My Rollercoaster of a Relationship with Reading

 Early Childhood

Books were everything to me. My favorite time of the day was any time I was being read to and when I wasn’t being read to, you could find me by the bookshelf either at my grandmother’s house or at my parent’s house looking at the pictures. I was an active child who never seemed to stop moving unless there were books involved. The most peaceful activity for me was laying in my bed while my mother or father read to me and it was how I ended each of my days. As soon as a story was over, I would reach for another one and beg them to read it until it was far past my bedtime. Another vivid memory was shortly before I was starting kindergarten and right around the time I turned five. My grandmother has always been a bookworm and always had a relatable book for every occasion. I remember sitting on her white and pink floral couch and she had a book about going to kindergarten, I forget what it was called, and another book called “It’s Hard to be Five!” by Jamie Lynn Curtis, which I still have on my bookshelf today. We read the books and laughed about the silly things that the characters said or did before turning to other favorite books of mine. Listening to stories and books was my favorite pastime. I could never get enough. 

Elementary School Years

Books were still my favorite pastime and not much had changed. I remember getting to go to the school library for the first time in kindergarten. I had simply never seen so many books in one place and I was determined to read through all of them. I attended a kindergarten through sixth-grade elementary school, so I had plenty of time to read my way through the library. One of the first books I checked out was “No, David!” by David Shannon. It’s fun and colorful pictures made this book a hot commodity in my school library and I was so lucky to get my hands on it early. Another thing I remember from my school library was after our class was done checking out our books, we would go over to the alphabet carpet where there were towers of rainbow-colored pillows for us to sit on. We got to pick out a pillow and find a spot to quietly look at our books and if we were lucky and we finished picking out our books early enough, the librarian would read us one of her favorite selections in the most magical reading voice I had ever heard. 

In first grade, I was introduced to and became captivated by “The Magic Treehouse” series by Mary Pope Osborne. My teacher would read to our class a chapter or two every day after lunch and every day we would beg her to continue reading. Those books were magical to me and I loved to hear about the adventurous lives Jack and Annie lead. I kept up with the series for quite some time after first grade, but its magic was eventually overtaken by books like Junie B. Jones and Judy Moody. 

As I grew through my elementary school years, I also found myself lost in the literary world from “A Series of Unfortunate Events” a series by Daniel Handler and Brett Helquist. I was particularly drawn to these books but to this day, I cannot figure out why. I was fortunate enough to have lived a wonderful childhood where I was blessed with everything I could have ever needed and wanted but for some reason, the darkness these books gave off was absolutely captivating to me.

Middle and High Schoool 

Unfortunately, after about fifth grade, my love and passion for reading had dwindled. I was more interested in athletics and my social calendar that I let reading get away from me. From sixth until twelfth grade, I only read if it was an assignment for school, and even then, I didn’t want to. When I did read books that I chose, they were popular books at the time including “The Fault in our Stars” and “Paper Towns” both by John Green. It took me a while to read these as I always felt that I had something better to be doing but when I did, I truly did enjoy the books. I especially found myself relating to “Paper Towns” and have since re-read it. I felt connected to that book because I grew up in a “paper town” so to speak and I absolutely loved how relatable the story was to my teenage years. A quote that I still think about to this day from the books is as follows: “Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.” When I think about my hometown and the people from there, I remember this quote and am always moved by how accurately it depicted where I came from. 

College--Finding Myself Again

Since graduating from high school and moving away from my paper hometown, I have had more time to reflect on what matters to me and to get back into hobbies that make me happy. I recently have found as much joy in books as I did when I was a small child. I am interested in reading anything and everything. Today I use reading as a way to escape from the reality that is the world we live in. The books that got me back into reading are the Harry Potter books. I didn’t pay them much attention in my childhood and young adult life and had decided to go back and read them and I am so happy I did. It is nice to be able to get lost in the magic and live, even just for a moment or two, in a reality different from the one we know today.