Dive In... To A Great Book!

Reading is like swimming in the ocean.

When you’re learning how to do it, it’s difficult and not very fun. Currents are trying to grab you and drag you under. Waves are knocking you around like a rubber ducky in a bathtub with a wild 3-year-old. Seaweed brushes up against your leg and you have a mini-heart attack, wondering if you’re about to be attacked by a shark or feel the sting of jellyfish tentacles. You can’t see the world below the water. You aren’t having any fun. It’s hard. For those reasons, you don’t seem to get much out of it. At its worst, surface level reading is drowning. At its best, it’s boring.

But to a strong reader, reading is like SCUBA diving the Great Barrier Reef. You have the proper equipment to breathe easily, see clearly, and glide through the water, powerful and weightless. Now a bright, magical, foreign world full of colorful marine life has opened itself up to you. There are too many new wonders to explore to even attempt to count. The beauty at this depth will knock your socks off.

You’re unhindered now; instead of being this alien outsider fighting the currents and thrashing against the waves, you are fully absorbed into the world of the ocean – you’re part of the story now.

But you have to get through the slogging open water swim – gasping for air, lactic acid turning your muscles to wasted rubber, salt water burning your eyes -- before you can experience the wonders of the deep. Tough it out. Challenge yourself. Each time you read something outside your comfort zone, you’re getting closer to being able to put on your SCUBA equipment.

And when that finally happens, you’re not struggling through words and counting how many pages are left until the end of the chapter. Not you; not anymore! You’re floating as effortlessly around Hogwarts as Nearly Headless Nick. You’re part of the story. You’re inside the castle, in a world you built with your imagination (and a little bit of help from an author).

No longer struggling through the currents and waves and being fully equipped with the proper SCUBA gear frees you up to open your eyes, look around you, and appreciate the depth of literature.

Knockturn Alley = nocturnally? Nice pun, Rowling. Severus Snape’s name comes from the Latin root meaning severe – which he most definitely is. Albus means white; there’s a little symbolism for you. Remus Lupin is named after a Roman myth about one of the founders of that ancient empire, who was raised by wolves… and his last name, Lupin, is Latin for moon.

When you’re diving in the reef, when you’re part of the story, you’ll notice qualities such as these. Ingenious foreshadowing, carefully and lovingly strung out across seven novels, allegorical connections to World War II. Wisdom dripping with eloquent beauty from the mouth of the eccentric, lovable sage, Albus Dumbledore.  

Treasures such as these make you not only appreciate literature, but find actual enjoyment from it. You can slog through a so-called “lame” story about some kid who finds out he has magical powers and goes off to wizarding school at the surface level, or you can become a part of Hogwarts yourself and collect a trove of literary treasures along the way.

This experience is of course not limited in any way to the Harry Potter series. It’s there in more shapes, forms, and stories than are imaginable. The world’s greatest thinkers and artists have set down their stories and ideas for us to glimpse here, in their future. It’s the ability to read minds – we have access to the thoughts of men and women long dead. Take advantage of it!

It’s beautiful down here in the deep. Join me. Put on your SCUBA masks and dive into the majestic reef that is a good book. Explore. See the depth and beauty your eyes can behold when you read like this.