Any time my mom would get an email from one of my teachers, she could be certain it was about their concern regarding my never-paying-attention in class because I was too busy reading. Whether they were hidden behind my math textbook or snuck underneath my desk, there was sure to be a book or two somewhere within my vicinity in a classroom. As a consequence, my mom wouldn’t take away my iPod like in a normal family, but rather would turn my bookshelf around to face the wall for a day, rendering my books virtually inaccessible.
I couldn’t pinpoint a specific date or time in which my love for reading bloomed. All I know is that reading has always fueled me; my imagination and creativity has increased one-hundred-fold thanks to devouring book after book not only in my youth but even now. Ask anyone from my high school, and they’ll readily tell you I lugged around Stephen King’s 1,138-page novel IT from class to class for a month while I read it. Need I say more? I definitely could: I have a Harry Potter tattoo, I have strong opinions about the Oxford Comma, I have favorite bookstores in each state…*
People love telling me how much they hate reading and how much they find it boring. I often get questioned about how I could love reading what is essentially just the English alphabet scrambled and mixed around on hundreds of pages. And I get it – reading books isn’t sexy; it’s time-consuming and seems to offer no real outcome. Other hobbies are more fulfilling, in a sense.
Truth be told, I couldn’t even give a straight answer for why I love reading so much. The C.S. Lewis quote I used in my college essay – which yes, I wrote about books – sums it up better for me than I really could articulate in my own words: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” At times, I think this is true for me. I am almost 19 and still believe in magic. I cling hard and fast to fictional worlds and characters as if they are real, as if they are my own, and I have no explanation for why this is. My imagination has an insatiable appetite.
Books are more than just a means of escape and a way for me to live out my wildest daydreams, though. From books has stemmed my love for writing, too. My dream is to write scripts for movies and T.V. shows. I have portfolios and folders filled to the brim with stories I’ve written since I was old enough to know how to write, and on my computer is a 60,000-word novel I began when I was fifteen and finished two years ago. It’s my pride and joy and one of the most important things I’ve ever done. My goal is to get it published someday and to write even more.
Without the books I’ve read and thus, the English language skills I’ve picked up from them, I wouldn’t be anywhere near the same person as I am today. It sounds silly when I write this to place so much significance upon me as a person and to attribute it all to books, but there’s no other way for me to describe it. And finally, if you’re someone who says they don’t like to read, you just haven’t found the right book yet (I stand by this).
*My favorite bookstores from a few different states are The Strand in New York City; Haslam’s Book Store in St. Petersburg, FL; The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, CA; McKay’s in Winston-Salem, NC; and City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco, CA.
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