The sales assistant joked that I had "a serious night of reading" ahead of me. Well, I don't know about "night" - it did only take 15 minutes - but it was the best book I've read in I-don't-know-how-long. The Lorax beats The Forever War (which I've been crawling painfully through for over a month now) hands down. And that's supposed to be a science fiction classic.
The Lorax may be a children's story, but it's also "serious" storytelling of the highest order. Seuss' joyfully poetic writing...
"I am the Lorax," he coughed and he whiffed.carried me right through to the end I knew was coming in one beautiful, imaginative burst of narrative. Without any of the tortuous mind-battle to continue reading I often experience with inferior (adult) fiction - as if reading a book, whatever my response to it, is good for me.
He sneezed and he snuffled. He snarggled. He sniffed.
"Once-ler!" he cried with a cruffulous croak.
"Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke!"
So honestly, if January is getting you down - which it is, according to BBC news - curl up with a good children's book. Read it out loud; as if you were telling the story to an *actual* child. This was easily the most entertaining, most uplifting thing I'd done all month. Medicine for the soul. And bloody good inspiration for some proper storytelling if you've any writer-ly inclinations.
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