Ink and Image

"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying:Let's not forget this"-Dave Eggers

Five years ago I wrote about why I felt that the written word was important. I was looking at Instagram Thursday and happened to see one of my best friends talking about a recent read she'd started and all of this is the result of seeing that picture. Before you think that I'm dissing technology and television in general let me be quite clear to get this message across;I enjoy television. I watch a good amount of it, particularly police procedural dramas. There isn't anything wrong with watching a screen for awhile. But, here's the thing, it is rare that I can watch a show and remember that for years down the road. With the majority of my books I can pull them from my shelf and tell you how I got it and when I read it for the first time.

We've gravitated towards the ease of television even more with the addition of streaming services that can pump all manner of things for your eyes at the push of a button. Sitting down in front of a screen is far easier than opening a book. You can multitask while watching a favorite show, doing that with a book is not as easily replicated. Why? When you read your brain has to focus on forming those words into a picture. Watching a show doesn't produce the same work. You just simply put your eyes on it, and it does all the work for you. Television requires no imagination and little thought unless you're trying to catch a killer. A book makes you think. It forces you to use your imagination and put effort into focusing on the words that become people and worlds.

In the last few years we've leaned heavily on letting a screen entertain us and forgotten the simple but powerful ability of ink on a page. Authors create worlds with their fingertips but in truth it is the reader that gives a story life. Parent's read their children bedtime stories and those stories are often the base on which a life of reading is built upon. Read to them while they are young and as they grow they learn that pages hold a mystery to be uncovered better than any child's television show. Books allow them to be in control. If you want to develop your child's brain, don't give them a screen, give them a book. I promise you that teaching a child to read will have a far greater impact on their life than an hour of screen time ever will.

Dismissing a book is easy. Books are expensive. You can pay for a month of any streaming service for what most books cost unless they are purchased second hand. Why limit yourself to a book that you will read once when you can purchase a subscription that gives you thousands of shows and movies? Well that is an easy question to answer;You will likely regret sitting for several hours watching something but you will not so easily regret being still to read a book. Being sedentary is far different when you are feeding your brain. Television doesn't do that nearly as well as a book will. The best books will be revisited like old friends. They invite you to take a trip, get lost for a little while, and you don't need to leave your chair.

Hogwarts,Middle-Earth,Narnia, Panem, Alagaesia these are worlds that spring to life from the moment you crack them open. Adventures await you here and they can be returned to again and again. This is where you discover a magic unlike anything technology will ever offer. No matter how much science advances in the future the creation of worlds that start with mere words cannot be trumped. Books matter. In them you discover friendship, sacrifice, bravery, and hope. There good triumphs over evil and thinking for yourself is how you decide between the two.

In the end as J.K. Rowling says through a sage Albus Dumbledore "Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic." A magic that a screen can never fully replicate. So I beg you to read. Read widely. You won't regret it. If our coming generations are so wrapped up in technology that they don't read we've failed them.