7 Things I LOVE about Books 

Marian, over @ Classics Considered, has ‘challenged’ me to list 7 (oddly specific!) things I love about books. After MUCH musing on the topic as well as sleeping on it here they are: 

1. As a lifelong fan of the English language – the only one I can read in – I do love discovering new words. Mostly I can get them from context and their similarity to other, known, words but sometimes I need to look them up and LEARN things! FUN. 

2. One of the pleasures of reading Classics is coming across ODD spellings of words and realise that the accepted spelling of things is a VERY recent phenomena. That alone is interesting to contemplate. 

3. Most of the time characters in books are there to move the story, the narrative, forward and that’s about it. Even when they excel at this function, they’re pretty much pawns being moved around the board by the author who, to mix my metaphors here, are clearly pulling their strings. But sometimes, rarely, you come across a REAL character who is clearly above the string-pulling business and is, mixing again, the captain of their own ship/story. It's as if the character is living the adventure and the ‘author’ is simply documenting it. I LOVE that so much it's difficult to put into words and I’ve probably only come across that sort of thing a handful of times.  

4. One thing I discovered recently – this year in fact – was how much I really enjoy animal characters in novels. I don’t mean in Fantasy or even SF where the animal is a character in the story just like the humans (and aliens) around them, but an animal as we would recognise them. In both Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (where the penguin - Misha - was an important plot element) and The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley (where the octopus – Albert – was very much a side character) I loved the way that the creature was a REAL person despite not being human and being mute. Both characters had personality and a well-earned place in the story.  

5. As I’m always looking for things to learn and new avenues to explore, I always like it whenever a novel presents a person, place or event that was previously unknown to or unconsidered by, me so I’m prompted to dig in the archives looking for non-fiction books on the subject/topic. It's ONE reason why my TBR is HUGE.  

6. I’m one of THOSE people who will drop a quote at the drop of a hat. Which means that I look out for them and ‘collect’ them whenever possible. Sometimes they’re from movies but also from books – fiction & non-fiction. Then all I need to do is wait for the appropriate moment and DROP it.  

7. I suppose, like most people, I often think that my ideas and perspective on the world is unique to me. Afterall, I’m unique, right? So, when I read a passage in a book that I could well have written which EXACTLY matches my beliefs, my thoughts and my deepest philosophical ideas it knocks me – metaphorically at least – off my feet. There’s almost nothing better than to discover that an author who might be LONG dead, from another country, has had the very same thought as you and that it has come into your life. LOVE it. It almost makes you believe in Fate.