My Thoughts on Reading

When I was a little kid, my mother used to make me read for a half hour every day. At the time, I thought it was just another ridiculous rule in her oppressive dictatorship of a household. Reading was boring. I was too antsy to sit for 30 whole minutes every day with a book in my hand. I could have used that 30 minutes for something so much more amazing like playing whiffleball or taking a nap. But without fail, it was a half hour a day. When I got to high school, the rebellious teenager that I was didn't pick up a book. I'd say I read an estimate of 30% of the books that I was assigned to read for various classes. Sometimes I'd skim various sections, but there were very few books I actually read in their entirety. Great Gatsby? Never opened it. Grapes of Wrath? Never even brought it home from school to pretend to open it.

Last summer, for whatever reason, I decided to give it a try. I wanted to pick up reading again, only I had nowhere to start. I'm not sure if any of you are fans of the Game of Thrones series, but I became addicted to the show, so I started to pick up the books. I finished all 5 of them within a month. The fourth one I read in a weekend. Before I knew it I was off and running. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, The Iliad, A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses, The Republic, The Sound and The Fury, The Idiot (possibly my favorite of all time). By the end of the summer I had read 24 books. I would wake up at 5 am, read for an hour and a half before work at 7, get back from work at 3, and read until I went to bed around 10. That was it. I read nonstop, and I loved it. Even those 8 hours I was at work? I downloaded iBooks on my phone and squeezed in a few extra hours.

I had fallen in love with reading. It's a hobby that is long since forgotten in this world of technology. Everybody is always watching movies, or TV shows, or YouTube videos. I think what I love about reading is that it allows for your imagination to take off, something other forms of entertainment don't allow. When I watch a movie, I'm not picturing it how I would imagine it, I'm picturing it how the director imagined it. When I read a book, the words are dictated by someone else, but I get to decide what each character actually looks like. Maybe I imagine this one with a mole over his eye. Maybe I imagine this woman wearing a monocle. Sitting down and reading a book, for me, is one of the most relaxing things in the world.

Now, I know I sound very pretentious right now. Yes, I'm that guy who says, "The book was way better" (in most cases - Mike Howlett, if you're reading this, Fight Club is a way better movie than a book. And I did love the book, but that movie is so great). I also realize that not everybody is patient enough for books. Kind of ironic that I'm saying that (if you don't know, I'm about as impatient as it gets). Why would you spend two weeks reading the book when you can sit down and watch the movie in 2 hours? You don't experience the same beauty on the screen as you do on the page, that's the simple truth of it.

I'm currently working my way through the modern library 100 greatest novels. It's going to take a while. I'm reading An American Tragedy by Theodore Dressiere. It's phenomenal and, shockingly enough, tragic.

My friends make fun of me for the amount I read. Emily loves to read as well, which is yet another reason I love her so much. It's a lot of fun to discuss literature, because I find people interpret everything differently. I know she and I are the exceptions, not the rules. Especially for our generation. But it doesn't take away from how fun it is. If you want to make fun of me for reading as well, go ahead. But then I just have to ask, if you dislike reading so much, what are you doing looking at my blog?