Dyet Yarns: reuse, recycle, reinvent!

Recently, I discovered knitting fiction. Fantasy and mystery knitting fiction, in particular. I started out with a tiny hardback from the bargain bin at Borders, Knitting: A Novel by Anne Bartlett. I put this tiny book by my bed and vowed to read a little each night. A year later, I ventured in slightly deeper; I purchased Casting Spells by Barbara Bretton for the Kindle. It turned out to be a delightful little fantasy novel set in New England, and I devoured it quickly. I even want to read the next in the series, but have promised myself I will read the other knitting fiction I bought, Died in the Wool by Mary Kruger, before spending more money. (I haven’t gotten through that one yet.)

Then I joined Audible.com and I was hopelessly re-immersed. My full return to epic fiction was heralded by the unique attribute of audiobooks that no printed word has: I can knit or spin while listening to them. Knitting AND epic fiction at the same time? I was sunk. There is no escape. The joy I get from epic fiction stories has few rivals. Not being content to let this simple fact be, I contemplated WHY that might be.

This led me to an interesting conclusion: reading fiction is not only beneficial, but necessary for advanced understanding of human interaction.

In the past few years since graduating from college, I have, on average, gotten through one novel a year. Since putting the Kindle app on my phone and joining Audible.com, my consumption has jumped to several novels a month. As I worked my way through these books, the senses of elation, anticipation, suspense, and satisfaction that I used to experience along with the characters of a book came back to me. I remembered why I loved reading epic stories so much, and it got me to thinking about how profoundly my reading habits have affected my personality and philosophies.

The single largest influence on my social views has been fiction novels. This realization came as a bit of a shock until I thought about how reclusive and immersed in my books I was throughout middle school and early high school. For instance, my first major fantasy series was the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey. Those books, while not highly sophisticated in many ways, contained well-developed social and political themes and explored controversial topics as a matter of course. There were many characters with alternate sexualities or lifestyles, and different cultures and races almost all had stories from the perspective of a member. The books taught me that things that are different may be valuable in their own right, even if they are not what we expect. They also had some damn good stories, humorous turns of phrase, sympathetic characters (especially for an angst-ridden teenager), and some steamy romances.

Later I tackled more advanced fodder along the lines of Dune and Ender’s Game, which discussed philosophical points of view more explicitly. These built a foundation for my ability to abstract a scenario from my own personal morals and perform objective analyses. I began to learn the significance of politics, manipulation, and communication. I saw how those things could lead to devastation when employed by the ruthless or the misguided, and I saw situations where there was only a choice of evils rather than an optimal solution.

My reading habits have profoundly shaped my perception of my society, the rest of the world, and how things “should be.” I developed an acceptance of many social “irregularities” without even realizing it. They were normal attributes of characters in my books, and I took them in stride. Formal education only goes so far; parents, encourage your kids to read often and read fiction. Consuming a diverse sample of characters, social structures, and political dynamics will be one of the best things you can do to prepare them to enter the world.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Tags: audiobooks, books, communication, kids, Knitting, morals, reading, society