College Composition - Book Intro

I sat next to my dad in the theater, and saw a preview for an upcoming film.  I snickered at the title, and leaned over to my Dad to whisper, “Ender’s Game, huh?  ‘Cause that’s totally original.  Nothing like, say, Hunger Games.”  Dad smiled to acknowledge my sarcasm, but whispered back, “It’s actually totally different.  Ender’s Game is a book that was published a while back, maybe in the 70s.  It was a pretty good read, you should try it out.”

That was my introduction to Ender’s Game.  It was not the start of my love affair with it though – that came much later.  I went away to camp for the summer, and Ender’s Game sat on the shelves of the library, completely forgotten by me.  Or so I thought.

When I came home I had not read a novel for three months.  I rarely go that long, and my mind itched for a new story.  Then, I remembered that night, sitting in the dark theater next to my Dad, and our whispered conversation.  

The next day I was in town, and I stopped by the library and picked up the hardcover copy of Ender’s Game.  The cover photo showed some spaceship aiming for some orange planet.  Very sci-fi.  I’ve always been a fantasy girl, so the picture combined with my resentment of sci-fi prodded me to put the book on my desk and leave it there for four days.

Finally, I started reading it.  Only a few sentences in, Orson Scott Card hit me with the line: “Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”  I was rapidly warming up to this book.  I love wise sayings stuck nonchalantly into prose.  Besides, I could identify with this kind of cynicism.   

After a few chapters, I was convinced.  Not in love, but convinced.  The characters were so real, and the sci-fi aspect wasn't over-the-top weird.  I kept reading, and followed this boy as he grew so old in only a few years.  I could identify with that feeling.  Of people expecting a lot from you, and trying all the time to measure up.  I became Ender - the writer was just that good.  

I finished the book and was flung into sadness.  I wanted to cry forever when it ended.  Not because the content was sad though, but because it was over.  I knew then that I was in love with the book.  When I love a book so much that it steals my real life and makes my life solely living vicariously through the main character, then it is a good book.  But the price of a good book, for me, has always been that when I finish it, there is pain.  Being ripped from that world, with no chance of return (for there will never be another first time of reading it) is so hard.  

And the bitter but amazing twist ending was done so well.  Ever been manipulated?  Well I have been, and yet again I became Ender.  There are more installments in Ender’s story.  A second, third, and probably fourth, and fifth book have been written.  But I won’t read them.  Ender’s Game was too good to be spoiled by my feelings about other books.  

I won’t forget that book as long as I live.  Someday I’ll even buy it.  I inadvertently memorized tidbits of wisdom from that book, like "Don't true to use hot anger to fuel you, wait until it cools.  Hot anger uses you, but you can use cool anger," and "Try it again.  This time without self-pity."  Feeling kinship with someone you've never met is an amazing and truly wonderful aspect of reading books.  

Ernest Hemingway once said: “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”  Orson Scott Card is a true writer.