What really gets me in to books particularly certain novels is the experience of experiencing a multiplicity of emotions and memories, which after being experienced are stored on the book shelf. Some characters and the emotions they trigger continue their life as part of my own memories. Others are forgotten but even these continue lurking in some compartment of the mind. Looking at the book shelf is a always a source of wonder, at all the characters created by other people which became a part of my life.
Sure there is another side to reading, a somewhat escapist one. For what's the use of creating your own narrative when there are so many extraordinary stories which can be lived sometimes even more intensely than reality itself, especially when this becomes repetitive and boring.
The feeling is captured in Orhan Pamuk's The New Life:
"Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.”
On the other hand some books have a power of their own to transform our own daily lives; to be overwhelmed as Osman was one day when he read a book his whole life was changed. "Its incandescence dazzled my intellect but also endowed it with brilliant lucidity...my point of view was transformed by the book, and the book was transformed by my point of view."
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