I spent the last three summers working in the library. Back in Blind River I did any and everything because I was the Katimavik participant. I did such things as wander around town and pick up donations, build a giant bookworm, shelf read, stamp things, pick up mail, etc.
Then in Tay Township I was a summer student so I got to do things like plan and run crafts, help kids find books to read, check things in and out, make phone calls, and entertain children, but there was no giant book worm for Tay.
I also read a lot of books. A whole lot of books. Not while I was at work but just about all the rest of the time. Just as a disclaimer, I’ve read some of the great classics, I even liked a lot of them but for the most part I read things like Janet Evanovich and Laurell K. Hamilton. These are not literary classics but they are still fantastic and thoroughly entertaining (unlike modern literary fiction which has this painful tendency to be miserable).
So I spend a lot of my summers living in worlds created by other people. In some ways coming back to a series is like coming back to an old friend. These people don’t exist but I feel I know them. Which is probably why I tend to read series in batches. Once I made it through the first Stephanie Plum novel I went and I read through the next six in about two weeks.
I like to do the same thing with TV, I own a few box sets and I’ve begged and borrowed others, I prefer to watch television shows in long strings, watching characters and relationships develop in a close series rather than over a long season. Generally this does not work so well with really crappy shows but it works really well with well put together ones like Veronica Mars and Heroes or ones with good character dynamics, like NCIS.
When I’m working my way through a world someone else has created on paper or on film, I’m relaxed. I don’t have to think about the world I live in because I’m not really there. Escapism!
And don’t let anyone tell you escapism is bad (well ok, it would be bad if you escaped so thoroughly that you lost your grip on reality for the long term rather than the short but that probably won’t happen to you or me.)
So anyways, here’s to everyone who’s ever gotten lost in Edward and Bella’s world or spent far too many hours watching Prison Break than might be considered healthy. We all love to live in worlds that are different from our own.
