This whole pandemic has been hard on everyone. For writers, like me, it’s a time to work on your current manuscript. But for others, its nothing but binge-watching the news or the same old TV show with no end in sight for the quarantine. That’s where books come in. Now is the time to dust off your copy of “The Lord of the Rings” or “Gone with the Wind” and immerse yourself in a good book. Books are the escape we need in this time of crisis.
Stephen King said, “Books are uniquely portable magic!” And you know what? He’s right. Books are meant to take you to other worlds and beyond, from the Shire in Middle Earth to orbiting around Jupiter on a derelict spaceship to an express train to Hogwarts and (in my case) on a flying galleon above the island of Avalon. For many of you stuck inside with nothing to do, this is the time to rediscover books.
Books are as important to writers as they are to readers. Books are what inspires us, fills our imagination, and gives us our purpose as writers. We look to other writers for that inspiration to forge ahead in our own stories. For readers, books are the escape route. Books are to the older generation what TV and video games are to today’s younger generation. Now is the time to introduce them to the magic inside books.
There are countless adventures found within the pages of books. “Think, boy. What kind of an adventure would you have had if I brought you here with the turn of a page?” said the Pagemaster (The Pagemaster, 1994). “When in doubt, look to the books!” I know it’s kind of hypocritical, quoting a movie to talk about reading books, but the message is still the same.
So, I encourage all of you to dust of your bookshelves and pick up an old friend or maybe download a new novel to your Kindle, iPad, or Smartphone. This is the time to venture out from the doldrums of quarantine and find yourselves in another world of possibilities. And, I will take this time to put in a selfish plug for my own novels in the Forever Avalon series in the hope that you might enjoy a jaunt across the magical island of Avalon.
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Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon book series. Forever Avalon is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon. The Dark Tides is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iUniverse Publishing. The Outlander War, Book Three of the Forever Avalon series is available from Austin Macauley Publishing.
I’ve always been a book lover,but even more so lately. I just want to fill my bookcases with every novel I’ve ever read and loved. In fact, I warned my children that, when I die, their inheritance will be a library of books. Is that a bad thing? No, it’s not. Heinrich Mann said, “A house without books is like a room without windows.”
You can find books that people seem to have forgotten about. For example, I found old Robert Heinlein paperbacks from the 50’s for 25 cents each! He is one of the premiere science fiction authors and to see his work, discarded in a box, was a shame. I haven’t read anything by him since high school, so this was a big find for me. These books are a part of the legacy we, as authors, share.
Mark Piggott | Fantasy & Steampunk Author 