Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories by Daniel TaylorMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I will let the author speak for me:
"Stories tell me not only who I am but also who you are, and what we are together. In fact, without you and your story I cannot know myself and my story. no one's story exists alone. Each is tangled up in countless others. Pull a thread in my story and feel the tremor half a world and two millennia away."
"It is crucial . . . that we surround children, and ourselves, with healthy stories. These stories should be filled with mentors, models, and heroes who do the kinds of things, physically and spiritually, that we ourselves wish to do. If I cannot imagine myself doing something, I am unlikely even to attempt it. Stories multiply our possibilities."
"Stories can . . . literally give us courage. The child who hears of another child outwitting a giant in a fairy tale is better equipped to conquer the equally fearsome giants in his or her own life. . . this is one of many reasons to reject the flippant response "It's just a story" . . . Stories are more real and more determinative in our lives than the vast majority of things that go on in the merely physical world. Stories form our minds and spirits, the way we perceive ourselves and others, and how we act in the world. Strip the world of story and it becomes more a simple mechanism--and therefore less real."
"Storytellers should be aware that they are dealing with dangerous materials. Life and death flow to us through stories. Words have almost unlimited power to destroy and to heal. Nothing is more false than the implication of the phrase 'words, words, words--nothing but words.' More lives have been destroyed by words than by bullets, and more lives redeemed and made whole."
"In his Nobel Lecture, Solzhenitsyn reflects on the role of stories, and art generally, in the modern world, and identifies four things literature can do to help heal a violent, fragmented, alienated world. First, it preserves memory, without which we forget who we are. In addition, it helps us to see ourselves accurately, diluting our human tendency to self-delusion. Further, it gives us a vehicle for overcoming our radical separateness and the relativism of values, offering something for common contemplation that shows us our potential for agreement and community. Lastly, as we have seen, art and stories can vanquish lies, including the lies that provide the needed cover for violence and oppression."Tonia, you have it right when you say, "Fight Evil, Read Books".
I really liked this book, and when I think of my life as story, and my friends as characters in my book, I don't know, it just adds something to my life.
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1 comment:
Another interesting pick from you ")
The cover photograph is brilliant!
I am so enjoying the little bits of time I am carving out with books. The time to read is such luxury...sometimes, when I am turning the pages of a really great book, I think how amazing it is to escape into a story or learn about some interesting nonfiction event....I love how in the book you lent me, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Juliet, in writing to Sidney tells him which of the Guernsey folks she likes a lot, a little and then not at all. So funny. It was like a story within a story if that makes sense! How sad that Mary Ann Shaffer is no longer with us, just her words....Did you know that Annie Barrows is the author of the great Ivy and Bean (children's series)?? Yes, I digress!
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