Story swimming

I sometimes miss the ability to slide completely into a book and be oblivious to everything else for a while. There was a period of time when that did not happen at all for several months (a year?) after my husband died. I was intensely needed by my children and by my own grief. I instead slid into the occasional movie, laughing, weeping in turns. Then when I went on a real book bender, sliding into a book completely for a few hours, it felt like a relief, to be swimming in home waters, even though (and maybe because) it was a book I’d never read before that was well-written, interesting, and engrossing characters and plot. Like when Beauty in the book, Beauty, by Robin McKinley, talked about books in the magical library in the castle, how when she came upon some concept or technology that hadn’t been invented yet, it didn’t bother her while she was within the book, it flowed along. But if she stopped to puzzle it out, the concept booted her out of the book, mentally.