HOW DID YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH READING?
Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.
~Jeanette Winterson
Today, I read. For hours. And it felt pretty darn good.
I remember the day like it was yesterday. Well, there are two occasions. One was when I was about seven or eight. I was living in Paris, France at the time. My dad had some errands to run in the city and I got to with him. I remember coming across a bookstore and begged for us to go inside. Once in the bookstore, I came across a book that I couldn’t let go of so my dad purchased it for me. I carried that book with me everywhere. I read that story over and over again. Then one day, I couldn’t find this precious book of mine. I searched everywhere, but never found it. I cried about it and pouted, but it didn’t bring the book back. I think I’m still a bit sad about losing that book until today. I just never found it again. Then I grew older and didn’t like to read as much anymore when I moved to the U.S. Because of the culture shock and language barrier, reading didn’t interest me as much anymore. That is, until freshman year of high school. I have a cousin who read everywhere. It was annoying but she always told me that I was missing out. So one day I decided to start reading “for fun” again. And I fell in love with words again. That night, there was a mouse in the house, so my siblings and I were all scared to leave our rooms. I didn’t want to turn the lights off in my room in fear that the mouse would “get me” (don’t judge me! ), so I stayed up all night and read Hand Me – Down Heartache by TJ Butler. It didn’t matter that I had school the next morning. I was lost in a new world. That day marks the moment I fell in love with reading again.
Reading is my escape from it all. I just wish I could make more time for it like I used to.
There is something about reading that takes you into another world. That feeling when you’re so lost in a book and can’t seem to stop flipping the pages. That feeling you get when you finish a book but the characters are still with you.
All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes — characters even — caught in the fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
~Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
I read to unwind, relax, and escape. Hopefully, it will remain the same always.
What about you? How did you fall in love with reading?
