We often hear that readers read books to escape, but I think it’s more complex than that. I think, sure, if we had to describe succinctly the allure of reading that would be it.
I’ve been a writer for decades. And if I it weren’t for personal health issues*, I would climb up to the attic and retrieve the tattered spiral bound notebook that contains my poems and stories from second grade.** That’s the oldest surviving record of my relationship with words— although I clearly remember the ashen yellow, wide ruled (with the dotted line) composition paper from Mrs. Brown’s first grade classroom, and oversized pencils scraping across metal desks. I bet I wrote some creative sentences on that paper.
What if… the commitment to reading comes from a desire to explore new topics, push our own boundaries and feel new emotions? What if the communal experience between book, author and reader forces us to expand our minds and deal with our own shit in new ways?
Currently, as publisher here at Parisian Phoenix, I am working with oral storyteller Larry Sceurman on his second book, a fiction anthology called Coffee in the Morning. I also launched— yesterday— Thurston D. Gill Jr.’s The Phulasso Devotional (order here from Amazon or contact us for direct sales) which combines spirituality and security, not security as in “are you secure in your relationship with the Lord?” (though it does base itself in that), but security as in “are you and your loved ones facing danger from the physical world?”
Just in these two titles, I am forced to examine my own spirituality and relationship with the Universe’s Powers-that-Be and how to be a good person and still be safe via Thurston and challenge my perception of others and the world around me through the fictionalized observations of Larry Sceurman.
Isn’t that why we read?
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