I have been reading for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories include the feel of the pages and my parents’ voices reading to me. Book fairs were my favorite parts of pre-school and kindergarten. I never realized that this wasn’t a normal thing for all children, but my life developed around books.
While books largely shaped my childhood, they started to make an even greater impact around fifth grade and middle school.
When I hit fifth grade, I was bullied a very large amount; many made fun of most things about me, and I lost a large quantity of my friends. Being alone was difficult for me, because I really didn’t know what to do, or how to spend my time. I began to get lost in books and read more and more. I read Inkheart on the swing set every day for recess until people approached me to ask if there was something in the book that attracted me to it so much.
This escape was what got me through fifth grade, middle school, and high school.
I learned about the world of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, mystery, fiction, sci-fi, and realistic fiction. I drifted into the world of books, and allowed myself to be swept away by the beauty that they provided. They became more than an object to me, but a whole different world, an escape, an adventure, anything else than what I was going through.
Books have guided me through my toughest times, and helped with processing. When I had no friends, and middle school beat me down, I read the entire Harry Potter series in two weeks. When a school shooting took place in my high school I read Hate List to help me process those events. When I was broken beyond belief from depression and anxiety, I read through the Mortal Instruments Series, Time Traveler’s Wife, and so many others. I gave myself new ways to cope and to learn. I began to keep a log of books I had read. I pulled down my favorites and read them through multiple times when I went through trials. Books have given me the comfort that no other situation or thing could have.
East of Eden. This book is something special. In high school this 601 page book was assigned for reading in AP Literature and Composition. Disgruntled at the size at first, and possible disinterest in a school book, I tried to get it completed as soon as possible. I was so very wrong, this book taught me so many different tropes, symbols, and better yet it continued to help me through my hardest times senior year.
Books like these are only a small example of what books have done for me throughout my entire life. They have taught me important life lessons, helped through the roughest patches, and shaped my personality. My quirks and oddities are taken from book characters that I emulated in my younger years and my wild imagination came from the different scapes of land and locations. Books are so much more than just paper sewn together, and I cannot imagine my life without them.
The pages are something else, and the crafting of the authors is masterful. Books have changed my life for the better by offering help that I would have never had, given me a sense of happiness in my darkest times, and changed who I was fundamentally. I learned the goods and evils; I learned morals and ethics. Books have shaped me, molded me, and saved me. I will forever recommend books, because without them, I would not be here.