Anyone else use reading as a form of escapism sometimes?
Which books were your best escapes?
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Anyone else use reading as a form of escapism sometimes?
Which books were your best escapes?
I like travel and adventure. Wade Davis, national Geographic explorer can take me to a different place. I've read several of his books. He is an ethnobotanist and explores Haitian voodoo potions among others. Eric Hansen has a great book called Stranger in the Forest about a man who goes to walk across Borneo. Steinbeck's log from the Sea of Cortez. I even enjoyed Mark Twain's Huck Finn. Matter of fact, those could be a few of my favorite books ever. I went through a phase of sci-fi/fantasy which was OK and some still is, but sometimes fact can be as wild as fiction.
Yes.
Fiction.
Winter makes me want to escape. haha
I appreciate the suggestions! I should actually read Huck Finn, I never have...
I have never been into mysteries, but I am open to trying some...
why do you think people watch television, often because it's mindless and easy, but also some people rally need to escape reality for awhile (if one doesn't then their reality is pretty good considering) and it is a more complete immersion to have a favorite show, series etc.. I read non-fiction though, not much escape there, well I guess I like to read about food when I don't want to read something serious,I find it pleasingly distracting (and not fattening :P ).
i love non-fiction!
I've never thought of reading as an escape--reading is just how I entertain myself, and it always has been.
Reading has been my escape and entertainment since I discovered Nancy Drew and Beverly Cleary 60 years ago.
I do read some non-fiction to educate myself and sometimes for entertainment as well. I've always consumed more fiction though for entertainment and occasionally for escape. I had introduced a friend to the Jack Reacher books by Lee Childs. She is currently treating for breast cancer and says these books have been a wonderful escape for her.
My husband reads incessantly. He gets 6 books at a time from the library and reads them in a week, usually. Right now he's reading a series by WEB Griffin that a friend gave him. He finishes one, closes it, picks up the next, opens it up and starts in. Just like that. Yes, he "escapes." Retired. Some days all he does is read, only stopping to fix himself something to eat and visit the loo.
I enjoy reading, and the Outlander series was really an escape, but I don't do that much.
I have cleared the decks for immersion in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield
I am putting the kettle on for tea on the sunporch (where sunlight is streaming in!). I have the Everyman's Library edition (877 pages, illustrated.) and I plan to read along with an audiobook. I will be several afternoons on the sun-porch before I finish.
I never read this novel before, but I am told it was Dickens' own favorite, and it was a watershed (half-light and half-darkness... the novels he wrote after David Copperfield were all darkness).
G. K. Chesterton concluded in his introduction:
... When a man sees perfection he goes blind... This book of David Copperfield is the one, perhaps, on which [Dickens] expended most of his actual ambition to be exhaustive, artistic and perfect. It is not exhaustive, artistic, nor perfect. The only thing is that, when you see it at the proper angle, it is annihilating.
I love non-fiction, but it's not an escape.
Fiction is the ultimate escape. Any good work of fiction. My immersion into a good book absolutely distorts my reality. I remember reading books set in winter, during which I'll put the book down and go to the window to see if it's still snowing. In July.
Poetry is an escape. I'm getting back into poetry. I used to love poems in my youth, but not so much for most of my adult life. But I'm back to appreciating he ultimate efficiency of the words in poems. Mary Oliver, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman are some of my favorites.
What does it say about a person who can seldom finish a book? I might know somebody like that.
As I mentioned in another thread, I recently read The Songs of Distant Earth. It was the deepest escape I ever took through a book. I highly recommend it.
I'm buying it now - songs of distant earth. Wikipedia says it was Arthur c Clark's favorite of all his stuff.
Reading as escapism? But reading is - life...
When I was younger and stronger I really frowned upon escapism. But as I have gotten older and worn down by life, I welcome some forms of escapism and I am sympathetic to those who use many forms of escapism.
For me, reading is probably my chief form of escapism.
I am looking for a good, long escape but I cannot seem to find a book or a series of books that will give this to me.
Thoughts? Ideas?
"Songs of distant earth" screams out for a few sequels.
I mostly read for information. But there have been times when it could be classified as escapism. I don’t know how old I was when I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings But I would say I escaped my teenage boredom. I enjoyed the James Herriot series about the British veterinarian called All Creatures Great And Small...and the followups. Definitely escaped reality when I read the James Wesley Rawles novels on surviving the coming collapse....Patriots, etc. For a time, I read fiction crime novels by Patricia Cornwell. Until I started living the storylines myself.
Id have to say now that my whole life is about escapism. I’ve adapted it to music, indulgences, exercise, travel, relationships.....life is one big escape. It’s really as if I am constantly, adeptly, maneuvering away from uncomfortable situations. Kind of like the Bob Dylan song......”It’s not Dark Yet; But it’s getting there”. When I find myself getting there...I make an adjustment.
A book...a physical book not only takes me somewhere else but it allows me to receive tactile feedback. I love turning pages, I like the crisp sound when I turn a page. I like to be able to flip ahead and see how many pages until the chapter ends. I like to run my forefinger and thumb together along the spine and look at the thickness of the book. I appreciate the craftsmanship of the construction of the book and the printing. A book almost always has an individual smell. Don’t tell me you have never smelled a book. I don’t mind seeing that someone else has read it if it’s a library book. There may be stains on the pages, underlining or corners bent. I like that.
https://youtu.be/C5ixkCXSI7M
I've got the Harrows of Spring on reserve at the local library and I am about to go fetch it. Excited!
I just keep wondering if the starship made it to the next planet ... I know there's a little ending that gives a hint - but it needed to be a whole novel. So many questions ...
Oh man. I read it in high school when I was home sick for a couple of days with a bad cold. Not the flu or a fever or anything, just a lot of sneezing/coughing/boredom. What a fantastic book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! That dude was a seriously brilliant author.
Personally I don't consider reading an escape. I consider it a worthwhile activity that I enjoy doing. Watching HGTV is an escape. I suppose some fiction that I read could be considered an escape, but it's a much more fulfilling escape than HGTV. Dreamland, the most recent book I finished, was definitely not an escape. It was more of an MBA case study of modern business practices that all aspiring capitalists should read.
I agree. Reading is communing with another mind, using your imagination and intelligence to put yourself in new situations. It can be learning new ideas from nonfiction. I don't see it as being any more escapist than having a conversation with a friend, or taking a class.
HGTV is prison to me. But the real estate industry loves it. Because of HGTV, I got to take a pilgrimage to Waco, Tx while visiting Houston. Television is capable of distorting any reality. They did a good job with Waco.
The house they did for Clint and Kelly Harp is not being lived in by Clint and Kelly Harp. It’s being rented out for big bucks. The Harp shop is next door and is a very small store front. The silos are commercially stocked with household items some of which was imported from Overseas. They were packed with people fawning over rather common decorative items. The whole thing was underwhelming.
Another guy who had a house remodeled for him has a business doing bus tours of Waco for $75. He was standing on the corner stopping tourists as they came in. He tried to get me on one of his tours. He was pretty adamant about how much I’d love it. Lots of people trying made crumbs of money off the Gaines’ success.
Frankly, I never liked Chips immature clowning around and hamming it up for the camera. And I think Joanna is the boss in that family. Boss in that she rules with an iron fist.
All these things are probably very unfair of me.