Imagination and print

I have always been a very big reader. As anyone in my family will tell you, if you see me with a book in my hand, you would do well to make an appointment to ask me anything. Russia could have dropped the "big one" during the cold war and I wouldn't have noticed.
Lately, I have been re-reading some of the stories I read as a boy. Specifically, I am currently going over the "Anne of Green Gables" series again, and what I can find in the local library of the "Little House" books. Any guy reading this has immediately declared me gay. That's okay, it's their problem, not to mention loss. Both are wonderful sets of stories.
I used to think that Laura and her family used to have such scrapes and adventures out on the prairies of the old west. Then I read the Anne books, and realized the messes that a truly imaginative person can create for themselves.
The imagination is a powerful thing. It allows me to actually picture the characters I like so much to read about, without having to rely on their television and movie incarnations. I will grant that they did come close with Anne Shirley, but Brother Cadfael isn't quite as I would have pictured him in the BBC series of television shows.
Which brings me to the variety of stories that I have long been a fan of. Some people seem to enjoy only fictional drama, romance or westerns. Let's not even get started on the obsession of science fiction fanatics. Myself, I have been from the Ice Age of Jane Auel's books to the future as envisaged by Issac Asimov. I have been to the streets of New York, and manor houses of feudal England.
That is what real reading is to me. It is a visit to other places and times. My imagination finds me a small corner of the scenery to fit myself into, observing the characters without interacting with them. From the time I was a child, I took myself to all of the places that I could never see otherwise. I know how hard the work was on the American frontier. I know that we will have to work hard to overcome the mistakes we make today and in the future.
Perhaps my imagination isn't strong enough to create such clear pictures for others, but it is definitely powerful enough to put me in the places that others have been in.
Some days, reality just has to wait its turn.