As you may have seen in yesterday’s or Wednesday’s post, I was tagged by Stephanie from Adventures of a Bibliophile to do the 3 Days 3 Quotes tag/challenge/meme/thing! The idea of this challenge is to post a book or reading related quote every day for three days, tagging three people at the end of each day’s post.
Of course because this is me, I’m going to unpack the quote a little bit each day, explaining why I chose it, and also perhaps musing a little on the concept of reading that it addresses. But, without further ado, today’s quote is:
‘A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,’ said Jojen, ‘The man who never reads lives only one.’
– George R.R. Martin
It’s no secret that I consider my own life (both professional and personal) to be extremely and incredibly dull. I am not someone who would be the protagonist of even my own story. Because of this, I live vicariously through others, and, largely, through the act of reading their stories in books.
That feeling of being able to live another life is something I think everyone can understand. As people we aspire to different ideals and daydream or fantasise of this ‘happy ending’. Or, alternatively, we witness trials and tribulations of someone living a much more exciting and dangerous life than ourselves. There’s something quite thrilling in being able to do that.
And, of course, it lets a person do something which is actually impossible otherwise – when we read we get to live as someone else, to see things through their eyes, to know what they’re thinking. We get to be someone other than ourself and, in doing so, perhaps our own life is enriched from the experience, even though we may not realise it.
I Tag:
I’m terrible with tagging people so I apologise if I pick you and you have already done it or don’t want to do it, but for the sake of sticking to the rules like a good little girl, I hereby tag:
YOU
YOU
YOU
Yes, that’s right, I’m wimping out of making any kind of decision by leaving it down to you – if you have not done this tag, or hell if you’ve done it previously but fancy it again now, then consider yourself heartily and duly tagged!
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The Terror of Knowing 