Reading

One of my greatest pleasures in life is curling up with a good book. I love to read. Sometimes I curl up with a cookbook and combine two of my favorite things, reading and cooking. In fact I got a new cookbook today that I will be curling up with tonight. I'm trying to decide which books to take to the hospital with me in case I'm there for a couple of days.

I had a very vivid dream last night that reminded me of one of my favorite books, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I often dream in stories and this dream was no different. In the dream I had a library with thousands of books in it. The society where I was living however banned books. I was able to keep the books hidden using magic and there were places where I could actually sell some of the books and get them to people who still wanted to read.

When I lived in Denver I worked at the Tattered Cover Bookstore and to this day it is one of my favorite jobs. I loved working so closely with books. I remember the orientation with the lady who owns the store and she was talking about censorship. Her philosophy was that all books should be available to people. It was one of the reasons why you would find everything from extreme right wing to extreme left wing political books in her store.

One of the things that has always bothered me is the people who try and censor everything a child reads using prejudice as the basis for their reasoning. Their are people who do not understand fantasy and want to ban all books in that genre like the Harry Potter books. They automatically assume that anything that deals with magic has to be evil. In fact the word evil is one of their most over used words.

If a child's mind is to grow and flourish it has to be stimulated and one of the best ways of doing that is through reading.  Many of our top scientists today grew up on science fiction and fantasy. One of my largest group of art buyers is from NASA/JPL. Their minds were opened up to new and wondrous sights through words and they have taken that wonder and turned it into a fulfilling career.

I am aware that parents need to protect their children from pornography and they should be careful with what their children read however they should also be cognizant of their own prejudices and try and make sure that they aren't condemning good books that should be read. I'm sure J.K. Rowling's revelation that one of her main characters was gay will bring a renewed outburst from homophobes wanting to ban those books from libraries. It is time to stop and realize that their are gays in this world and that they are not monsters. They are human beings just like you and I. They, like us, were made in God's image. Remember Christ said "love thy neighbor as thyself." He didn't qualify that statement so that means everyone is your neighbor.

The picture is called Reading.

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