something about me

Kids today are growing up reading different books than I did. I remember reading a lot of Magic Treehouse books growing up, it helped me learn to love history. I read Harry Potter too many times growing up, my mom actually offered to buy me new books if I'd stop reading them. I just used to finish the seventh book and start the first one again. She was rightfully concerned. I actually haven't read it in a few years. Fall plan, now, I guess. Harry Potter helped me learn a lot of new words at a young age; it also introduced me the format of a continuous series. I read a lot of Rick Riordan books because I was interested in mythologies, and because I thought Percy was so cool and I wanted to be him (or his little sister. I am also older than him now, which is horrifying. Thanks, Rick, for taking a like a five-year writing break on your most popular character). Point being I read books growing up and realized I loved to learn. New things excited me!

I was good friends with the librarians at all my schools. I loved when they would pick a book for me, something fresh and interesting that I'd never seen. Sometimes I liked them, sometimes I didn't. But variety was good for me. I read so much growing up that my parents would punish me by taking away my books (the ones I was currently reading) and when I was older my laptop (because I had figured out that PDFs are a wonderful thing and I no longer needed to beg my mother to take me to the library every couple days over the summer), which all led to me relying on books as something I turn to (obviously I stashed books in my closet for when the Parent Police came through). Whenever I am stressed, I try to open a book or read something new. Reading slumps? My lowest moments. Books are something I choose to love because they are something new, and they are connected to a history that excites me.

Obviously I went through phases, the Magic Treehouse phase was a long one, then came Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Septimus Heap (criminally underappreciated series), then some romance slop, and, yes, I guess I tripped and fell into BookTok for a while (in my defense, it started off as a solid place for book recommendations), but I finally found my way to the classics. I have given a chance to a lot of different genres, and I have learned much from each, which is something I am grateful for.

But a lot of my friends, who watched shows (sorry, but you know I'm talking about SpongeBob) and read Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants exclusively for their reading logs in 2nd grade English class don't like to read today. And I can't force people to like reading, though I have successfully turned some of my friends into avid readers (thank you The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and The Starless Sea, they never fail me). Reading and books are something important to me, they shaped me growing up and they are what I still lean on today. I want to share the pleasures of reading, but the books I find in Target today are not the kind of books I can get behind. Now I am certain that racy novels have always been hidden and intertwined with the public domain of literature, but come on, this has gotten out of hand. I want a good book, with a thoroughly thought-out world, that has a genuine message and does not include scenes that would send my mother to her early grave. Seriously, there is a time and place for such things, and it is not every chapter. Give your characters some dignity (and self-control). It feels to me sometimes like literature has lost the depth that made it so beautiful to begin with. The world now caters to "what sells fast?" and cookie-cutter plots that are currently popular.

The books I want to read today are the ones that make me love the characters in them or hate them for what they are doing to other people. The books I want to read are the ones with intricate vines of plot that wind through the story and all connect at the end in a way that makes me gasp. I want to read something that someone put their heart into, that they truly care for. I want to keep learning. I want to fall so far into the book I forget where I am. And it breaks my heart that the only place I feel I can find that now is in the books that are "Old." Does writing not hold the same weight as it used to? It can feel like it sometimes.

I read and I gather myself and I piece myself together in the rhythm of the words. I read and I trust the steady voice of the narrator and I block out the loud, pressing, pushing voices outside. I let the sentences carry me and I let them hold me. I read and I rely on this act and I return to it and I remember who I am.