Happy Monday, everyone!
Today is April 23rd, which is World Book Day! And I think it’s just great that there’s a whole day dedicated to the world of reading and publishing – well, technically there are several, depending on where you happen to be situated on the globe.
I am a person who loves books – I love reading them, I love writing them, and I love to analyze them. Literature has been a part of my soul for as long as I can remember, and even when I come across a book that I don’t specifically enjoy reading, I can always find some aspect of it to analyze and think about.
Books are wonderful things because they can do so much. They can provide light entertainment, a wealth of knowledge on a particular subject, or transport you to different times and exotic places. From just reading a book, you get a whole platform of people and places that just appear in your head, and the fact that the relationships that form or the events that take place in a fictional world can have such an impact on the thought process, emotion, or even action of a reader in the real world is actually kind of amazing.
I recently studied an online World Literature course with HarvardX, and what that did was just remind me how incredible books really are. It was so intriguing to look at the history of World Literature and see the differences in both personal and political standpoints on certain subjects, and how writers from around the world reflected the culture and society in which they lived. Learning about the translation and distribution of various cultural and multi-cultural texts, and how these texts were received by the public, was absolutely fascinating.
Reading has been an active hobby of mine for many years, and as I grew up the potentially dynamic force of literature grew upon me. I have always been fascinated by the truths that can be exposed in literature; how it can either highlight the best and worst aspects of society and the human race as a whole or focus on the deepest recesses of the brain in the individual, exploring the events and emotions that make us human. It never fails to amaze me how literature can explain the mundane in a way that enables the reader to view it from a new perspective. And, with this new perspective, the reader can gain a fresh insight into humanity, or simply oneself as a human being. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty awesome to me.
So, on this World Book Day, go forth, and read!
*edited repost from original website