Letter to a Child of the Future hand/first-hand insight creates deep empathy.
Reading doubles your life, over and over. You enter other worlds and encounter different people. Are the characters just like someone you know, or perhaps they are you? The world of books is the world of imagination, both believable and unbelievable. The characters are lifelong friends, forever ready and waiting to take you by the hand and lead you into their reality. They are constants in your life, at your beck and call, always on your terms. You will never be alone with a book in your hand and words in your head. When you read a story you step into someone else’s shoes, seeing their world from their perspective. You become them. Reading gives a powerful, concentrated type of understanding. Your feelings, and the characters’ situations and emotions, mixed with a special type of literary fairy dust, make for vivid perception. Intrinsic to books, this alchemy of second-
Books are a place of safe retreat when life gets tough. Taking you out of yourself, stepping into the familiar reliable world of an old favourite provides an invaluable source of comfort and healing. Your mind escapes and returns refreshed, stronger than ever. Your world may change but the worlds in your books will not. Emma Watson says, ‘When times get really dark and times are really hard, stories give us a place where we can go, where we can rest and feel held.’ Reading emphasises life’s pattern, leading to recognition. A thrill of connection is felt on discovering that someone has read the same book as you. If all the books you have ever read were piled up in a room,
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