One of my favorite life experiences is falling into a book series. I've been trapped on more than one occasion in the book world. As a kid I loved Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators by Robert Arthur Jr. and Mary Virginia Carey. I would argue they are better than Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene (pseudonym) or The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon and David L. Robbins (pseudonyms). It's funny the books are written under a pseudonym since they are mystery novels. Everything's a mystery it seems.
I bring up book series because I did in fact start one last week. Many years ago, I told myself I would not ever read this series, mostly because I thought it was stupid. "Are you team Edward or team Jacob?" Neither. I don't care about Romeo and Juliet type romances. And yet here I am halfway through the third novel of the four-book series. I will admit it is a good series. Otherwise, I would have stopped reading. However, for me personally, I think if we are allowed to compare apples to oranges, then Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling is a much better series. I don't really know if they are comparable to each other. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer is rather straightforward and slow-moving. Rowling's Series on the other hand is packed. It's packed with characters and creatures and places and spells, and new details are unearthed in every chapter, every page. They are so independent from other another, so I think the reason they are often compared is because they are written for young adults. Both novels also include the supernatural. So I can understand why a dystopian novel series, such as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, is not included in the typical comparisons. I can't tell you how much I loved Collin's series, it was just too good (and awful at times).
Resurfacing from reading a series is like stepping out of one world into another, less colorful world. But the thing is, I have to do it. I can't stay in another world. I have to go to the bathroom. I have to eat. I have to sleep. It's frustrating but its true. And the other thing, a very obvious thing, is that the series eventually comes to an end. It's like waking up from a dream and hitting your head on a rod. You've invested your mind into characters that are only real on the page of a book and then sometimes on the screen of a tv (although typically not matching the expectation in your head). I find the transition from the fake world into the real world is rather abrupt. I once did a virtual reality simulation in LA where we walked around and fixed things or shot things. We wore goggles attached to cords so you couldn't go very far. It was fun by very superficial compared to the depth of currents books, movies and video games. I'm sure there are virtual reality experiences that are much more in depth, and if not, magicians are probably working on it (well not magicians, but close).
That of course butts into the ethical dilemmas of creating in-depth virtual reality experiences. Could creators go so far as to design worlds such as the world in The Truman Show, in which the real people in the "world" don't know that it isn't real? This of course goes back to children. As adults, we know —unless we believe the philosophical theory that nothing is as it seems and deem life as a dream a real possibility— the difference between a virtual world and the real world. I remember learning in one of my film classes in school that young children (three years and younger) may see the tv world as a real world. Eventually the child learns that the real world and the tv world are different, but at one point they didn't know. I'm pretty sure a person could be convinced that the virtual world they live in is real if they were exposed to the virtual world at a young age and didn't know anything else. I'm not sure what the chances are that an adult would believe that a virtual world was real. I'm sure it's not impossible.
I wonder what it would be like to find out that I was living in a made up world. I imagine it would be traumatizing. Good thing reading book series' is nothing like that.
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