Booking Through Thursday - Headlines

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme that asks book related questions.  This week's question is:

The news has been horrifying and addictive this week, with catastrophe piled on catastrophe, to a degree that–if I had read this in a book or seen it in a movie–I’d be protesting that it was just too unlikely, too farfetched.


But, topics for novels get ripped from the headlines all the time. Or real-life events remind you of fiction (whether “believable” or not) that you’ve read but never expected to see. Or real life comes up with an event so unbelievable that it stretches you sense of reality.

Hmm … I can’t quite come up with an outright question to ask, but thinking about the theory of fiction and how it can affect and be affected by real world events can act as a buffer between the horrific events on the news and having to actually face that horror. So … what happens when the line between fiction and reality becomes all-too slim? Discuss!

I'm not really sure what to say to this.  I'm not even sure if I completely understand what we're supposed to discuss.

First of all, I haven't mentioned anything about Japan anywhere online except Twitter.  I never brought it up here or on my Youtube channel.  There's one main reason for this.  I have some family members in Japan, and I was terrified that something had happened or was going to happen to them that day.  Even once I knew they were safe, the whole thing had shaken me up so badly that I just didn't want to discuss it online.

As for the actual question, I'm not sure what to say.  I think there are some fictional books that can be frightening if they remind us too closely of some tragedy that really happened.  I also think these can be some of the most amazing books.  Fictional books that are based on a real tragedy that happened in the past are very emotional to read (especially if you lived through the tragedy) because you know that there may have been people out there who suffered through things just like what happened in the book.

I don't really know what else to say, and I'm not sure if that even answers the question at all.  I'm just going to leave it at that.