This Is Your Brain on Books

Hey all! I was trolling around the internet this morning and I found this incredible book wormhole on the Huffington Post website.

Woaaahhh, amiright?

So let's talk about books. I am always amazed at the many ways people use books to create something new. A continual chain of cause and effect, inspiration and ideas. An author is inspired and writes a book, which they sell to an inspired agent who sells it to an inspired editor who, in turn hopefully inspires the people working in design, publicity, marketing, etc. so they can get the book out there to inspire readers, who turn around and use that inspiration to create something new. (Think I could have used the word inspired more?) Pretty cool, huh?

Garett and Jessica Mayfield from the blog Wednesday use books for a lot of their DIY projects and wedding decorations, and my heart always gets a little fluttery when I see them. (Is is weird that I would rather have flowery centerpieces that explode from books rather than vases?) Or what about Newspaper Nail Art? And I'm guessing a lot of you heard about the Mystery Paper Sculptures that appeared around Edinburgh last year (see below). All we know about the mystery sculpture is that she's female, she's an artisan, and she left ten book sculptures around the city of Edinburgh to show her appreciation for the written word. From a note that she left with her first sculpture:

We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)

Aren't those beautiful? If you want to see more, all ten were photographed by local literary lover Chris Scott. I find it ironic that sometimes people destroy books to show their appreciation for them, but as she says, a book is so much more than a bunch of words. A few of my college friends took a course where the professor required them to rip apart a book and make something new with it. Several students allegedly burst into tears because they were so uncomfortable with what they considered a disfiguration of something so important.

If books were merely a bunch of words on paper, none of those people would have cried. To be honest, had I been in that class, I might have cried too. The good news is, you can't kill ideas (if you could, it would make dystopian stories like The Hunger Games a lot shorter and a lot less interesting). It's pretty neat, the power and meaning that books have. I'm guessing you agree with me, or you wouldn't be here.