Throughout elementary school and most of middle school, you would not have caught me reading a book or even in the presence of books, for that matter. I would cringe every time a teacher assigned a reading assignment. Essentially, books and I were not friends. Oddly enough, eighth grade was the year I discovered my love for reading when my teacher assigned our class The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I was a little skeptical about reading it because it was, indeed, a book but after the first few chapters I could not put it down. About halfway through the book I realized something: books are pretty cool. And so my friendship with books began. Barnes & Noble gift cards became the key to my heart and books some of my most dependable friends. Which is why I doubtlessly agree with Ernest Hemingway's noble quotation: “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
As corny as it may sound, I really like the idea of being able to see the world through another character’s eyes. You learn so much through reading and you learn in a way that cannot be taught, but must be experienced. Books teach you things that you cannot learn in a lecture hall or from taking notes because they express feeling. Books equip you with armor for the outside world and experiences from all of the characters you could possibly imagine. Just a few of my favorite “easy read” books include The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Some of my favorite “deeper thinking” books include The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Night by Elie Wiesel, and the many works of Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and of course, Romeo and Juliet).
You could say that I’ve come a long way with my reading experiences. Thus, the joke in my family is, “Victoria, put down the book and do something productive!”
