ABSTRACT
I’m sure it was books that first got me hooked. As a kid, I wanted every book I could get my hands on. I wasn’t some young prodigy reading Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. I just loved kids’ books. I can’t remember the books I read first, but Katherine Paterson’s 1977 Bridge to Terabithia captured my attention at a young age. It’s the story of two kids who create their own kingdom in the forest. I lived in rural Virginia and had access to a forest of my own, so the book gave me new ways of connecting to the only things I really had access to—land and trees. I also loved C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, about a group of siblings who stumble into a magical universe. Both Terebithia and Narnia reflect the power of the imagination and the ways that imagination can be something that we share with others. Now, in my 40s, I devote my leisure reading strictly to fantasy and (preferably) science fiction. I loved the opportunity to imagine the futures presented in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, and Peter F. Hamilton’s The Commonwealth Saga. Fantasy and science fiction offer the opportunity to imagine different ways to be human, which appeals to my sociological imagination.
