Some magical thoughts on books!

I like to imagine how its pages would feel between my fingers, how they would whisper, and how the words that I had been leaking out would be organized on them – One day, I want to hold the witching novel in my hands!
Just as I have once been holding so many books that saved my world, and I want to realize that I actually managed to tell the story that came to in such a weird moment in time.
But since writing a novel is just as much hard work as well as passionately leaking out onto the paper, I have to focus on the reasons for doing this from time to time, and this time, I will share some thoughts on what reading a good book has meant to me!

These are some magical thoughts on reading books!

While scribbling notes for this post into my notebook, I realized that most of them were about the kind of book which I carried around with me for a very long time, and most of them time even more than once. I felt the need to tell about these books, because they offered something that made me sink into and somehow gave me the needed energy to keep going. This is interesting, because I am not a big fan of Fantasy books. If I had to settle on a genre (before my witching interest made me go history), it would have always been science fiction. The following post however will feature the few more fantastic worlds that I could really get lost in!

Here are my favourite ones of those!

Inkheart

I will start with this one, because it is one of the first books I have ever read. I was so young, I remember listening to Avril Lavigne‘s first album while reading this novel by Cornelia Funke. It is a bit difficult to write about, because I have to admit that I never read the follow up parts. By now, I do not even want to, because I want to keep this one reading experience alive. An experience that filled me with excitement! The novel is about Meggie, who is going on an adventurous journey with her father through Germany to Italy and discovers a very magical ability of her father‘s which leads to an even bigger adventure. It is full of weird and unexpected encounters, and I kept this feeling in mind on so many long summer evenings playing outside, and always kind of hoped to also find the gateway to one of such adventures!

Harry Potter

Yes, if it is me writing such a post, the Harry-Potter-books cannot be missing.
Lately I realized more and more how this emotional bond to their telling can be problematic, and I will soon write an own post about that.
They were important to me for more than just once. I read the first ones shortly after discovering „Inkheart“, and it only made me enjoy adventures even more. But that is not even the main point for why I carried them with me for so long. Because yes, these books I carried in my pockets now and then. For the first time, when I was 10 years old, and I had to take the bus to get to my new school for the first time. I always had it with me to read it on those rides that seemed endless so early in the morning. But the last time, the books became my companions, I was already 20 years old, and had just moved into a new city all on my own. The books gave me a warm place to retreat to. A warm place with familiar places. At the time, I did not have anything like that in my life, so whenever I read something about places like „The burrow“ or the “common rooms”, I could reach out to a feeling I did not have anywhere else. It felt warm and sparkling. The thought of adventure filled with excitement, and the whole aesthetics of the world was soothing. Having your friends so close around, living in this beautiful castle, and of course the need to fight against the dark and evil! Just the best refuge to carry with me in my pocket!

The Hobbet

I have already stated that I am not an avid reader of Fantasy, and so I also never really got into reading Tolkien. This little novel was an exception, and I carried it with me when I had to get used to having a long commute and therefor, long train rides everyday. Having this novel in my pocket made it a lot easier to deal with all the trouble this meant. For this, I will also have to explain that this part of infrastructure is not well cared for in Germany and is therefor not working at all. There is almost always something late or something broken. This means spending hours on sometimes small train stations without even a vending machine, or even more hours inside of trains gone stuck and sometimes even with no toilet available. Having this in your daily life can become stressful, and to not bother too much with worrying, I very much needed to escape into a dirty adventure with a lot of unforeseen encounters and Orcs and great battles to get lost in!

The Hollows

This is the most recent one of these kinds of books. I carried each one of this series by Kim Harrison with me during a time when I was still a full time student and was taking lectures and classes, but also tried out many different jobs to find out what I wanted to do. The fantastic aspects of this world in which humanity had been decimated and another version of our present time had taken place were not even the most important aspect of these books, although seeing witches and other fantastic beings occupying churches and smelling good coffee definitely got me dreaming whenever I needed to! But no, in this case it were the characters I needed with me. Most of them the main character, Rachel. The way in which she constantly survives against all odds while stomping the world in her boots and wearing leather and this while also being able to get away with some kind of deal with all kinds of dark creatures was inspiring. And was what I needed in mind when dealing with grumpy old professors, and snobby landlords, and all those kinds of things. And an hour at a good Cafe could always lure me back between those pages.

While writing this post, I realized that my witching novel will never be like anyone of these books. It will not take place in a world this magical and exciting, but in one a lot darker and it will always tell a story filled with so much more pain.

These books were a refuge, a place to recharge a certain energy I sometimes lacked of needed to find elsewhere, and for that they will always mean a lot to me.
And of course, there are a lot more and other reasons to read books. Also for me, and I could continue collecting them in posts as well, but I will leave you with these magical ones for now.