Have you ever thought about the similarities between falling in love and reading? Both prompt intimate feelings, are deeply personal, and can make us feel vulnerable.
Reading a new book is an emotion-packed experience; a roller coaster of feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Each page, each chapter unveils a new twist, a new predicament, a new reason to fall deeper in love with your hero or heroine.
So how do you fall in (literary) love?
Anticipation
First comes the anticipation. The exhilarating feeling of a potentially great experience.
You’re already flirting with the idea of loving the character and the plot, because something attracted you to the story. And this just builds your excitement even more.
You feel keyed up yet somehow squeamish. It’s a risk.
What if it turns out it’s not what you thought it would be? You feel vulnerable but determined to go headfirst no matter what.
The appeal of unfamiliarity and the soothing sense of growing intimacy
And so it begins. You start slow. You want to take in every word, every image, every sensation the author lays out for you.
The unfamiliar has a great pull. As you read more pages and the characters start taking shape, the excitement of unfamiliarity is gradually replaced with a mesmerizing, pleasurable sense of intimacy.
You start to understand what your characters are thinking before they do. You start having an opinion on what they do; you judge their actions, you sympathize with their thoughts, and feel uneasy and sad when they make choices that are going to cost them later on.
A kaleidoscope of emotions
No other mental activity known to humankind can stir such a variety of emotions. The intensity and visceral impact of these feelings can only be compared to those experienced when you fall in love.
You are now partly the director of your character’s story. You empathize at moments, reject their actions at others. Reconcile with them once you learn their rationale and understand their deeper incentives. You marvel at the fact that an author could know you all too well. That they could think the thoughts you are thinking and speak the words you’re saying.
The bitter end
Inevitably, you reach that dreaded point in your reading where there are only a couple of pages left.
Your soul is brimming with excitement.
You are lingering for the last sentence. Will the end be joyful or sad? Will your character shine through and be redeemed?
Your feelings of excitement are now mingling with feelings of sadness and grief.
The story has to end. It’s like a bad break-up, an inevitable divorce. There’s no turning back.
You wish you could read it afresh again. You realize you cannot relive the experience again, because you already know what’s going to happen. There’s only the possibility of a new love. A different love with another book.
The possibility of falling in love all over
And then, while you’re still feeling down because there are no more pages to read you start to entertain a very appealing thought. The possibility of falling in love again comes to the forefront.
Starting again
And so it goes, you pick up another book. A promising one. It might even be from the same author you grew to love and identify with.
The sweet story repeats itself. Only this time, the setting is different, the characters are new, and the possibility of immersing into a wondrous world suddenly becomes tangible again.
Don’t you just love reading?
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