As the school year comes to a close and children’s summer reading challenges begin (keep an eye out for TPB’s list), we have a new kind of challenge for you: seek out magic in your everyday life.
Most people I know fell in love with the magic of reading as a child - engrossed in worlds with endless possibilities. We imagined ourselves flying off to Neverland, sitting for the sorting hat at Hogwarts, training with extraordinary teens at Camp Half-Blood, going on an unexpected journey with a band of dwarves - reading meant endless possibility and discovery. It’s a lot harder to find that same feeling in the pages we read as adults. When we open a book today, we bring all our grown-up anxieties, fears, and unrealized dreams with us, and we’re not always ready to confront them in the fiction we read. When I read, I want to rediscover love and hope and magic - the magic that came so easy as a child.
I think at this point we would all be forgiven for wanting to escape 2020, and what better way to do so than to read some high fantasy?
High fantasy ticks all the boxes for what I need right now: it’s often long, so it fills up many hours; it explores complex ideas and themes for maximum distraction potential; and most importantly, it’s set far, far away from the United States in 2020.