But Words are Things

It is only in books that one can lose themselves so completely that just for a little while, all else ceases to exist.

Isn't it funny how getting sucked into a book can change your mood and play with your emotions?

Do other people get so lost in books they take on the main character's feelings? If they are sick I feel I am suffering, if they are sad I feel distraught without knowing why. If they are angry, my mood is black.

Worse still is when that book is over, and there are no longer any pages left to turn. It's like an entire world died, even though it's still right there, in your hands. I call them book hangovers, because you can't bring yourself to start a new one, when the last is still fresh in your mind, and the world feels useless and grey without that book to read, like suddenly everything has become pointless. 

How can I be angry over a world that isn't even real?
But that's the magic of writing I suppose, to have such a way with words that the author can communicate these people from their heads, their triumphs and losses, their laughter and deaths. We grieve with them, their words alive, even though their creators may be long dead.
In many ways I believe that authors are the ones who have transcended death, because their souls are still right here, within those pages. We hold them in our hands, innumerable treasures, and it is for this that the greatest sadness a book can have is to never be read.

Literature is a funny thing. A powerful thing.

Lord Byron himself words it better than me:

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,      

Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces

 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;     

 ’T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses 

Instead of speech, may form a lasting link   

   Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, 

when paper — even a rag like this, 

Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.”