When I was growing up, I cannot tell you how many lectures, sermons, and morally high-toned talks I heard as a kid about escapism. I still am not entirely sure why so many people are against it, but there are people who will bend your ear at any hour on the subject. In all seriousness, I’ve genuinely never understood what could be so bad about escaping present circumstance through the vehicle of story, since escapist reading is what I heard spoken against most often. My Dad didn’t always like to see me reading, because it was his opinion that I was wasting time.
Yesterday I was on the author website of one of my favorite pairs of fantasy writers and I read hundreds – literal hundreds – of comments about scenes and books of those authors which were their favorites, which they considered “comfort reads.” And I hugged each word of the Book Devouring Horde to my heart.
One of the greatest things about being An Old is that you read what you want, you escape when you can, and you enjoy the realm of books and comfort reads for what it is – sheer joy.
like a book
she named it frigate
but on smooth-gliding train tracks
a story moves me