Online Literature Community: Modern People’s Walden Lake

Over one hundred years ago, H.D.Thoreau retreated from the big bustling city and settled down the lake area of Walden. He lived alone and ploughed in the field every day to search for his literature inspiration and realize his literature conception of transcendentalism. He recorded this period of life experiences and his understanding on life, nature, society and the universe in his classical book Walden.
Today, we read what Thoreau writes down in his hermit-like life and feel congenial to his thoughts of pleasure in seclusion, which brings us true delight that is far beyond description. Everything in the book, the dust in the wind and the wind in trees, are so familiar to us.
People always wonder what we read books for. The answer varies from different individuals and it also varies with passage of time. But there is one thing for sure that we always rejoice at imagining and experiencing things we know little about and find a transitory peace in mind through reading different types of books-collections of poetry, novels, essays and biographies.
Unlike many great men of literature who are in committed pursuit of truth and art, most of us read literature works only to obtain a sense of gratification and fulfillment and only want to own a patch of literature field just as Thoreau did around the Walden Lake.
In the beginning of Francis Bacon’s essay Of Studies, he said: “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring.” We know reading books mainly serves as a tool for delight.
However, today’s rapid pace of life has deprived modern people of much delight of reading. People are seeking new and effective way to regain the freedom and joy of reading.
The declining of traditional publishing industry as well as the emerging of multi-channels of reading has gradually changed people’s way of reading. In the era of internet, reading online books has become a fashion to make best of time.
Online reading community has now become many people’s Walden Lake of literature, where free novels are like flowing water, incessantly irrigating our dried mind that’s eager for fresh fictions. Ficfun(www.ficfun.com) is such an online literature community where people can find many sorts of free books including popular romance novels, mystery novels, crime and vampire and encounter with many seed writers and literature fans of the same taste.
It’s true that reading books helps us come back to serenity and brings us some delightful meditation in the busy urban life. Literature helps us, at least for a while, to free from daily trifles and laboring. The freedom and flexibility of reading online books bring readers huge convenience and comfortableness. People can read what they want and can share their ideas and feelings with people of similar literature interest in such online literature community.
Online literature community is just like Thoreau’s Walden Lake where people can rest their mind and regain the delight of reading. You can choose to read alone and you can also choose to read to meet more congenial people.