Musings on book reading experiences. Who is in the lead: you, the author, or the main character?
We all know it: the anticipation before the release of a book that you have been waiting to read for a long time. This feeling is most common when expecting sequels to books you loved. But for those following a specific author or meticulously reading all translated works from some part of the world, this happens just as often.
As soon as you see the author’s name, the cover, and/or the description, you want to own the book. Right now. You look forward to reading the book, anticipating the joy and fun experience that you will have. For the duration of the book, you explore someone else’s life and become another person – or multiple. Their misery becomes yours, as does their success. When you close the book after reading the last page, you leave their world and step back into your own life or dive into a new book straight away. Sometimes the thoughts that you had while reading the book will stay with you long after you finish the book, no matter what you do next.
Lately, I have been spending more time thinking about every book I read. After reading the synopsis, I ask myself what I think about the themes and issues that I will read about. While reading the book, I improve upon my formulated opinions with what I learn, writing down the phrases or thoughts that hold meaning to me; thoughts that make me reflect on my own life or society. Often, this leads to some absurd thoughts.
This is where the book starts to lead a second life in my mind. As I connect the many topics for reflection, a new story is conceived in which the motives of the original book’s main characters become overarching leitmotifs. The main character essentially becomes a philosopher, because – as you must have noticed – most book characters show deep wisdom. Through them, the authors try to share their experiences and life lessons with us.
After I close the book, I ask myself what the author wants me to do. What real-life experience should I apply my new knowledge to? If the author is a skilled writer, my unconscious mind will effortlessly absorb the main character’s beliefs into my daily life. But wait, didn’t I have an opinion before reading the book?
With a better understanding of the subject matter, and taking the author’s hidden message into account, I choose a way forward. I’m curious to find out whether the main characters in the next book act according to the ideas of the author of the previous book. I’ll leave them to learn from each other as I enjoy watching this social experiment from afar. The impact won’t be immediate – sometimes it takes decades – but over time new authors will arise that have read the previous books. They’ll want to deliver even better stories to the world. Stories that have evolved as the main characters experienced personal growth.
And through them, I learn the easy way. Though when I look back once more at the opinions I wrote down before I embarked on this journey, I get an inkling that I might be the textbook dystopian reader to whatever genre I pick up. Those main characters will never be able to catch up with the future that I am living in.
