Today’s post by Debbie Thomas from our sister blog, Novel Matters | @NovelMatters

I know what I like. I’ve been reading for 40…ish years, so yes, I should know by now what floats my boat when it comes to books.  Strong characters, authentic motivations, deep and worthwhile themes that resonate with me as a reader and settings as character that make me loathe to leave at the end.  Where do I consistently find these books? If there were a section so labeled in bookstores, I would camp out on their shores.

But there is no such shore. So, I cast my nets wide in the stacks of new releases or trawl musty secondhand stores for well-thumbed books. Dog-eared corners don’t lie – they have a reader’s stamp of urgency about them.

Occasionally, I reel in a surprising catch.  Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and left me running breathless through the stacks.  His even darker book, The Angel’s Game, had me cowering under the covers with a booklight into the early hours of the next workday and thanking God for people of courage. Flavia de Luce pulled me onto the back of Gladys (her bike) to race through Bishop’s Lacey for poisons. I promptly downloaded her next three books on my Kindle at the end (thank you, Alan Bradley).  The unabridged version of Jane Eyre left me aghast at what incorruptible spiritual truths had been gutted for word count and brevity in the version I’d read early on. I tasted the desperation and joys of a New York slum in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I laughed open-mouthed at Green Shadows, White Whale. Who knew Ray Bradbury could turn writing a screenplay for Moby Dick into a thing of hilarity?

So, yes, I love the heftiness of velum and cloth cover in my hand, the knowing scent of old type and fuzzed edges of well-worn books, the cover photo that stirs the waters of imagination, the lure of a title that befuddles, the quick catch of a downloadable world.

I never want to be so sure of what I like that I steer away from unknown waters.  What have you read that surprised you?

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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Our own Bonnie Grove wrote an inspiring post a few days ago on the value of daydreaming and its connection to imagination titled “Scribble on the Walls of Life.”  She encouraged us to play, to imagine and pretend.  Rejuvenating stuff for harried, stressful lives.

On a vacation last weekend, I was able to revisit a major source of imagination from my childhood – The Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City, Maryland.  Revisit isn’t exactly the word. We pulled off the highway and took photos at the castle entrance.  The park’s been closed since the 1980s when it became a retail shopping center.  Now Old King Cole directs shoppers to the Safeway instead of the quaint park that fired our dreams and imprinted our hearts with wonder.

The Enchanted Forest, built in 1955, was the first theme park in Maryland.  It had no mechanical rides or flashy special effects.  It offered a fairytale land with Peter Pumpkin Eater’s house, a rainbow slide, Alice’s Wonderland, the seven dwarves’ cottage and glittering cavern, the three pigs’ homes, Robin Hood’s barn, a gingerbread house…sigh.  When you crossed the threshold, you raced to leave reality behind.

My niece and I were only four years apart in age, and we would lie awake the night before our yearly visits planning the route we would follow and which souvenirs to buy.  I still treasure my souvenirs from the gift shop.  We didn’t care that some of the paint was flaking off the mache-like characters and the pond surrounding Mt. Vesuvius smelled faintly of chlorine.  Reality held no power there.  We had permission to escape to the land that shimmered with fairy dust.

Once we stuck our toes in the waters of enchantment, it was a short swim to full-length fiction.  Narnia, Middle Earth and Camelot unfolded their road maps.  We searched out secret openings in cupboards, kept our eyes peeled for hobbit footprints among the ferns and sharpened our makeshift swords.  When the stories ended, we remembered with fondness our time there and treasured the souvenirs we picked up along the way.

Imagination is an illusive thing that must be nurtured to grow. Writers know that it meets you at the same place at the same time each day, if properly trained.  If you miss a day or sleep in late, your characters will be lined up at the entrance, arms crossed, tapping their feet.  But they won’t wait for long.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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