“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
The comfort of books has always been one of my favorite pleasures over the years. I have yet to find a better quote to express their value than Carl Sagan.
At the time of launching this blog, my Audible account has me clocking in at over one thousand titles and I must admit I have a large (and embarrassing) to-be-read pile on bookshelves. Books have taken me on countless adventures and allowed me to see the world through many different characters. They have also been my comfort when utterly alone in solitude.
My thoughts on some of these titles will have a presence in this blog. This is personal enjoyment, more so to challenge myself to reflect on the books I read and consider any takeaways that I find a value to revisit and consider via posts. This is a new practice for me and I look forward to whatever form it will take.