You read the title right – books boggle my mind.

Now, before you start thinking about how big a loser I am that books blow me away, understand that this subject has been pondered upon for many, many hours.

I am a fan of all books. Fiction and non-fiction. Biographies and autobiographies. Some fantasy and nearly all history books. I envy rich men who have nothing to do and vast libraries full to the brim with tomes of all kinds.

When I really stop to think about it, I can think of few better investments for the average cost of a book. For typically around ten dollars you can buy yourself an escape from the drudgery of your day. For packed in-between two covers are people, stories, places, events and ideas that can set your mind free and tempt you to immerse yourself within the pages.

For a small investment, you can get endless hours of enjoyment. That, is what boggles my mind about books. Here are some of the books that I love, and the reasons why I can get lost in their worlds again and again.

James Alan Gardner wrote a series of I believe three books – “Expendable,” “Ascending” and “Hunted” – which losely revolve around the same main characters, while introducing new main characters with new stories. The former stars then become the supporting characters.

Gardner has had his novellas featured in publications such as Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing Stories, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was the grand prize winner of the 1989 Writers of the Future contest, has won the Aurora Award, and has been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Not a bad track record.

The reason his books are so enjoyable to me, is because of the depth of the worlds and the details he weaves throughout the story. These stories are set in a future of space exploration, planet colonization and introduces a not-too-uncommon theme in books written about the future – DNA doctoring of unborn babies, discrimination and classism. I won’t give away many details, because I’m hoping you’ll find copies of these books, if you like sci-fi novels, and be captivated yourself. The stories do get you rather attached to a female character named Festina Ramos. In “Ascending” we’re introduced to an alien character named Oar. And in “Hunted”, Festina Ramos is back, this time as an Admiral, in a story that centers upon Edward York. Son of Admiral Alexander York, Edward’s father pulls some strings to get him commissioned into the Outward Fleet Explorer Corps despite his low intelligence. The Outward Fleet Explorer Corps is “a fiercely independent band of misfits who referred themselves proudly as Expendables – the branch of the League of Peoples responsible for investigating planets and contacting new life forms.”

Trust me. You’ll like these books.

From previous posts, you know I’m a fan of Dean Koontz, and in particular his two book mini-series about Christopher Snow. It takes a genuinely talented writer to bring forth a man who lives in a small coastal town, inflicted with xeroderma pigmentosum. Xeroderma pigmentosum is a rare and frequently fatal genetic disorder whose victims are acutely vulnerable to ultraviolet rays from the sun, light bulbs, camera flashes, etc. Christopher Snow is a creature of the night, his friends and family altered their lives to spend the most time with him possible given his limitations. “Fear Nothing” and “Seize the Night” are the books that feature Christopher and his gang of friends.

In the autobiography “7 tattoos: A memoir in the flesh”, Peter Trachtenberg takes us along with him on his journey from growing up in a staunch Jewish household which, due to Leviticus 19 forbade tattoos. If it were not for the holy scripture, his family would probably still have banned tattoos seeing that Peter’s grandmother was given her only tattoo in Auschwitz. Each chapter in the book focuses on the events and emotions that inspired each tattoo: S&M, atonement, rebellion, death, sacrilege, primitivism and the downfall. It documents Peter’s trip from being a heroin addict in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to family deaths and to Borneo to seek out someone skilled in the Iban Dayak tribal tattoo style and ritual. It’s a difficult read, due to the hardships he’s endured in his life, the paths he chose to take, and the losses he suffered along the way to self-acceptance and recovery. I highly recommend this book as a way to see that tattoos are not just ornamental to everyone – for many people, as Peter so eloquently put it, “A tattoo, I’ve always believed, is a visual reminder of pain, which has the tendency to be forgotten quickly and so sometimes requires documentation.”

The last book that I’ll briefly talk about is “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. In high school one year, our English teacher handed us a big list of approved books. We were told to go to the library, pick one and do a book report on it. Admittedly, I picked “The Things They Carried” not because it was written about the Viet Nam War, by a vet who sweated his way through the jungles and gun fights, but because it was short with larger than normal type. What I realized, was that though the book was not quite 280 pages, it was packed with soul, emotion, loss, gritty details, and stories that made you lose your breath for a moment. The book is about O’Brien’s time in Viet Nam. It’s about war, but don’t expect your ordinary war story. As Tim O’Brien says in the novel, “A true war story is never about war. . . It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.”

These are just some examples of books that lead to the topic at hand: Books boggle my mind. Not because of what they are, but because of the emotions and enthusiasm they invoke. The worlds they contain that seem real enough to touch and the people and characters you only want to get to know more.

Books really are amazing things. Sometimes it’s a sin that you can get all of this, with change back for only $15.