“We Read to Know We Are Not Alone” – C.S. Lewis

This is perhaps one of my most favourite quotes from a brilliant re-telling of C.S. Lewis’ later life as a teacher at Oxford, the kleenex-required movie Shadowlands. In the movie Lewis shares the quote above with a serious young university student who falls asleep in his class. Lewis soon learns that this student is spending his evenings reading voraciously. He can’t help himself. Plot, character, everything, just suck him in and he is transported.  Reading is like that isn’t it?  I’ve been thinking a lot about the act of reading this week as I’ve been utterly sucked into The Hunger Games in an attempt to finish the book before seeing the movie. It seems that all life stops around me and time is suspended as I read this surprisingly good story. My mind finds it easy to picture the characters, the setting and I wonder if the movie will match my imagination? I hope so!

This morning I was reminded of the power of good writing and how it can transport you when I visited one of my favourite blogs, Brain Pickings.  The author Maria Popova has a remarkable sense of smart, articulate curation. As Maria writes “Brain Pickings is a human powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise…” I’m never disappointed when I find an article suggested by Maria.  Today I found a recent reading list generated by Maria and one book she recommended that is now on my “nightstand” (read iPad), is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.  In the book, Anne seems to agree with C.S. Lewis about the magic of good writing and our often unrecognized purpose for reading. As Anne writes: “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

Ok, I’m off to feed my soul with a good book!  Before I go, in case you were wondering, the photo above is from my New York Public Library photo adventure. I thought it would be apropos here. I edited it with my new favourite go-to free photo editing website, PicMonkey, from the good folks who brought us Picnik, the recently shuttered site with a keen sense of humour. Check out PicMonkey if you need a quick photo edit or enjoy transforming your shots into works of art. You will not be disappointed!

Enjoy your Sunday!