Lovely morning. The other day, for the first time in a long time, I went to the bookshop to pick up books that I had ordered. Buying books has become so convenient these days that we can just press the buy button on a book we’ve always wanted to buy, or a book we’ve seen recommended that has piqued our interest, and have it delivered to our door the next day.
But sometimes I also like to go to a bookshop to experience the atmosphere and the smell of the shop, to see for myself what books are on sale, to find a book in a genre I didn’t know existed, or even just to look at the cover of a book. And I can’t tell you how exciting it is to open the cover of a book I’ve just picked up myself.
Books are the crystallisation of human knowledge. Whether it is a book by a successful businessman, a cookery book, a fashion magazine, a picture book to read with the children or, of course, a novel, each book is the product of the knowledge of the person who wrote it and the people who worked on it during their lives. We have only one life to live.
But reading a book can make us feel as if we are reliving that person’s life, or we can enter an imaginary world in a novel and experience a different personality. Reading a lot of books allows us to experience different aspects of life in a way that we could never do in the time we have to ourselves. And we can expand our own humanity through the input of the knowledge we gain by reading different books.
We can imagine more clearly and concretely how we can think and act in order to get closer to our ideal image, even if we do not act ourselves. By taking the knowledge gained from the book, interpreting it in our own way, digesting it and acting on it, we can achieve self-fulfilment, get closer to our dreams and enrich our own lives.