When you open a book

When you open a book, you open your mind.

You welcome a journey, whether it’s educational or imaginative.

When you immerse yourself in a book’s pages, you allow yourself to be either lost in another time and place or locked in the pursuit of knowledge.

When you open a book, you can let the words inside take you to places you never thought you’d go, right from the comfort of home.

Since I set my goal to read two books a month (which was a failure), I’ve gone to war-torn England and France.

Words have taken me to Vietnamese jungles, and home again to witness a man’s struggle to live with what he’d seen.

I’ve stood atop Pikes Peak with an author who returned to visit the spot where, as a boy, he’d scattered his daddy’s ashes.

I went around the world with a series of short looks into the lives of people I thought I knew, and some to whom I was introduced in the span of three pages.

The last book I finished took me to Tennessee for the battle of Shiloh.

The book I’m in the middle of now, Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’ has taken me to too many places to count between the Appalachian foothills and Haiti.

I’ve still got several chapters to read, and who knows where I’ll end up when it’s done.

Books are wonderful things.

When you open a book, you never know where you’ll go or what you’ll learn.

This post is a response to Sue’s prompt, which is “book.”