We Are the Sum of Our Books

The Mouse in the Manger (Gennaro L. Gentile)

Blue Trees, Red Sky (Norma Klein)

Child of the Silent Night (Edith Fisher Hunter)

King of the Wind (Marguerite Henry)

Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)

The Hobbit (Tolkien)

The Trilogy of the Rings (Tolkien)

The Silmarillion (Tolkien)

The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour)

The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)

The Three Musketeers (Dumas)

My Friend Flicka (Mary O'Hare)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo)

Les Misérables (Hugo)

The Man in the Iron Mask (Dumas)

Sassinak (Anne McCaffrey)

Brainship (Anne McCaffrey)

Robin of Sherwood (Robin McKinley)

The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley)

The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley)

 

I could go on. These are the books that formed my childhood and teen years, the ones I remember most vividly, which still hold strong places in my mind and heart.

Stories are powerful parts of our lives and society; we are steeped in stories. We watch stories on TV and at the theater. We hear them on YouTube and TikTok. Facebook records bits and pieces of our stories for us and provides a platform for liking or loving the stories of our friends.

Books hold a special place in the legacy of stories. A well-written book gives us an intimate view into the lives and thoughts of the characters. Good or bad, shallow or deep, preachy or thoughtful, what we consume with our minds shapes us in much the same way that wind and water shape cliffs and canyons. A single book might make a profound impact on our minds, like a sudden rockslide, but more often, the gullies and grooves of our thoughts are formed by the repetition of themes and values. A steady diet of worldviews carves the face of our consciousness even before we realize it.

At its best, reading teaches us compassion for those who experience hardship. Books show us the Other, leading us to empathize and see that the Other is not so different after all. We recognize the injustice of Jean Valjean's sentence. We sympathize with Edmond Dantes' desire for revenge, and his horror when he realizes he has gone too far. Anne McCaffrey's Brainship books show us the rich life of the severely physically disabled. Robin McKinley and Alexandre Dumas show us the daring and heroic, and kindle in us the desire for courage, if not courage itself.

We have the chance to shape and cultivate the landscape of our minds. There is always the choice to find something that might challenge our worldview, to look at authors and stories that do not fit into the neat slots of our preferences. We have infinite chances, through books, to consider the world through eyes not our own, and risk finding new slots in the canyons of our philosophy.

There is also the responsibility to recognize the acid that will eat away and form cracks and weaknesses. It is a feast of ideas and views, a million different characters ready to put thoughts and words into us.

Just as a book or story can soften our hearts, it can harden them too. It can turn ignorance into passion or twist it into hate, and we must have the sense and reason to see it for what it is. We have the responsibility to step away from the cliff and study its face for deadly cracks. It's become popular in the past year for some to argue that books and reading aren't political. We may not read them with politics in mind, but that doesn't mean we aren't consuming the ideas and worldviews within them. This isn't about holding each and every book to a certain standard of political or moral purity. That only produces stagnant, boring morality plays. It is about analyzing our reading habits and recognizing the themes and ideas we consume, because they affect us. The ideas we take in become our thoughts and ideas. We should be able to critique even our favorite books, to recognize their flaws, where they fell short, and what they've done well. 

As authors, we are not just consuming but producing. What bit of formation are we sending into the world with our words and our themes? Far more than readers, writers need to be aware of what we are saying with each story, both implicitly and explicitly.  Are we sowing hope or despair? Are we upholding justice or looking away? Will we be pleased, when the final tale is told, to see the indelible marks of our thoughts upon others' minds? We are not just creating stories. We are shaping the thoughts of our world.