Am I the only person who reads a book twice? Like you can't quite comprehend it the first time so you feel obliged to flick through those pages again in order to understand it in depth and to appreciate it with the wonder and admiration that it deserves. Surely I can't be.
Recently I've become ever more engrossed in the world of fiction. I don't know it just seems everything fictional is more striking, more poignant than the real world. It seems that within a book, simply a story, you can be affected in a way that reality never could affect you. I mean isn't it peculiar how you can empathise so strongly with Hazel in The Fault In Our Stars? You can experience that heartbreak with her simply through words. but when you think about it, there will be someone out there, struggling in real life with the same issues, same illness, same pain, but we'll never hear their story because it is not one of beautiful words, it is not a work of art or worthy of an award. It is too real, too honest, to exist anywhere other than in that person's life, And I think that's where books are strange, because they evoke emotions and feelings that our own lives never could. We learn to know a character better than ourselves, or our friends solely through words, a jumbled collection of letters created to inflict on the mind. And it's strange to think that we feel this without physically living those moments with that person yet it's much easier to comprehend because there isn't a right or wrong way to interpret it and we don't have to worry about the consequences if we don't interpret it the same way as anybody else.
For example, take Charlie in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. You could interpret him as confused and misunderstood, encompassed by the troubles of being a teenage misfit or alternatively you could understand Charlie as being seriously mentally ill, or in a multitude of different ways. You see it's all down to how you perceive it. Yet there could be a 'Charlie' walking down your corridors at school, that you could be totally oblivious to, yet you just never know. And that's because we seem to be blinded by the normalcy of illness whether physical or mental or other. We don't realise that within almost every person there is enough to write a novel, we just discount the possibility of it because our emotions aren't heightened the same way as in a book, life isn't amplified the way a fictional story is.
So back to what i said about reading a book twice. Sometimes the first time you read a book you don't understand it, you feel disjointed from the characters, the same way you can do with people in real life situations. But then you reread it, twice, three times, maybe more. You take time to digest every word and find yourself pondering the consequences and possibilities beyond the final chapter, sometimes you even fall in love a little, with the words, emotions or even characters (*cough* Augustus Waters *cough*) and you become completely immersed in every aspect of that person's story. Imagine how much nicer the world would be if we took the time to understand, to focus on the novels and stories of those people around us, imagine if we looked at the people around us with the same care we take when turning the pages of our favourite book. And I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes you have to look back at a situation before you can judge it or begin to comprehend it. The same as in a book, you have to reread the story and digest the specks of information again, so you can understand, judge or maybe even fall a little bit in love with a real life story or memory. Because as lovely as it is to escape reality and bury your head in fantasies and fables, sometimes you have to learn to deal with the rest of the world, the one that exists long after you put the book down.
Love
Georgie xx
Twitter- @geo_lawson
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E-mail- geo.leigh4@gmail.com
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