a reflection on reading.
I love reading. But I hate finishing books. especially series. When you begin a book or a series of books... an epic story of sorts... you emmerse yourself into an other world in which often times the rules of our world don't apply. This world begins with black lines on a page and ends with my heart breaking. And that's just part of it. The book ends. You know when you begin it it ends. I used to have the habit of looking at the last page. Sometimes simply the page number and other times the last word. But books are final. The author ends it in some way. Most often stories don't have a happy ending. If they did you'd feel cheated or wronged in some way. Sometimes things end as best they can... not everyone happy, but the characters end up how they should be. I'm always upset when I come to those last pages. I want to know what happens but don't want the story to end.
In Ender's game and throughout the Shadow series, you can see a theme of "knowing" and "loving"... how they are related... if they even exist. Can you truly know someone. can you truly love someone. Is it the combination of the two actually resolves the contest. My biggest problem when I read, is that when I do read, I fall in love with the characters. I begin to know them. You are let into their thoughts their dreams... and I do love them.. as much as anyone can love an idea... an thought.. a dream.
and when the last page is turned. I feel as if I have lost something. Again my best friend is gone... stopped talking to me or half way around the world, in some country or another... fulfilling a dream of sorts. The memories are there. Dreams of the past and what might have happened in the present or future... how fate may have twisted to that happy ending that everyone hates.... unless it's done well. But that's all it is. Dreams. Memories. speculations. I can talk to my friends half way across the globe... and the friend that I thought was lost has since been recovered. But there is something gone. In all of these cases. Something I knew final. I had read the last word on the last page. I knew it was ending. And when that last page was turned, and even though I can always flip back through... reread parts. relive. It is never the same. New memories will not be made with those spectres. The last word was read. The last page turned. The heart broken.