I do not remember any time in my life, when I was not aware of books. My earliest memory is of my uncle telling me a story about a wicked dragon, which steals a treasure, and the group of heroes, who go to confront him in battle. He used to tell me this story in sequels, a small amount every week, so by the time next week came up, I would be totally waiting in anticipation. It was when I started reading myself, that I realized that he had been retelling Tolkien's "The Hobbit". To this day "The Hobbit" is one of my favorite books, I read it to bring back memories of my child hood, when I’m depressed, or when I plain don’t have anything else to read.
My father is a Masters in English Literature, and because, or maybe in spite of that he loves reading, not just classics, but all sorts of books, science fiction, history, war novels, philosophy, you name it he's read it. I can very honestly say that my house resembles more a library than a home. There are books stacked every where, and periodically my mother throws a fit, and threatens to throw them all out, just so that she can have room to move about in.
Maybe, my sister and I inherited this live of reading from my father, or perhaps, our environment influenced us, but we were hooked onto books from a very early age. We would even take them to social gatherings, where we sure that we would get bored, and then just disappear into a quiet corner and spend the evening reading.
Now that I’m older, people meeting me after a long time come up to me and exclaim that we remember you, you were the little girl who always had a book in your hand. As I grew older, my love for reading also grew; my interests extending to every kind of book, except for schoolbooks.
This was probably the result of the amount of time I them had free and nothing with which to fill it. I developed a love for books similar to that of Malcolm X’s, as well as very similar reading habits to his. Malcolm X says that he spent more time reading in his room than he did in the library. This was certainly the case for me. I spent very little time in the library, preferring to read in places where I felt more comfortable. My room was my favorite place to read because of its peaceful familiarity, but I also tried to read wherever I could; be it the school hallway, in the classroom, on the bus, or outside on the grass.
My earliest memories can be found at the hands of paperback novels. Books were my escape from the world around me. The thrill of being able to leave behind the world and it’s baggage and enter another that books provided captivated me, and left an impact on me. The emotion I experienced solely from taking a small step into another person’s story was unlike any I had felt before. I desperately wanted others to feel what I had felt, and love whatever I had become entranced by with the same passion as I did.
The first beloved books in my life were the Sesame Street Encyclopedia volumes. At three, I wasn't old enough to read them, but I always wanted to have them read to me. In fact, I memorized the ten volume set so when my parents would skip some pages I would ask them to read what they skipped. After learning to read on my own, my favorite book became the anatomy volume in the Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. Courtesy of a supermarket book offer, I was the only kindergartner who knew about fertilized egg cells. As I grew older, I continued to read largely because reading taught me so much outside of what we learned in school.
Instead of mom reading children’s books to me, I read them to her. And if I stumbled upon something I didn’t know or understand, mom helped me out! Soon enough I started reading to her without stuttering of not knowing how to say a word. I started being able to sound out words easier and my fluency became much better than before. First grade came around and I started reading bigger books such as Junie B. Jones and also the Magic Treehouse books. Books became easier to read as I aged and the books I read were getting bigger and bigger. In 5th and 6th grade I read The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpents Shadow, a trilogy called The Kane Chronicles written by Rick Riordan. I thought these three books were the greatest three books ever written! I even thought they were better than the hunger games! Especially with the series being based around Egyptian gods and theology, and also managed to tie in kids around my age that I could relate to. Those books made me love reading more than I ever have and I would read them again if I had the time to. Once 8th grade came out along I decided to read a “big boy” book: DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I thought I was so cool because I was reading a book that my parents have read. It has been the best book I have yet to read so far because it sparked my interest from the first sentence, to the last, there was intense suspense throughout the whole book and I could nonstop
In “The Lonely, Good Company of Books,” by Richard Rodriguez, you learn that Rodriguez had read hundreds of books before he was a teenager, but never truly understood what he was reading. His parents never encouraged him to read and thought the only time you needed to read, was for work. Since his parents never encouraged Rodriguez to read it effected how he perceived books.
I know that not everyone ever realizes this, but the moment when you realize how amazing it is to sit and read a book, to immerse yourself in a world other than your own, for the very first time is a truly magical moment. I remember when I was just starting kindergarten, and, having learned to read from my parents very early on, starting to read chapter books all by myself. While my brother and his friend were in the pool in the summer, I would take one of CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books from my brothers collection, which I remember as a vast, overwhelming utopia of books, but in reality was just a couple shelves with a few books in it, and sit and read. Did I understand Lewis’s deep Christian allegory and symbolism at the time? Of course not. But that didn’t keep me from loving a story about four children not much older than myself becoming kings and queens. I was a reader.
Ever since I was a child, I've never liked reading. Every time I was told to read, I would just sleep or do something else instead. In "A Love Affair with Books" by Bernadete Piassa tells a story about her passion for reading books. Piassa demonstrates how reading books has influenced her life. Reading her story has given me a different perspective on books. It has showed me that not only are they words written on paper, they are also feelings and expressions.
“Books are uniquely portable magic,” Stephen King wrote on “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”. I quite agree with this view. In retrospect, the genres of books which I read gradual vary as my age periods. Additionally, those books which I have read browsed my horizon and improved my understanding ability to some degree.
My dad taught me that books could be my teachers, my mom taught me that our backyard could be my classroom, and my sister showed me that you could bring books into the swimming pool. I did not know it when I would spend hours in the pool reading a book that my parents weren’t encouraging it in vain, but my family life, for good reason, was centered on books. We were the planets orbiting around one sun that was the bookshelf. Little did I know that books would be the catalyst to academic success in my early life, and I owe it all to my family. Although a life with a book in your nose might seem boring, I was never bored. Living through the characters vicariously, I explored Narnia with Lucy, attended Hogwarts with Harry, and rode dragons with Eragon. Of course
The idea of literature being an important aspect of life has always been greatly prevalent in my upbringing. This notion that I supported was spurred on at the cause of my obstinate parents insisting upon my reading of two books a week to benefit my vocabulary and to develop the articulate thought process of a skilled reader. As a young child, my biggest influences were my parents’ passionate and persuasive ideas regarding the correlation between
As a child, I have always been fond of reading books. My mother would read to me every single night before I went to bed and sometimes throughout the day. It was the most exciting time of the day when she would open the cabinet, with what seemed to be hundreds of feet tall, of endless books to choose from. When she read to me, I wanted nothing more than to read just like her. Together, we worked on reading every chance we had. Eventually I got better at reading alone and could not put a book down. Instead of playing outside with my brothers during the Summer, I would stay inside in complete silence and just read. I remember going to the library with my mom on Saturdays, and staying the entire day. I looked forward to it each and every week.
Ever since I was a young child, I have loved to read. Whether it was Chet Gecko, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, A Series of Unfortunate Events or Animorphs, or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, they all provided me with hours of entertainment and an escape from everyday life. Throughout elementary and middle school, I read constantly and frequently visited the library to find new volumes to digest. Each novel was it’s own world, a new adventure with new friends along the way and an opportunity to travel the world, through time and dimensions, with only the time that you spent reading, in exchange. One year in
From the time I can remember, my mom has always had a book in her hand. Her love for reading was passed down from her parents and her older brother and his wife. They had a little book circle that made reading seem fun. However, at my early age, my mom would not permit me to read or listen to the James Patterson or Nora Roberts books that had been traveling between my house, my grandparents’ house, and my uncle’s house. This made me envious to learn what was inside those books that were so secretive.
Reading books gives the power to increase the imagination of anyone by bringing out the emotion within ourselves creating a movie like experience in our head.
My parents instilled a passion for reading in me even as a toddler; years later, an excellent,