the Joy of Books

BOOKS

Books are my passport to other worlds. More than that they are the ticket, plane and pilot as well.

Every book has its story to tell or message to convey and acts as a stimulus to that underused part of the brain. The imagination. Just as a text book or cyclopaedia is an invitation to share experiences outside the everyday reality, even a table of logarithms provides a stimulus for a brief sojourn in another land. A land where mathematics has clawed its way from crude marks on a slate tablet to an intricate device with which to explore the universe for oneself without the invitation to mental sloth that is a calculator.

But the truly enriching books are not the knowledge based guide books to places, things and systems that enjoy the library label; FACT. The most satisfying books are those that inhabit the realm of FICTION. With these the mind is carried away from the realm of the everyday with its linear time and measly 3 dimensions into the unfettered realms of malleable time-lines and an infinite number of planes of existence.

The highlight of a modern child’s world might be seen as the artificial reality of some computer system but in order for it to work this is very rigidly defined by some computer programmer who has decided the shape, colour and size of its denizens and artefacts In the same way as a movie or TV program does. However far fetched the image produced it is 100% the product of someone else’s mind and you are merely allowed to share it. We didn’t decide that Gandalf looked like a kindly old man with white hair, good teeth and a smooth voice. The only think left to our imagination was whether or not he had B.O.

Children of my generation grew up with the much freer world of Radio where the pictures only appeared in our own heads. We were not shown what something looked like but created the image in out own minds from the sounds and words we were presented with. We could picture the exact shape and size of a dragon as it had appeared in our worst (or best) nightmares. We would decide for ourselves how its scales rubbed and banged against each other and how long each individual tooth was and yes how bad it’s breath smelt. However we were constrained by the fact that Smaug spoke with a particular smug accent and for us the sound of a troll’s head being bitten off was provided by the special effects man.

Prior to that children could read a scenario and create their own universe from it in any way they felt fit. They knew what Bilbo looked like ( a cross between a rabbit, a chimp and a child in my mind) and know how big he was compared with the long legged, gnarled featured, shiny eyed white wizard who was called Gandalf, and how Bilbo spoke with his delightful rural accent something like a cross between Somerset and Dorset.

That is the power of books for me. They free my imagination to work within the limited parameters provided by the authors. Someone once said one picture was worth a thousand words but for me a thousand words can conjure up ten thousand pictures each one subtly different to the other like the frames in a movie.

And the ultimate joy is that if our imaginations have been well enough exercised by the power of good books we can use the best book of all, a brand new exercise book, to create our own stories for ourselves and as prompts for others.

Books are irreplaceable