Are we the books we read?

They say we are the food we eat.  Are we also the books we read?  I don't mean that lovers of murder mysteries are murderers.  More that we are attracted to the books that chime with some of our dearest wishes, our fantasies, lifestyle or how we feel about life in general.

Myself, I don't want to read books - fact or fiction - about child molesters, serial rapists or violent and murder.  I know these things exist, I can read about them any day in the newspapers (every day probably in some papers or on the Internet!) but for my leisure reading I want something more wholesome. Am I alone in this?  I can enjoy the occasional whodunit, but I prefer the sanitised variety of writers like Agatha Christie, where there is very little violence. 

I can understand the demand for romance and adventure stories, as it is a form of escapism.  The same applies to most chick lit, which I admit is my guilty pleasure.  I can understand anyone reading for a form of escapism - fantasy sci-fi for instance; but does escapism really include the full gamut of horror, death and destruction?

Do the people who read really violent novels (or violent biographies, or watch violently terrifying films) feel they are mere voyeurs?  Is that the thrill?  A guilty pleasure, like fantasy sex?  More importantly, should we indulge our fantasies, our baser nature, to this extent?  Is that what gives rise to pornography, sex-based killings, violent sadism in military contexts and marriages etc?

We worry about the influence on our children from watching violent computer games or films.  Do we adults think we are exempt from being influenced by such things? The more we indulge in these off-limits pleasures, the more they seem acceptable.  I have a particular fear and conviction that the more we hear about underage sex and child porn, the more acceptable it becomes, because our shock- reaction gets dulled.

Richard Bach, of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull  fame, says in The Bridge Across  Forever, “Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they’re encoded holograms of a decent man… The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives …”  Probably my two favourite writers currently are the Dalai Lama and Alexander McCall Smith.  I love their gentle and gentlemanly approach to life.  It reminds me, that amongst the rest of life's mayhem, there is another way to live - and one that we would all be the better for attempting to emulate.