A plea for you to read books

The first essay to mention Gilmore Girls

“I live in two worlds, one is a world of books.”

I remember memorizing that line while sitting on a worn-out couch in the back room of my high school black-box theatre. We were studying monologues and, as the rest of my classmates passed around a bag of weed gummies, I was deep in the script I’d chosen from my favourite show of all time, Gilmore Girls.

Rory is graduating high school and this line becomes the thesis of her valedictorian speech. As she faces a time of great change and uncertainty—going off to college—she revisits the adventures she’s had with Moby Dick and other classic characters. Books taught her about the world and reading took her on a journey that couldn’t be replicated by city bus.

I’m not a very good bookworm, and frequently my world of books lies stagnant and dust covered. But when my wifi is down, or when the real world feels too overwhelming, I crack a new spine and, pen in hand, dine on narratives I hope can teach me little more about the real world to which I am heavily committed.

I read a lot of non-fiction, usually about leadership or religious topics, but sometimes I open up a story in the truest sense of the word. And months ago, I found—buried in one titled A Minor Chorus about a master’s student struggling through their thesis—the greatest reason to read.

As evidenced in recent posts, I’m in the middle of discovering what I want to do and why I want to do it.

And unassumingly, on page 19, there it was. The character found themselves in the book world, facing a similar dilemma to the one I’ve encountered in human existence. So similar in fact, that I grabbed a pen and copied out the entire quote.

“Writing is fundamentally a social act. I write because I've read and been moved into a position of wonder. I write because I’ve loved and been loved. I want to find out what "we" or "us" I can walk into and build a roof over. To hold hands with others really. To be less alone.”

These lines, written crookedly on a torn out notebook page, have found their final resting place on the wall next to my bedside table. When I wake up for a day filled with storytelling, I’m reminded of the reasons why I write.

Books are beautiful because if they don’t take us on vivid journeys aboard the Pequod, then they are bound to at least show us more about interpreting and experiencing the world.

My experience was finding a line so relatable it could have been written by me. How is your world of books doing? Do you need a dust buster?