How in the world can you do this with an e-reader?

What resonated with me though was: “perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep in flu ence on our lives.”

I have to both agree and disagree. I’ve read some books as an adult that totally changed my perspective. I see where he’s going with everying about the future for children, and about the past for adults, and possibly that is why I so often return to the same books I’ve read over and over. Still, you never know what will hit home with a reader.

I write a little about what I know – which falls under the general category of profiling I guess, given my social services employment. Personality traits, typical life circumstances, social/behavioral trends. But I also write about what strikes me as interesting. What if questions.

One of my friends told me she called Amazon to complain that there isn’t a way to mark a book as read in her Kindle. I was a little shocked that the feature was needed. She said she reads so many books she can’t remember any of them clearly and doesn’t want to re-read something.

She didn’t believe me that I’ve read – well, I’d say at least – about a thousand books in my lifetime (judging by my bookshelves in my front room) and pretty much remember them all. If not by title, by the first five or ten pages.

Perhaps there is something to be said for holding that paper book in your hands as you read.

……..dhole

I don’t remember them based on the cover art, or they way they smell, or even how quickly they fall apart (as I have paper bound books in the past). I remember them based on the events, the story and the growth of the characters.

I think the story matters. But I supposed when the fire light was our only light, and stories were told around the hearth, that those ancient story tellers bemoaned the loss of that when books came out.

I remember something about J.R.R. Tolkein and how he came up with some of the races from The Lord of the Rings – the Ents, specifically. He said he’d seen a production of some of Shakespeare’s plays as a boy and one scene stuck with him because it hadn’t ended the way he wanted. The description was of trees moving, and, as a child, he expected that mean that the trees were actually walking around, not that an army with heavy armor was clomping through them. So, from that “what if the trees could march” thought as a child, he developed Treebeard and the Ents.

Even if your ideas aren’t epic, they all start that same way.

What if there was a magic school in Scotland? (Harry Potter)

What if books became illegal to own or read? (Fahrenheit 451)

What if that handsome, aloof guy was a vampire? (Twilight)

What if society reveled in a lethal game of hide-and-seek between kids? (Hunger Games)

What if a criminal was really a good man at heart? (Les Miserables)

That’s how my own stories started out:

What if the monsters you’ve been taught to fear aren’t monsters at all?

What if the guy you blame for killing someone you love turns out to be the best thing in your life?

What if Little Red Riding Hood became a hunter in retaliation for her grandmother’s death?

What if your little sister’s imaginary friend turned out to be a not-so-imaginary dead girl?