Truth in Fiction

I love to read. It is one of my favorite pastimes. With the job I currently have I have been able to do more of it. As the receptionist - I sit at my desk for 9 hours and when it gets slow, I read. It's a fabulous thing - even if I do have a small headache almost all the time from the eyestrain. Now that my children are away I have a lot more time to read at home - even though I haven't been. For some reason it has become craft month and my living room may never be the same. :)

However - I must say that reading can be very educational. I'm not talking about textbooks or history books or biographies (even though those are all great books). I am talking about fiction. My particular genre that I most enjoy is science fiction and fantasy. There is so much that can be done and said in them - lessons taught, morals learned etc. Some are more obvious like C. S. Lewis, some I dont think even tried to be educational but are anyway. Think of the myriad things you learned from Dr. Seuss, and Ray Bradbury, and Orson Wells. Well I did anyway.

I think of the political and moral lessons I learned in The Sword of Truth series, the strategic and tragic lessons from the Ender series, and the wonder and joy of it I still get when I vist the world of Pern. Stories are meant to speak to us - and they speak to us differently I think. Sometimes I know that the things that speak to me - resonate and speak truth to me - are things that really are just part of the story and not necessarily meant that way. Certain phrases I want to highlight and bookmark the way I do my scriptures and say yes, see that is it! that is what I was trying to say but couldn't find the words - that is what I was feeling but couldn't express. Other times I read something and think to myself - wow, I never thought of it like that before and a whole new way of thinking opens up to me, a whole new world of believing is suddenly there to poke and prod at and see how it might fit.

Then there are the simple things - bits of trivia I wouldn't have bothered with - like did you know Wednesday is Odin's day? If you go back enough that is one of the roots of it. Little did I know that hump day belongs to the All-Father. He must cringe at the thought :) Or how reading a book in a very similiar but definitely alternate universe can make me spend as much time on wikipedia looking up things like the Crimean War and Duke Wellington as I do reading the book - trying to find out how much was real and how much changed for the story and in doing so I learn more history than I did in school.

Every time I read something new I have to be open to new thoughts, new worlds, new lives, new hopes and dreams. And every time I do - I learn something - about the book, about the world, or just about myself. I believe this is a good thing. We always have to be open to new ideas and ways of being or else we get stuck in a rut and might miss something amazing - even if it only affects us.

And maybe three months without my husband has made me a bit strange and far too much time to ponder other things to try and avoid missing him. :)