A Chapter Into a New World

Hello fellow readers,

Have you ever wanted to travel to foreign lands, explore uncharted territory,

 perform magic, or fall in love? You can do all of that and more when you read!

 I absolutely love to read, there’s something magical of being teleported to a 

new world. Today I want to talk about the wonderful world of reading.

I really found my love of reading in 3rd grade when my teacher had the Magic 

Treehouse series, it was the one series I consistently read because every book had

 a new adventure. As I grew up I began buying and borrowing more books, I 

started to explore new topics and, slowly but surely, I started to discover what I 

liked to read. During high school I was the odd student who enjoyed reading the 

required books for my English classes. My favorite books from high school 

included: The Hunger Games, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New

 World, In Cold Blood, Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies and The Great Gatsby. One 

book that was taken off the required reading when I reached high school - but is 

still a great book - is the Catcher in the Rye.

My family noticed my love for reading early on; there was one time when my mom

 scolded me for reading too much. Granted, I was reading during dinner and wasn’t

 really eating, so she took my book away. I love reading from physical books, the

 smell of the paper, flipping the pages, and being able to visually see the progress of 

my reading has always brought me joy, but I also have a kindle that is conveniently 

light weight and I can link the account to an app where I can read not only on my 

kindle but also my phone, tablet, and computer. Some of the older books can be 

found for free like the Little Women series, The Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, 

and more. Often times strangers think I’m one of those youngsters who’s addicted

 to their phone when, in reality, I’m really enthralled with a book.

My ongoing book collection

 

During college I worked part-time as a receptionist and would have a lot of down

 time to read, especially during the holidays. It was nice having people come in 

and give me recommendations. I started reading a lot of books by Dean Koontz, 

Sandra Brown, and Stephen King. I really love exploring the book section of 

Target because they have some good deals and books like In a dark, dark wood by

 Ruth Ware or What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan, which were two titles that I 

really enjoyed. My sister, who despised reading growing up, noticed how much I

 love to read and decided to start reading herself. She was the reason I fell in love

 with Ready Player One by Ernest Cline long before it became a movie. We tend to

 share books often and enjoy talking about them when we finish.

I find reading to be a healthy escape from real life without succumbing to social 

media. Reading, to me, is like a detailed movie in my mind where I’m guided 

through by the author; he or she describes the characters and set the tone and 

scene for me to follow along. I’ve been shocked, fallen in love, laughed out loud, 

and cried for many books because of how involved in the reading I became. It’s 

beautiful how the written word can teleport you to a different world and time. 

Reading is extremely educational, your imagination grows the more you read 

and I even learned new vocabulary through reading because sometimes there is 

just the perfect word to describe the scene that the author chose to use, but I had 

no clue what it meant, so I looked it up. When I was little, my dad and I read the

 entire Spiderwick Chronicles, a little bit every night. It’s one of my fondest 

memories from my childhood.

Lately I have felt reading has lost a lot of its power because of technology and 

social media. I’ve heard teenagers struggle to read paragraphs out loud because

 they don’t know how to pronounce a word. Grammar and spelling are blatantly

 deteriorating and it’s unnerving to see. So I encourage you to read! Find books

 that interest you and take a few minutes to read every day. You’d be surprised 

how inspired others can become by seeing you read. If you’re a parent, read to 

or with you children, even if neither of you continue to read in the future, at 

least you’ll have the memory of spending that time together.

Live every day to the fullest.

Love, Damaris

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