Thurs, Sept. 5
... Peculiar treasures
It’s amazing how books can influence you. When I was in New York, and again in England, I was struck by how much my expectations and impressions of them had been influenced and shaped by books that I’d read, mostly in junior high. For NYC, it was particularly the Babysitters Club books that really got me interested in it, wanting to learn more, wanting to visit, and knowing more about some of the landmarks and such.
When I was in England, I realized that a lot of my expectations of that had been formed through the Christy Miller books; particularly the last couple in the series, when she goes to England as part of a missions trip. That wasn’t as much about the landmarks or whatever, but just about the lifestyle and the culture.
For both places, though, there were certain things that I expected, certain ways I expected the landscape and the scenery to look, certain ways that I expected people to act, or whatever. It wasn’t even a situation where I spent weeks before I left researching the area, reading tour books, or whatever. It’s just that those books formed my first “real” impressions of them when I was 12 years old, and ever since then, I’ve sort of expected things to be a certain way. Some of it was what I thought it would be; some wasn’t. Life is never exactly like a book.
There are certain phrases, too, that I remember from books that I read. Phrases that I don’t necessarily use in real life, but ones that I often use, in my head, to describe a situation. Phrases like, “With a smile on her freshly-kissed lips,” “Peculiar treasure,” or “God is weird and we are tweaked.” Even the idea of taking a backseat to someone, and having that actually physically happen in a car is a reflection of a scene in a book. Sometimes it’s not the actual words that I remember, but it tends to be more the idea behind it, and the symbolism is increased for me because of it.
Anyways… they say that books take you away; that they open new worlds and introduce you to new friends, and that’s totally true, but they can also influence the way you think and talk in “real life.” It’s interesting to think what impacts us.
infinite || abyss
posted at 1:26 p.m.
