The Sweet Escape of Books

Reading will set you free. - quote from my 10th grade English teacher

It has been swirling craziness around here. The kids started school this week, our house had been under construction for months with a few major setbacks and delays and is a tornado inside and out, three of my kids are in soccer on different teams and leagues, I have been teaching and training for more fitness classes, and I am still in the midst of potty training with lots of success yet frequent setbacks.

Everyone one of you reading could write a similar paragraph above with your busy lives. How do you cope amidst the chaos? What do you turn to for comfort and refuge?

I turn to books. The bigger and more intense the stress, the bigger the books I put my nose into. As this crazy time started a couple weeks ago, I chose to dive into a 1236 page small print historical fiction novel, World Without End by Ken Follett. This is the sequel to his epic bestselling dramatic Medieval novel, Pillars of the Earth. I read Pillars more than ten years ago.

One word comes to mind: ESCAPE. How thrilling it is to quickly slip back into year 1327 to experience the hard life in ancient England where life revolved around a great cathedral and and the town of Kingsbridge filled with good, strong, and villainous characters. Desire, Black Death plague, war, passion, and family conflict fill these pages that I willingly get lost in.
Maybe this makes my life seem like cake compared to those hard times of peasants and serfs. As I sift through assignment notebooks and  my overloaded calendar, the Medieval world of Kingsbridge lingers in the back of my mind. Sweet escape. What's yours?