your little gray cells with our intelligent detective Poirot. Books make the tale real. For a moment it becomes real, only for you. You remembered the burned books. Years later they were free, but what is the benefit? You will feel sorry for the books in the flames.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
You will be in the leading role of thousands of lives. You will travel with the letters there as well.
That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Yes, without ever leaving your place... I made a few sentences about a few books that came to mind right now. But if we think about it, who knows what we have felt with the books, what characters have been impersonated. We met different people and lived different lives.
It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there, it is part of us.Carlos María Domínguez, The House of Paper
I will now prepare a reading list for 2018. I would be pleased if you also want to share. Thank you for reading.