The books speak to me...

Two of my favorite authors did blogs recently on how stories help us make sense of the world around us. Jackson Pearce did hers, which you can find here, on why adults shouldn't worry so much about what their kids are reading. Nathan Bransford's was on stories being how we make sense in the world (and you can find his here.)

Aside from wanting to give cyber-shout-outs to them for creating such spot-on blogs/vlogs about this topic...

I also wanted to put my two cents in.

Words are food for the soul. Without authors like Robin McKinley, Laurell K. Hamilton, Terry Pratchett... There are whole bits of myself that I never would have found the words to describe. The world is a lonely place full of lots of people and it is really easy to feel like you are the only one who does... (fill in the blank) or feels... (more blank here) and never have the words to even express how you feel if someone should wander along and seem like they might be a person who might agree with you in the first place.

So that was why I wanted to start telling stories. I was thrilled to find a world full of authors, through the internet, and most of them seemed to be on the same hypothetical page as I am. Which is wonderful! How many times do we hear (okay, I probably hear it more than most...) that we are weird? But is it weird if we aren't the only one?

Nope.

But we all feel awkward at times. We all feel like we don't belong or that everyone else is part of some grand scheme that we are left out of.

I love books. I love the worlds inside them. I love that my kids have learned to love books and I encourage them to read whatever they want as it probably speaks to them in some way I don't understand and most importantly ... don't have to understand to be happy about.

So check out those two amazing blogs and if you have had an author that really moved you, tell me about it in the comments below.

Also, on an anecdotal story kind of note, when I was a kid, I snagged a copy of Mort by Terry Pratchett. My mom confiscated it because Death was a main character and she was pretty sure that me reading something so morbid would throw me deep into the bowels of teenage depression. I finally got the book back somewhere in my 20s when she finally believed me about it being a comedy. Death speaks in capital letters, y'know...

And the picture? One I drew based on an inspirational picture in one of Jordan's fairy books. Didn't come out half bad, if I do say so myself. Which I just did. Hmm...