Hello, friends! Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Feather Stone, Janet Alcorn, Rebecca Douglass, Jemima Pett, and Pat Garcia. Are you a writer? Do you feel insecure? Well, then this is the support group for you! Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.
What are books for? When I was young, the answer seemed self-evident. You read a book, and the ideas and information on the page get absorbed into your brain, like uploading data into a computer. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that books can do something far more magical than that.
You see, there are a handful of books that I’ve read and re-read over and over again. The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Worlds, and Dune are probably my top three most re-read books. I’ve read each of them half a dozen times at least over the course of my life. Weirdly enough, each time, the reading experience feels different. Some characters seem more relatable, or less relatable. Little details seem to gain or lose significance, and the overall meaning or moral of the story seems to keep changing.
How can this be? I haven’t bought new, updated editions of these books. The text on the page is the same as it’s always been. Even the typos (for some reason, my copy of Dune has a lot of typos). So what’s happening? If my reading experience keeps changing, but the books themselves always stay the same, then the only other factor in this equation is… me, the reader. I’m the one who’s changed. And every time I re-read one of my favorite books, I get a glimpse of who I am now compared to who I was five, or ten, or twenty years ago. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it’s been almost thirty years since the first time I read that book.
Books can impart ideas and information from the author to the reader. That is one of their functions. But there’s a deeper magic at work, too. Books can also serve as psychological mirrors for their readers. When you read a book that you love, what does that tell you about yourself? What is the book reflecting back at you that makes you so happy? Or, if you hate a book, what is that book reflecting back at you that makes you so mad?
As writers, our job is not merely to put words down on the page. Our job is not merely to inform and/or entertain our readers. Our job is also to make good mirrors. To offer people a chance to see themselves a little more clearly. To help them catch a glimpse of their own hearts, their own souls. What an awesome and helpful service we writers provide!
P.S.: Oh! Maybe that’s why they talk about “polishing” your manuscript!
i-love-space.com 
When I read, I’m like you. I visit the worlds and people I come to love and you’re right I sometimes see things I didn’t see before. I used to tell my son, every day we wake up we are a different person–wiser, older, with a clear slate…
And back when my son was growing up, a little taller. hehehe
Anna from elements of emaginette
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a good lesson for your son to learn. We keep changing as we grow, sometimes in ways we don’t notice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s right – as we grow and change, we see things differently, and that includes what we see in the books we read.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly. And sometimes, maybe we don’t realize how much we’ve changed until a book shows us.
LikeLike
Oh, how true it is that we are always changing as the years pass by. There are quotes, ideas, and stories that continue to resonate with me — however there are also things that hit harder at a certain time in my life than they do now. In rare instances, my stance on a piece of work could completely change. I have found this to be true not just in books, but with television, film, music, and more.
When it comes to my own writing, my feelings about past works have changed as well. I may have been proud of something I wrote in my twenties, but reading it back at forty is a very different experience. I try and remember to be graceful and kind to my younger self, but some of my earlier writing is pretty rough, though some of it still holds up fairly well.
We continue to evolve as writers, and also as consumers of media.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a good point. Our writing reveals how we change over time, too. I think I said something about this in a previous IWSG post, but there are things I wrote 20 years ago that I’m ashamed of now, because they reveal the biases I held at the time.
LikeLike
Wonderful post – and you’re so right. I love rereading something I read years ago and discovering how my perception of it has changed–because I have changed. We’re all works in progress, and I love that reading can remind us of that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same. It’s a magical thing, when books show us who we are.
LikeLike
That is so true. I have found the same thing with re-reading favourite books over and over again throughout the years – noticing different things I hadn’t picked up the first time, experiencing characters in new ways – as if I am a new person every time I come to the page. Helping readers to see themselves as they are in that moment, yes, you’re so right. Great post, James!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks! Someone once told me books are just luxury items. I strongly disagreed with that, but I couldn’t articulate at the time what made books so important.
LikeLike
That’s a good way to look at it. The way I’ve come to think of written fiction is as a guided daydream. The book prompts our imagination, but we’re the one constructing the dream, one where we end up supplying most of the details. So it makes sense that even with the same guide, we’ll have different dreams at different stages in life.
I know when I reread some old books last year, my experience was radically different from when I read them as a teenager.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s the way I think about it, too. In my copy of Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card wrote a forward about how stories are things that the author and the reader build together in the reader’s mind. That forward has been a strong influence on my own philosophy of fiction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t recall that forward. Sounds like something I need to look up. Thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looking at my copy of Ender’s Game, it says he wrote this introduction in March of 1991. It begins with: “It makes me a little uncomfortable, writing an introduction to Ender’s Game.” Hope that helps!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks! I don’t recall my old copy having it, but I do see it shows up in the Amazon preview of the book.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a wonderful post. I also like re-reading my favorite books. And you’re right, the same book read 10 years ago felt differently than when I read it now. Some of those books stay on my shelves, still treasured, still to be re-read again, even when I myself am different. Others I re-evaluate and might even discard. What felt like a revelation 20 years ago might feel like dross now. It is a dream of every writer to be in the former category.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I decided not to mention this in my post, but there are a few books that used to be regular re-reads for me that appeal to me. But even that tells me something about how I’ve grown and changed as a person.
LikeLike
Oof! That’s a hard hitter, but it makes a great deal of sense. I recently read a survey which listed a number of qualities and trails held by those who’d been prolific fiction readers growing up. Some of the less obvious ones were: being critical thinkers, lifelong learners, and that we appreciate the grey areas. Books are a lot more than simply entertaining and informative, they help us to understand the world, the people in it, and that includes ourselves as well as the journeys we’re on.
Debs posting today from Fiction Can Be Fun
Also found at Debs Despatches
LikeLiked by 1 person
That makes sense. I try not to jump to conclusions about people, but when people tell me they don’t read, it usually turns out that those people aren’t critical thinkers or lifelong learners either.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for stopping by my blog.
This is a good post. I like the idea of books being reflections of ourselves. We see different aspects of ourselves in the books we read and as writers, everthing we write, to some degree, is autobiographical even when we’re intentially trying not to be.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a good point. Sometimes things come out in my writing that I’m not expecting, and I don’t always like what those things say about me. But that’s still an opportunity for me to learn and grow and work on myself.
LikeLike