In the absence of my own blog-content ideas, I’ve picked up this question from Booking Through Thursday.

Okay… picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

For me, when I’ve been sad or worried or stressed, it’s always been novels by John Marsden. In some respects it’s about the minimisation of my own problems. My boyfriend may have dumped me, but least my country isn’t at war, like Ellie’s inTomorrow, When the War Began; I may have a cold, but at least I haven’t been scarred by acid as Marina has been inSo Much to Tell You.

But, after reading the same books multiple times in the years since I started high school, there’s also some comfort now in just knowing the stories, reading the words that I’ve read before, the certainty of what’s going to happen at the end.

For me, books are a way of learning about new worlds – different people, different places – but, at the same time, they’re also a good way of escaping the worst-case scenarios on this one.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 12:57 am and is filed under Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.