true books

When my oldest child was five, she wanted to know if something she was reading was "a true book." We talked about the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and how some books take a "true thing" and make up a story about it. (Dolphin Tale, I'm looking at you! And more recently: The Greatest Showman.)

To me, fiction is book candy - it tastes yummy as you eat it, but it  doesn't fill you. You can maybe sometimes get a little bit of nutritional value out of it, but mostly, it's just cotton candy fluff. Don't get me wrong - I don't stop anyone from reading fiction! My children's favorite genre is fantasy - we are all about Harry Potter and Percy Jackson in this house. I read plenty of it myself because sometimes you just need some book chocolate!

The two fiction books that had the most impact on me are the stories that made me forget they were pretend, and to this day, I want to go to Guernsey and Italy to meet those characters who really exist only in my mind.

Real stories, on the other hand - "true books" - are fascinating! My favorite genres are memoir and biography.

History is not about dates and quotes and obscure provisos. History is about life, about change, about consequences, cause and effect. It's about the mystery of human nature, the mystery of time. And it isn't just about politics and the military and social issues, which is almost always the way it's taught. It's about music and poetry and drama and science and medicine and money and love.

~ David McCullough. keynote; National Conference of State Legislatures annual meeting, Boston MA, August 2007.

I don't know that I personally have any amazing stories to tell. I'm pretty average. But what I can do - what I am good at - is to help other people tell their stories. I can give a stronger voice to people who have a message to share with the world. I can help people write down their memories to pass them to their future generations. Not every story needs to be published for the entire world - some are intended only for family memories. But that doesn't make them less important to be written down.

We come to know people more fully by learning their personal stories. Whether it's someone sitting in our living room and talking to us, or a person we'll never meet because they live in another part of the world or another century, we develop our humanity through shared experience. We can love and support other people more fully. We can gain support for our own situations. Sharing stories helps to build relationships, and I can't think of anything more central to the human experience than relationships.