Take a holiday from your World by reading a book!!!

 

I believe that an ailment that can be cured by reading a good book.

 

        If that sounds whacky, I'd go even further. Almost any book will do. As long as it's a good book – with engrossing characters who catch your attention –

reading gives you a break from yourself. And a break from ourselves, it seems to me, is precisely the thing most of us desperately require. When you ask me what's you favorite read then I say, "I never read anything I haven't written myself ." I was much mocked at time, social media has now left many people in much the same situation. We have created a universe in which every person is a sun about whom all planets revolve. It's not called Facebook for nothing. It's a book written by you, and about you, and for you – as if you are staring into a picture of yourself. It's not so much a MacBook as a MacphersonBook.

 

        This is a world that could have been designed to create social anxiety, self-doubt and depression; a world in which people are constantly thinking about themselves and their relationship to others. How did the old joke go? "Enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think about me." That's Facebook in one.

 

 

       The magic of reading is that the reader disappears. Every keen reader has had the experience of being "lost in a book". It's the phrase we habitually use because

Reading books can help you cope with the real world

it is so accurate to the sensation. You find yourself entirely inside the world of the book, oblivious even to your physical circumstances. Your bad knee stops aching, your cup of tea goes cold and – most excitingly – your anxieties evaporate. With great writers, every sentence somehow tips the reader into the next; each scene pulls the reader deeper into the thickets of the story. A door opens, and there is this glorious, momentary escape from self – this break from the ego-surfing, Facebook-checking, Instagram-posting world. Yes, other art offers the same escape, but reading may be the most potent pill; probably because it requires more from our imagination, as we picture the world in which these characters walk – filling-in as designer, authour, student,oncologist...

 

        And here is something hilarious: whenever we have this holiday from ego – with whichever art form – our various devices become unhappy: anxiously pinging and



When I had too much reality I open book. . .

poking, insisting we return ourselves to the center of the picture. Why not rate the book you've just finished on Good Reads? Or discuss your favorite TV show while it's being broadcast using Twitter? Or take a photo of yourself queuing to see the Mona Lisa and post it on Instagram? How lovely to think: the less anxious we are, the more anxious are our devices. They are worried, I guess, that art is allowing us to free ourselves from their control.

As my devices ping and trill and flash, I try to be sympathetic to their mounting panic :P ;)