Books.Glorious Books!!

What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I’d say it’s this: a endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation. There seems to be a growing tendency among people to disengage: with the ideas, with the world around them, with other people, with their own feelings. To say whatever, because it’s easier than actually caring. I find this attitude, and its mass appeal, very unsettling. Fear—something we’ve experienced a lot of in the last year—only heightens that urge to turn off and withdraw, to choose not to extend oneself. But great books force people to engage in the human conversation. They teach empathy and they teach compassion. They remind us of all the words there are beyond whatever.