Alice Gentili teaches visual art to middle school students and writes a blog. She says "the purpose of this blog is to share the goings-on of my middle school art room and sometimes other things." One of her other things was describing her husband's new interest in reading books. It's a great story that you can read in full here.
When my husband, Dick, told me he’d like to try reading a book for the first time since he was in high school (over sixty plus years ago) Charlotte’s Web immediately came to mind as a good place to start because I knew the book well, and like Fern, we live on a farm.
I was aware of the cowboy and western genre of novels, yet never having read them, I wasn’t sure what he’d like. I did some research and ordered the collection The Steve Dancy Tales by James D. Best for him.
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| Dick reading The Shopkeeper, A Steve Dancy Tale |
Once received, the James D. Best series took a little while to get through. It was a joy to see Dick reading with intent. He would happily fill me in on the sequence of events as he read. I enjoy hearing his perspective on plot twists and character pitfalls and triumphs.
I asked him what he likes about reading and he said, “It’s like you’re in the story. You’re there wherever it takes place. You feel what the characters feel.” So here we are, essentially grounded by the pandemic, and through his reading, Dick has traveled from the Texas panhandle to Monterey, California and throughout Montana and Wyoming.
Nicely put. I've written previously that a good story is a time travel machine.
We’ve all experienced time travel whenever we’ve opened a book and been transported to another place and time. When you slap the book closed, it returns you to where you started. Well, sorta. You may lose a few hours, but nothing's free.
Here are a few of my Time Travel Posts. Next time you open a book, think bon voyage.