September 16, 2010

What's your favorite book?

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez speaks at a podium after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, Sweden, 1982. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature.

If I was illiterate, I couldn't have enjoyed 100 Years of Solitude.  I would never experience the extraordinary events of one family's history, never enter their world to think and dream, and never learn the lessons my favorite book taught to me.  And whatever my life would be like, I know something magnificent would be missing. 

Imagine life without literacy, much less literature: when reading for pleasure is beyond your grasp because you have trouble just reading for survival.

No comments:

Post a Comment