Quote of the Day: Why Read?

Currently reading, like, so currently reading--that I checked it out of the library at 5pm and only got to page 64 on the way home. I'm think I'm the first to check this American edition out of my library. The spine is so stiff and the book even smells new. It's like finding a perfect meadow of freshly fallen snow and getting to decide if you are going to leave your tracks, or walk around it and leave it undisturbed.

Via here

'People are better in books,' she muttered ...

'But they're not real,' he said, as though that would put an end to the discussion.

Real. What was so great about reality? ... With books, she could be whoever she wanted, wherever she wanted. She could be touch, beautiful, charming; she could come up with the perfect line at the perfect moment, and she could...experience things. Real things. Things that happened to real people.

In books, people were charming and friendly, and life followed certain set patterns. If a person dreamed of doing something, then you could be certain that, by the end of the book, they would almost certainly be doing that very thing. And they would find someone to do it with. In the real world, you could be almost certain that person would end up doing absolutely anything other than what they had dreamed of.

'They're meant to be better than reality,' she said, 'Bigger, funnier, more beautiful, more tragic, more romantic.'

'So in other words, not realistic at all,' said Tom. He made it sound as though she had been talking about some romantic schoolgirl fantasy about heroes and heroines and true love.

'When they are realistic, they're more realistic than life. If It's a story about a meaningless, gray, normal day, then it'll be much more meaningless and gray than our own gray, meaningless day.'

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katrina Bivald, pg. 49