Why I love to Read by Liesel Hill

Why I love to Read

Drama Queen

by Liesel Hill

Why I Love to Read

Why do I love to read so much? It’s a valid question, given that the bookish community is just one corner of the world, albeit the most important one. ;D

The simple, all-encompassing answer is that I’m a bit of a drama queen. *waits patiently for you to recover from your shock* I know, I know. How could I be a drama queen? I mean, I only write stories about scary collective entities that murder individuals (Persistence of Vision), ferocious dragons and evils sorcerers, locked in battles that threaten to tear the world apart (WIP) and sadistic medieval dictators who rule over Eastern chaos and try to come up with new and more interesting ways to kill people (Citadels of Fire, out 9/2013). But me? A drama queen? Of course not!

Seriously though-- *sticks out tongue and crosses eyes* --I think I’m a drama queen at heart, but I’ve had such an awesome life. My parents were loving and supportive. I’m very close with all of my siblings. I have friends I’ve known since junior high that I still hang with (on occasion). I live in the greatest country in the world. And I’ve been taught the basic Christian values of family, justice, honesty, and hard work. I mean, what do I have to complain about?

But drama is a human condition—I’d argue it’s even a human emotion—and we all need to vent sometimes. Reading allows me to do that. It allows all of us to get lost in worlds where the conflicts are real enough for us to care about, but not real enough that we actually have to deal with them. It’s a place where characters are likable, even when they’re not (as opposed to real people) and the bad guys are oh-so-tangible and vanquishable. It’s so much easier to wrap our heads around fictional conflicts than our own.

I’m a firm believer, though, that while also providing much needed relief and entertainment, getting lost in fiction also helps us build up our own characters and face our own real problems with more courage and confidence. Even if we don’t like how a character handles a situation, we’ve decided, by default, how we would handle it. And so, our own character grows.

The stuff I read (when it’s awesome) gives me courage and insight into the mystery that is our universe. If what I write does that for anyone else on any level, than all the reading I’ve ever done has been all kinds of worth it.

Here’s to coming up with noble-sounding excuses to read for hours on end. Cheers! ;P