Happy Star Wars Day!

Why Read?

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

– Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times? ... As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar."

– Cornelia Funke, Inkspell  

"Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book."

– Stephane Mallarme

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."

– C.S. Lewis

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

– Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."

– Gustave Flaubert

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

– Charles William Eliot

"We read to know that we are not alone."

– C.S. Lewis

"'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

"It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."

– Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

All of these quotes are from the phenomenal site Good Reads, where I have only skimmed the surface of 1,307 quotes about reading. These are all reasons why I love to read, as well.

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There's a theorist named Evgeny Morozov who writes about something called "net delusion." This concept is that the world's population has become naive with the invention of the Internet. People believe the Internet can fix anything, is stronger than anything, has power over anything. Morozov pities those of us who believe that sites like Twitter and Facebook can overpower government or tyranny. I, like Morozov, pity those who believe in the absolute power of the Internet.

The Internet is only as powerful as the people who use it. Those who wield the power of the Internet have the power to make change. Just as the invention of the printing press. Alone it holds no power. When a printer uses the press, only then is there power in the object. The printing press began a revolution around the world, just as the Internet has. They are mere catalysts in a human's evolutionary curiosity. "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Well, certainly guns help in killing people. But, this is true. It is a tool we use. The printing press is a tool we use. The Internet is a tool we use.

Books are tools we need. Without them, there is too much untapped knowledge. Is it naive of me to think that books have power? Am I one of Morozov's delusional people? Can I sit here and say that one of the necessities of life is to read, and in reading one becomes powerful? I am, albeit, biased. But, when reading, a reader gains a more enlightened mind. A reader gains knowledge. If "knowledge is power," then the Internet is powerful. But, those who control it are even more so.

Excuse the tired ramblings of a weary college student. I found myself in need of an outlet of sorts. Perhaps this makes sense... Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps I'll return to this post and edit the living day-lights out of it... Perhaps not.

"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom." – Roald Dahl

Happy Reading!

-- Isabel