Did you know that the average person spends about an hour and forty minutes on social media every . . . single . . . day? I looked up several articles and found this to be the most CONSERVATIVE estimate. When I think of that statistic, I’m overwhelmed by how that time could be cultivated to do more for the betterment of a society. Maybe, you are not like the average person. Maybe, you spend less time (or none at all, like me) on social media.

However, what if you took 30 of those minutes and began reading stories with redemptive themes? Think for a moment of the impact it could have.

1. You could have a much deeper love of the world around you, including nature and the outdoors.
2. Your imagination would become virtuous and focus around how you could aid society.
3. Your mind wouldn’t be cluttered with so much of the junk floating around the internet, television, and the other major media venues of the day.
4. You would understand better what makes healthy society.

You don’t have to just read fiction. Find stories that are real as well as stories that aren’t real but that have the same virtues. Read stories that have stood the test of time, and measure it up with stories told today that have the same virtues.

See for yourself how it will impact your life.

I have purposefully written The Williams House and Treasure on the Southern Moor to demonstrate this sort of writing. Don’t want to spend money, yet? I understand! Then check out some of the below books from the library. Some are a little eccentric with the imaginative flare, yet it will definitely take you away from most of the Hollywood-ish tales being told today, which is the objective.

Frances Burnett’s The Secret Garden
E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children / Five Children and It
Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows
Kate Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Mary Dodge’s Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates
Laura Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie

Your fellow writer,
Joshua Reynolds