Blog Party

I feel as if I would be a different person without books. Both as a reader and as a writer, fiction has shaped my life in many ways. So my inquiry question for the blog party is: "How does reading affect a person's personal life?" This question, for me, started with looking at how a person reads. I compared two people, one who reads constantly, and one who has never, according to him, finished a single book in his whole life.

Person A, the big reader, is full of curiosity about the world. She reads to enrich her life and disappear into a fantasy world. She reads fiction and nonfiction, depending on her mood and if she finds something she wants to learn more about. She is in her early 30s and still single.

Person B, who has never read a single book all the way through, graduated from high school playing football. He then went directly to work, got married young and started a family right away. He watches TV and hangs out with his circle of close friends and thinks books are a waste of time. If he wants to know about something, say how to fix a motorcycle, he learns from a mechanic. He might watch an educational program on the history channel, but more for entertainment than to learn.

So are these two different, apart from their reading habits? Person B has a family, whereas Person A does not. Has she spent too much time reading to find someone to marry? Or is that a factor here? Which one is happier?

I come from a family that does not put much store on reading. Most of us do, occasionally, but to read and to be a Reader (capital R) are two very different things. A person who reads might read on occasion, or even very frequently. A Reader puts reading first, above most everything. For those people who say that they don't have time to read, they are not Readers. Readers find time between the cracks in the walls. Readers always have a book with them. Readers read while walking down the street, or at red lights or while stopped for a train. Readers lose sleep and miss meals because of books. Readers have jobs to pay for their book habit and have houses so they have somewhere to store their books.

Reading has had a very large impact on my own personal life. I would rather read than be out with humans. I prefer fictional characters to most people. But that does not mean than I am better of than anyone else. Nor does it mean that someone who doesn't spend all their time reading is better off than I am.

I believe reading is just like any other past time. It doesn't fit everyone. I do not enjoy putting together model airplanes, but that doesn't mean it would enrich the life of my neighbor. However, I think that reading can enrich a person's life like very few other things can. Without books, I wouldn't get thousands of people's opinions on every subject possible. Such as Stephen King's opinion that a person can get used to anything, given the right circumstances. Or Dave Barry's opinion that a man is like a fly sitting on top of a truck tire and when that tire starts to roll and the fly is squished into a small, dark blot, the only thing going through the fly's mind will be - and I quote - "Huh?" Or Mercedes Lackey's opinion that Unicorns are distracted by passing butterflies. Or a thousand other things that are sometimes useless but more often than not, things that I have used to shape myself.

After reading the book Sphere by Michael Crichton (who does not kill children in his stories), I found something he wrote very useful. "If what you're doing doesn't work, try something else." That is a form of the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

So my question to everyone else is: How has reading shaped your personal life? Do you find that it helps you in the read world? Does reading affect your life in a negative way? Or is reading just something like any other hobby?