Today I started watching the new Reacher series on Prime Video and it got me thinking. I just finished watching Station Eleven and before that I had watched The Witcher and before that Wheel of Time. All of those series have something in common. They are based on books.
At the same time as we are seeing school boards and governors across the country attempting to ban books from school libraries we are seeing an uptick in interest in books. There are BookToks on TicTok, Bookstagrams on Instagram, and Bookcast on Podcast networks around the world.
With the rise of streaming services more and more books are being turned into movies or TV shows somewhere, and people always like the source material. If someone likes a movie or tv show based on a book they are very likely to check out that book.
When I was younger it felt like every other movie was either based on a Stephen King, Michael Crichton, or John Grisham novel. Now there are far more authors with their works being turned into movies or tv shows and it is happening at such a pace it is hard to keep track of.
A love of books generally brings with it a dislike of people that hate and fear books, and that is the reason people try and ban anything. The people trying to ban books from public school libraries aren’t worried about the children reading about sex or violence. There are far too many books with that in it for them to ban. They only use that as a pretext for attacking books about facts that make them uncomfortable. Beloved is about slavery. Maus is about the Holocaust. You have to ask yourself who would be uncomfortable if children learned about slavery and the Holocaust.
It is a strange world we live in, but I have faith. The love of books is spreading faster than it has at almost anytime in my life. The new generation is making reading cool. It used to be if someone wanted to be an influencer they had to have rock hard abs or a nice butt but now all one has to do is read a book, and the more people read and love reading the more people will exist to defend books from those that seek to do them harm.
David Huzzard Writes 