When I was 19, I returned home for summer break from university. Mom (who worked in education and had summer breaks off too) and I were watching a movie based on the work of Indigenous American author Sherman Alexie. In one scene, the main character recalls a childhood Christmas. His family could only afford to give him one gift—a dictionary.
As we watched, my mom said something I’ve never forgotten: “They just gave him the whole world.”
At the time, it felt like a nice sentiment. Over the years, it has revealed itself as something much deeper. Something true.
To read is to gain access. To books, language, ideas, and lives far beyond our own. Reading is not just a skill, but rather it is a passport and one that transcends geography, time, era, and circumstance.
The late journalist and speaker Christopher Hitchens once said: “The only reason I’d want to meet Shakespeare, or might even want to, is because I can meet him, any time, because he is immortal in the works he’s left behind.” This is precisely the pulsing miracle of literature. Through it, we can sit with the greatest minds who have ever lived. On demand. At any hour.
History offers another powerful example of this transformation. A young man named Malcolm Little (later known to the world as Malcolm X) entered prison barely literate. Determined to change this reality, he began copying the dictionary—word by word. He sounded out each entry, wrote down definitions and built his vocabulary from the ground up. That discipline unlocked a world of reading, thinking and expression. He emerged not only educated and wise, but one of the most articulate and influential voices of the 20th century.
Once again, a dictionary became the whole world.
For many of us, our earliest exposure to the value of learning didn’t come from books alone, but from those who championed them. One such figure was Mr. Feeny from the sitcom Boy Meets World (played by William Daniels)). He was the teacher many of us wished we had. Honest, demanding, principled, and deeply committed to the idea that education matters.
In one memorable episode, he reflected on how, in Gutenberg’s time, the world would wait months on pins and needles for a single new book. Today, by contrast, new webpages are created every second. His question still lingers:
In an age of abundance, do we still thirst for knowledge, or have we mistaken access for engagement?
A book is more than ink-treated paper. It is compressed experience. It is thought refined over years (sometimes decades). It is failure, insight, curiosity, humility, and discipline distilled and made transferable.
Every book is, in a sense, a conversation across time.
When we open one, we step into a mind that is not our own.
We borrow perspective, test ideas, confront beliefs and expand our internal world and notions of what is possible.
That is why books often feel like portals. They take us places we could never otherwise go—to ancient civilizations, future possibilities, inner lives and unfamiliar truths.
They offer both promise and caution, wisdom and warning, perspective and promise.
And yet, perhaps just as interesting as reading books, is what we do after we read them.
We keep them.
Why?
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked: “Do we think it will have a different ending next time we read it?”
It’s truly funny, but something much deeper can be inferred.
We keep books because they become part of us.
They mark who we were when we read them.
They represent ideas that shaped us, challenged us or clarified something we couldn’t previously articulate.
A bookshelf is not just storage; it’s a quiet autobiography and mirror that speaks back to us without sound.
You can learn a great deal about someone simply by scanning their shelves.
There is a memorable scene in the movie Se7en where Detective Somerset (played by Morgan Freeman) walks through a vast library. The way he moves, slowly, reverently, feels less like a building and more like a cathedral. A place where knowledge is preserved, protected and honoured.
That instinct resonates because books are sacred in a sense—not necessarily in a religious way, but in their capacity to carry human thought forward across generations.
They are how we build on what came before us.
They are how we avoid starting from zero.
And they are how ordinary individuals gain access to extraordinary thinking.
That is why community reading initiatives matter.
They create shared experience.
They give people a common language for discussion.
They invite reflection, debate, humours, possibility and connection.
Last week, the Fort Frances Times included a review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari—a book that challenges how we understand human history and our place within it. It doesn’t merely inform but reframes.
This week, I’m diving into The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, with a review coming on March 25.
Different books. Different purposes. Same underlying value.
Each one offers a doorway and every time we choose to read, we step through it.
Back to that moment years ago, sitting and visiting with mom, watching that scene unfold.
A single dictionary.
A single gift.
The whole world.
It turns out, that wasn’t a metaphor.
It was a literal truth.
Robert Horton is an educator, author, orator and linguist. He is a member of Rainy River First Nations.
