Literature: Finding the Meaning

   Hello dearest readers, I hope you all slept well and are ready to seize the day. It is finally Saturday, and after a beautiful and mild day yesterday, I find myself waking up to a snowstorm; I don't know what I did to anger Mother Nature so much, but the fact that I have to work today and she does that to the weather makes me feel like I did something wrong. None the less, I'll put my big girl boots on with my winter coat and face the storm. Before I do all of that, I thought about talking a little bit about books this morning, and how to read them well.
   There is always a deeper meaning to the front face value of a book, and whether or not the author intended to do that, a subconscious meaning can emerge as well. It's the end of the term with the exam season just around the corner so all of my professors are telling me to look deeper within the book to find some new way of looking at it, (and since I have about 4 essays and 2 projects to do, I'm doing that quite a few times on repeat). The advantage of doing that is the fact that you get a whole new appreciation for the book if you do succeed in finding something that at first you might not have found.
   If you feel like you're coming up at a loss, take a look through sites and find book club questions for your book. If your book is not a classic, or relatively an older version you might have a little more trouble, but it becomes really helpful. In my personal experience, I need to write an essay for my American Literature class and I've decided to compare Emerson and Poe's work on the imagery of the eye as a reflection of the self; since I had joined my mother's book club one month while they were discussing The Life of Pi (one of my favorite books of all time), I remembered one of the conversations we were having on the image of Pi looking into the eyes of the tiger and seeing his soul. His father would simply reply that the only thing that he was seeing was his own emotions reflected into the eyes, and nothing more. This quote itself is what is inspiring my essay.
   Inspiration can come from anywhere, we just need to be open to receive when it comes knocking. This goes not only for reading and writing, but in every creative aspect of life. You never know what your muse can be, but it is a muse none the less.

K.P.H.