Stories unfold from our past. The books that we read. The fantasies we create. Images from near and far. They are saviors of the shadowed days. Blessings of the inspired evenings. Sources for numerous dreaming adventures. I would not trade one memory of a tale away.
~ Maria Lehtman
Do you dwell into books when you need advice, inspiration, a calm-down or feel-good moment? Are there books that you can recall having changed your life? Perhaps one that even might have saved your life one way or another?
I was 8-years old when I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings. I was immediately fascinated by learning that he had created the Elven language using his linguistic skills combining several languages, including Finnish. Some of the sources Tolkien studied for the books came from his explorations of, e.g., fairy tales, Norse, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Persian, Greek, and Finnish mythology. I read the books in a matter of days from cover to cover even laying out the map each time I started. I followed every progress of the adventure from the geographical viewpoint, and also studied the language translations, the last pages of the book.
Some might say it was not a tale for someone that young. But you see, when you are a child, you are blissfully unaware of what should or shouldn’t be your reading material. I just knew that the story was everything to me. Even years later when I watched the LOTR film series directed by Peter Jackson (and if you tell me you never watched them, don’t get me started…) I still had tears in my eyes, seeing Gandalf take the fall (The Fellowship of the Ring). I knew he would return, but still…It took me back all those decades ago when I first came to that scene and read how my hero fell into the shadow and fire – thinking that was the end of a cosmic level character.
Why is fantasy in such a high rise today?
I know very well why I read fantasy and sci-fi books when I was young. Everything was not always ok at home, and I was a child with a wild imagination to start with. I did not think fantasy was any different than the dreams I saw or the stories I developed in my mind. As I grew older, books and music offered me the ultimate escape from reality when the world seemed to press in with all its weight.
Oddly enough, the people who at the time looked down on me reading these books became parents themselves and were entirely absorbed by J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and movies, James Cameron’s Avatar movie, and the most impacting area of all: gaming.
The more we are surrounded by the realism of our world, the more we seek outlets: escape! The social media and medium of all kind are pouring down on politics, finance, violence, the divide of various areas, let alone what happens in our vastly growing networks. No one can take 100% realism 24/7. Our mind needs inspiration, motivation, and worlds of imagination beyond our current landscape.
Most of the things happening today, the very technological changes in the world, are of no surprise to me. Why? Because ever since I was a child, I lived through the tales of the past and future. I read the stories written by people who were scholars and dreamers – who envisioned things that might come to pass. They might never happen, they might be illusions – but there was always the ‘what if’ in a child’s mind. So I am not afraid of looking into the future, or understanding and trying out what we face in our digital realm. After all, I had all my spare time to educate myself on what might come. I felt the divide: how light and shadow would grow deeper again. And so I see it has. People realize they have to take sides. Some visions, dreams, and values need defending if we want to hold on to our ethics.
The visions of sci-fi writers: Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, even the satires of Douglas Adams from my childhood favorite authors, are coming through. The very fabric of space is now questioned – first shrinking, then expanding, and now space is considered being created continuously. The latter I suspected long ago. Just common sense. If there is something living, it tends to multiply and create more of it.
The Gist
Did J. R. R. Tolkien’s tales change my life? They did. They gave me a profound understanding that a highly educated mind did not have to limit their life into scholarly papers. Fantasy was a real area to dwell into and just as important. Dreams feed the reality and the other way around. If you do not expand your mind, how will you understand the framework others are living in? What defines you? Your street address? It is only temporary. The legends. They survive because they are created to be larger than life.
I do not have as much time now to read as I did before, but I watch movies and binge read – any topics from fibers of humanity to deep space. In my mind, the dots always connect.
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Sources:
- The Lord of the Rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_mythology
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
Harry Potter taught my daughter to read and LOTR did the same for my son. They both started out a little on the back foot because they didn’t speak English at home and although we had many English children’s books, we also read books in Danish.
There is magic in passing the threshold into drinking books in instead of spelling one’s laborious way through them, dictionary in hand.
I don’t recall any special book doing that for me, but I am very hard to get in touch with if I am sitting chuckling over a Terry Pratchett Dishworld novel.
Thank you for sharing, Charlotte! Great examples and it’s wonderful that your children found such fun book pathways to learning English.
Terry Pratchett’s books followed me around the world like the magical suitcase. I miss his witty writing. The world needs his satire.
What a beautiful article, Maria! Books remain my friends to this day as I read about people overcoming challenge, rising strong, loving, learning, living, creating new pathways, inner realities. I tended to steer clear of sci fi and fantasy as my childhood felt like a volatile, dangerous, creepy Alice in Wonderland, creepy/real fairy tale (Wizard of Oz, witches, cruel queens, etc) chaotic mess. I needed actual human beings struggling, loving, overcoming, being kind. I love To Kill A Mockingbird, the Little House series, The Untethered Soul, The Western Guide to Feng Shui Room by Room, The Help, Big Magic, and so many others. Books have altered and continue to shape the trajectory of my life as I love being inspired, uplifted, challenged, and opened.
I now can watch the Harry Potter series as I’ve done deep healing work. I also love the movie Avatar, and have begun watching the Lord of the Rings series for the first time in my life. My bandwidth has expanded to include fantasy. Still a bit tricky for me to view the violent scenes, though. If you’ve lived a violent past, it’s tough to be entertained by what you know in your bones can be all too real.
Thank you so much for this article and asking the question! Loved reading it and offering my thoughts/reflections here. 🙂
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment, Laura! I too read books similar to yours. While my heart was in fantasy and sci-fi, I also read everything from Little Women to detective stories, romance novels, and discovery books to nature and history, archeology etc. I still have a hard time watching or reading realism though. It is a strange thing – reality to me was always “too real”. I can work through a much tougher context in a parallel reality :).
Thank you for sharing!
As a child, believe it or not, a Trixie Belden Book, “The Mystery on Cobbett’s Island” My parents gave it to me when I was age 13 on Christmas Day. My mother had been intrigued with the similar last name. This book set me on a course of becoming a voracious reader. More recently, Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” set me on a course which led to writing my own book. Along the way, there have been so many…Thank you for this! I agree with Cicero, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ?
Hi Darlene, Thank you for your comment and interest in my post! I believe you! I loved mystery novels, especially ones related to islands, sailing, discoveries and so forth. It was a tough moment to give away a big part of my books. I saved the ones I really cherished. Funny enough, many of them not very expensive ones but more like souvenirs. All the Terry Pratchett books I bought from the airports for travel reading, as an example. They’ve given me so much joy. I would read them taking turns with a more serious line of novels. Hill’s book sounds interesting.
You are most welcome! You will find Hill to be most inspiring.
J.R.R Tolkien is such a stunning choice for a life-changing book and I had my childhood escape book which was Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. A book that still makes me cry today and I learned a great deal about love and friendship when I read the content. It moved me to as a child who was much older than my sibling and felt sometimes alone in the world. A great exploration and review, Maria!
Thank you so much, Maureen! And thank you for sharing your life-altering book :). You are right, the characters in the worlds authors create make us feel that there are others out there, living with similar or even larger challenges – we find comradery in the tales.
Siddhartha By Hermann Hesse
Excellent, thank you for sharing, Larry!