Reading...

A rather staged picture of me reading.  But it really was a good book.

Action #3

I love to read.  I remember reading my first chapter books back in first grade - The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.  I felt proud at having read such "big" books, but more importantly, I felt like I had just come back from Narnia myself.  Reading allows me to excercise my imagination and travel back in time, to other worlds, into other people's minds...  From first grade on, I was hooked.  I read voraciously, quickly growing bored with books tailored for children and craving more substance. Sometimes, I think my poor mother had quite a hard time finding books I would enjoy reading yet were still appropriate for a 5th grader to read!

I still enjoy reading immensely, though I have unfortunately not had as much time to devote to reading since starting college. (Let me rephrase that - I am doing a lot of reading here in college, but not always what I wnat to be reading! ) I still try to make time for some enjoyable reading, however.  I realize that reading is not only good for my own emotional wellbeing and imagination, but I can also learn so much from the books I read.  For example, I don't think I will ever forget the year  Titus finally destroyed Jerusalem - A.D. 70 - because that was a pivotal event in a book I read back in 6th grade.  And this was a fiction book!  

Lately, I have tried to read more non-fiction books dealing with history because history fascinates me and I want to know as much as I possibly can about, well, everything!  I realize that this might be a rather lofty goal, but it never hurts to aim high, does it?  I work in the library, and often when I am shelving, I find myself staring at the rows and rows of books before my eyes and almost despairing because there is no way I will ever be able to know all the knowledge and information contained within those millions of pages and I want to so badly! I guess the best thing I can do is to just keep on reading one book at a time.  

 I often read books pertaining to to the subject matter being taught in a class.  If I find myself interested by that particular topic, why not learn as much about it as I can? When my Modern World History Class was doing a unit on Imperial Russia, I checked several books dealing with the czars, Russian history, Russian trivia, etc, out of my school library.  The teacher never asked us to do this, but I wanted to learn more so I took the initiative myself.  I loved it!

Books are great.  I am so thankful for books.  I hope to keep reading and learning for the rest of my life!

Since those were such cliche phrases, I will end this blog with a couple of quotes (I find them humorous) from one of my favorite "kids' books" authors, Lemony Snicket:  

"All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk." 

"Well-read people are less likely to be criminals." 

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness." 

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."