I can point to a hundred books that have changed my life. Fiction or non-fiction, aligned with my worldview or not, written last month or thousands of years ago. I can hold each book in my hand and be transported to a time, a place, a person. Feeling the contours of the ‘me’ I used to be in each spine sparks reflection on where I walk. More books will come through my life and transform my lifestyle, outlook, relationships, work, and day. More authors will bless my life with the arduous good of their life’s work. This is a truth: books are not just why I write, they are why I live. As narrative creatures, we seek meaning in the chaos. Nowhere has satisfied our longings more than in the words of our ancestors. For good and ill, these shape our lives whether they be Greek philosophers, French economists, Jewish rabbis, Colonial naturalists, or West-coast novelists. These same people may write a blog post, create a podcast, or preach a sermon, but the medium is the message, and these mediums hold little weight in the long-term trajectory of our lives. A TedTalk may be revisited a hundred times, but it can never be leafed through as you seek a particularly ink-stained page. An op-ed may spread like a virus through the digital web, but it can never be held entirely by your gaze as you sit alone in a study surrounded by the tomes of friends dead long before you met them. Books are windows to worlds that only we can see. Each of our perspectives changes what a book is. Throughout our lives, our own views on worlds we built in our minds will shift and grow with maturity and new perspectives. My worry about digital technology, short-form and algorithmic junk content, and the rise of AI-enabled creations are fully eclipsed by the wonderful world of literature that sits beside me as I think and work. In a world where so many are committed to creating art in countless languages, styles, explorations, and themes, there is hope. Hope, not just for the future of books (because there is and always will be one), but for the future of us.
