In a world fraught with awful things like terror attacks and shootings and military coups, people need a method of coping with all the negativity they're forced to experience on a daily basis. Some people meditate, some exercise. Some do drugs, and some shop excessively. But I read. When I'm sad, I read. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I read. When I'm nervous about something or mulling over a big decision, I read. When I'm in the mood, I read. Even when I'm not in the mood, I read because books are such an important part of my life not only as a coping mechanism, but as a hobby and pastime and joy as well.
When you pick up a book, you can always expect without fail to be transported to a new place, a new era, a new world or even a new universe. You know you're going to go on a new adventure with each new book you read, you'll get to experience life through another person's eyes and be in their shoes for a while and leave your own shoes/life/problems behind for a time. There's something incredibly satisfying about getting so lost in a book that you forget to move or eat or go to the bathroom for quite literally hours at a time, because you're so invested in the story you're reading you're able to shut out the entire world.
Sometimes, when you pick up a new book, you see yourself so perfectly, so absolutely in the main character you're reading about that it's uncanny. You can identify with a myriad of characters in books so different from each other it's as if they were night and day. You might see yourself in the lonely baker who befriends a lost prince. You might identify with the captain of a generation ship bound for a new life on a new planet so he can leave behind the slew of regrets he's accumulated during his life on Earth. You could even see yourself in the villain of the story, who is ruthless and unforgiving in their treatment of the protagonist because they've had to fight tooth and nail for everything they've got. The ability to identify with so many different characters at once is a unique experience you can only find when reading a book; no other experience can mystify and entertain you quite as wholly as a book can in this respect.
And when you find that one, the most perfect and flawless book you've ever read in your entire life, well, there's no way to explain the feeling of utter contentment and satisfaction you feel. You read, reread, reread again tens of times, finding something new to appreciate each and every time. You know the book almost word for word, but you're still surprised by the twist, you still tear up at the end, and you still feel pure joy when the protagonist triumphs. Even your friends know the book forwards and backwards, not because they actually read it, but because you talk about it so often that they know everything about it by now.
So when you have something as special, as diverse, and as wholly unique as books, with new ones coming out every hour, new genres being discovered by the day, why would you ever need anything else? Why wouldn't you choose to visit a new place, a new land every night from the comfort of your favorite sofa when all it takes is the flip of a page? No seriously, who needs drugs when you have books?
