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article, books, Harry Potter, imagination, psychology, reading, the onion, travel, writing
Books Don’t Take You Anywhere – Excerpt from article
“For years, countless educators have asserted that books give readers a chance to journey to exotic, far-off lands and meet strange, exciting new people,” Education Secretary Richard Riley told reporters. “We have found this is simply not the case.”
According to the study, those who read are not transported to any place beyond the area in which the reading occurs, and even these movements are always the result of voluntary decisions made by the reader and not in any way related to the actual reading process.
This is an excerpt from the ‘Books Don’t Take You Anywhere’ article. An enthralling article written by The Onion. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Even though The Onion write comical pieces of ‘Ground breaking news’ I reallly enjoyed this article. It brings in perspective (and it’s absolutely hilarious! *knee-slapping laughter erupts*). If there is a grain of truth in this witty article it’s that reading is, almost entirely, an internal experience.
Sadly (in my opinion), to some people reading is boring and they feel like they are going no where. Why does it happen that when I read I get transported to that world? Some books don’t transport me (the ones I don’t like :P). Harry Potter had me bound to it’s world so much so that I preferred it than my own.
Can people who weren’t readers as children/teenagers still engage in full-blown imaginative worlds if they start later? I think so but at the same time I know a lot of my enthusiasm for different worlds rose from my adolescence (which wasn’t that long ago…). That vibrant, imaginative and curious desire to be taken elsewhere is what clips me onto the book. Then it can take me wherever it wants.
Reading takes me places, many places. So does writing. It teaches me the skills and life lessons of the characters I read from. It allows me to self reflect and explore who I am and the society I exist in. It provides me an escape from reality to a fictional world that can sometimes, ironically, feel more real than reality. Reading does transport me, does it transport you?
– Ermisenda Alvarez
Ermilia 
It is sad. It’s sadder that it’s so funny and even sadder still that I laughed so hard. Reading fiction is such a magical experience. I remember Horton had me on the edge of my seat once upon a time, or well at least the spooky pale green pants did.
I crave the feeling of writing another world and whisking readers from their chairs into it, to live in the pages or on the screen the way I lived in my dream. If through my words readers can narrowly miss a subway train, or swim the Atlantic at 113 years old… the only greater thrill in life is for one reader to come back and tell me about something I didn’t know was there.
Five thousand years ago our ancestors saw a dream. They squeezed together the leaves of plants to form the first pages. Many of those first pages were used for recording laws and scriptures. But I think the dreamers saw beyond the dogma. I think they knew that it was the stories they told their children at night, and told each other around their campfires, and over their kitchens… that it was those words that would burst forth and on those pages teach others to dream.
Writing transports me. It shares a dream I think was always meant to live. Reading transports me. I live a life I think I was always meant to live and learn to dream again.
Very eloquently expressed. To be able to take readers on the journey I have been taken on by other writers would be a great feat. I hope I have in the past and that I am only getting better in time. I feel like I have lived so much more because of the amount I read, I get to experience being so many people, living through so many events. It opens my eyes and mind. I like your words on the ancestors and the theme of dreams. It’s a very good point and for those who don’t read, they can go on a similar experience through their dreams which take them on a journey whether or not they want to. Reading is definitely, as you described, magical.
I thought it was hilarious to, as you said it’s sadder because it’s true. 😀 Thanks for writing down your thoughts and sharing them with us.
Good fiction does transport me and has since I was wee. I have always been, in my imagination, the extra character that no one mentions but who is nonetheless in the thick of the action, tho one who may not be as important as the heroes and heroines but who nonetheless is always there, making the odd remark, leaning on her sword, standing just behind and to the left of the captains of the tale.
So I have always tried to write from that place of transport.
The Harry Potter books, however, never took me any further than my chair. I gave up on them. They’re second rate. Okay to be fair to JKR, she has: 1] sufficient talent for a degree of success; 2] a propensity for working hard (never a bad thing!); 3] some good ideas; 4] bloody good PR; 5] the good luck to have been in the right place at the right time. But an honorary degree from Edinburgh University? The Légion D’Honneur? PUH-LEASE!
(You’ll get used to this. My ongoing battle with my hordes of friends who idolise JKR is somewhat of a trademark of mine.)
Now, the writer-for-younger-readers who does it for me, and who has done so for all my life, is Alan Garner [unofficial web site: http://alangarner.atspace.org/ ]. Of course I can see how his first novel, ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’, has signal after signal that he has read Tolkien and Lewis, but by the time you get to ‘The Owl Service’ you become aware of just how wonderful a writer he is. To me, JKR has a long way to go before she catches with AG, and frankly I don’t think she will ever reach his level. Of course with her bank balance she doesn’t need to. I’ll grant her commercial success.
Damn… I’m hi-jacking this thread.
M
Don’t worry about hi-jacking it, it’s always great to hear your point. There are pros and cons with any author, I love the Harry Potter series because of the complexity of the story and because I also grew up with it. Putting that aside… I think you made a good point about where do ‘readers’ stand in their stories. I never really thought of it the way you have. I generally sit within the mind, like a brain within a brain if it’s first person. If it’s third person I generally sit on their shoulder, at least I think I do? It’s quite a mind boggling thing to think about, I never have before hand. Thanks for raising that point, it made me think! 😀
I never really thought about this either. I try to become one of the characters who feels like me.
That’s another good approach but I generally don’t place myself in their position… hmm… Now I am going to be conscious of this when I read a book. Haha. ^^
I would find it sad if I were not taken away by the fiction I read. It is an escape and I get very involved with the characters, though I really never gave it any thought how I view myself. I’m just kind of there.
I can see how someone who is very cut and dry, black and white, and stick to only the facts,type personality would have trouble letting themselves be lifted to another plane. It is not within their makeup.
That works for them, but would never work for the rest of us whose imagination leads us anywhere we please.
I agree, I think it comes down to imagination. If you’re uptight and ‘stick to the facts’ as you stated there is no way you can be taken to another world. It’s important to let yourself go sometimes. If you are able to suspend your disbelief for a movie than I don’t get why people don’t do the same for a book and let themselves get taken away by the magic of the story. Thanks for sharing your opinion!
Movies don’t really leave much room for imagination.
I think that depends on the movie but most mainstream ones don’t. But even so, you have to suspend your disbelief. You have to say ‘okay for the next two hours I am going to just pretend that in the future humans will find a planet with great big blue people who can connect to their world through their wormy tail.’ Some people don’t get ‘into’ movies while some do, I think it’s similar to books in that way. For some people once they have finished the movie, it’s done. For others (especially children) the world of the movie follows them long after the movie. Books demand a lot more imagination but you can’t enjoy a movie properly if you don’t get sucked into that world either. 🙂 At least, that’s what I think.