Day 76: GIANT Stories

So I don't know about you, but sometimes when I browse for a new book to read I get a little discouraged because everything feels like a massive, multiversal epic that determines the fate of all reality. I'm talking about series like the Three Body Problem, the Lightbringer Series, the Stormlight Archives, that sort of era-spanning or multi-dimensional story that feels gigantic. Marvel and DC have been doing this for decades, and now our 'cinematic universes' seem to dwarf every other story out there in the number of movies, the number of characters, the rules at play, etc. This isn't just a modern phenomenon either. People in the past were also obsessed (even more so perhaps) with massive epics, from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Bible, and all the fan fiction created thereafter like Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno, and before then, the songs and poems from the cradle of civilization that told tales about the founding of the first cities. We have always been interested in telling stories that span our civilization, explore our origins, and generally have a level of complexity that rivals the real world.

I love these stories because they take you on journeys like no other, across space and time, through gods and wonders, right from your living room, but the issue is I can only store so many multiverse rules in my head before I just want to read about something simple for a while. That's why earlier this year I read a book called Tin Man by Sarah Whitman that just blew me away. It's the story of three friends living in Europe and the course of their lives as time takes it toll. It's a novel about life, hardship, love, loneliness, and the things that tie people together. This piece literary fiction is what got me interested in reading the classics, and so it is ultimately the inspiration behind many of the blog posts I've written. I think it's amazing how a story about the lives of just a few people can feel just as influential as the big epics without needing carry the same baggage that comes with reading a 10 book series. Hopefully I can find a nice balance between giant epic and small scale literature at some point in my writing career because I personally think it would be the ticket to a great book. I haven't found many series that can manage such a precarious balance, but I'm always on the lookout, so I'll let you know if I find a good one some time soon.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley