Audrey Rae-
You like books.
No, seriously, you like books.
Like, a lot.
You get the idea.
This is a trait that has been encouraged by both your mother and me. We both have a passion for reading. In fact, as I write this, all I’m really thinking about is the fact that I only have 40 more pages until I finish Inkspell and how I should just skip this letter and go read. The problem with that is that if I finish Inkspell, then I have to start Inkdeath, and then this letter will have been lost in the banks of my memories.
You’re very much the same way. We can’t just read one book, honestly. No matter how often I say that “we can read one book before bedtime” it always turns in to at least two. If you’re running around the house rambunctiously, it only takes the offer of reading to get you to stop what you’re doing, calm down, and sit on my lap. But, of course, you also get a stack of six or seven books to read. Therefore, if I want to use that tactic, I have to be willing to read that many Dora, Froggy, and Sandra Boynton books.
I won’t lie to you, I absolutely love this passion that you have. It may not be my favorite thing in the world to read copious amounts of your books to you, but the fact that you love books is something that I am very proud of.
I write you this letter now to warn you. Someday, something shiny and colorful with a fancy screen and music and actors and whatever else is going to be on your “want” list. It might be a TV for your own room or an iPod/iPad/iPersonal-Chip-Installation or whatever else all of your friends have. Or maybe even Google Glass (is it a thing now? Right now, in 2013, I’m seriously so curious about it…but I digress). That’s all okay, I’m not saying that electronics are bad or that you need to go luddite, but I just want you to know that none of these things will EVER offer you what a book can offer you.
You see, books only have the limitation of imagination. Whatever an author can envision can be put onto a page. There are no limits of visuals or sounds, only the limit of our minds eye. Lovecraft can get away with calling a horrific monster “indescribable”. Tolkein can make you feel the Misty Mountains under your feet and smell the age of Fanghorn Forest. These are things that don’t translate to a screen, and never will.
In a nearly literal sense, books are a vehicle. The moment you immerse yourself within one, you travel. The location you land in isn’t exactly what the set director wants to portray or only seen at the angle the director wants. It’s whatever picture you paint in your mind with the words the author has given you. One of my favorite things about books is talking to someone who saw the world in a completely different way than I did.
Books expand your thoughts; challenge your presuppositions; bring anger, tears, joy, excitement, and more; all from the comfort of wherever you want to read. And they’re wireless and never run out of batteries.
Never lose your love for books. It’s okay to watch TV or listen to an iWhatever, but never forget the worlds that wait between the pages. Never dismiss the people that come to life from cover to cover. Read, my Raesin, read and travel on the vehicle of words.
I love you.
1 Corinthians 1:4-
Dad
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