As I learned years ago, fiction is a beautiful thing for so many different reasons.  It can teach you about the real world, provide an escape and bring history to life.  Of course it can do so much more than that, but those are the main reasons why I love fiction.

Literature has been a driving force in pop culture for hundreds of years from Charles’ Dickens Oliver Twist to Harry Potter.  So many different books have left their marks on world history, but more importantly on the lives of many individuals.  When you find that one book that really changes your outlook on life it’s a hard feeling to put into words.

When you find that book that changes your life, it leaves you quite literally breathless when you finish it.  You close the book, maybe stare at it for a few seconds and then slowly release your breath as you’re sucked back into reality.  You get that odd feeling in your chest that’s a mixture of sadness, amazement and sheer awe.

Sometimes it’s the plot itself that was so intense you couldn’t put the book down.  Other times it’s the characters that were so real that you felt like you knew them as if they were your best friends.  And still other times it’s the little bits of wisdom or the message the author imparts to readers.  Either way, it doesn’t matter.  You’ve just read this incredible book and you have a hard time coming back to reality.  You don’t want to go back to your own dull life; you’d rather read your book again and escape between the pages once more.

That, my friends, is the beauty of fiction.  Fiction can leave such an incredible impact on your real life that as someone who loves books I can’t imagine what it’s like to go a whole year reading only one or two books like some people do.  True, for me fiction is mostly an escape from a body that hates me.  It’s also a way to learn about people, times and places that I never would have discovered otherwise.

Truly, fiction is beautiful.