Hello, and welcome back to my reading blog!
I will be discussing specific books soon, but before that I want to write about one more topic: the story of how I got into reading. It's not exactly the most thrilling story, but nevertheless, it's worth telling. In fact, it's worth telling because of how mundane it is, as this shows how potentially anyone can develop a passion for reading. With this, I'll get into it...
For as long as I can remember, storytelling has always fascinated me, but I started the way most kids would. Besides bedtime stories and the like (Eric Carle was always a personal favorite of mine), the first memories I have of reading books was in my elementary school's library, where we would go once a week to pick out a book. I specifically remember a handful of titles I'd gravitate towards, like the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne, the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary, and the Holes series by Louis Sachar. As a little boy, I don't remember being particularly picky with books; I have many positive memories of sitting in that little library with my friends, flipping through all sorts of different books -- graphic novels, encyclopedias, short stories... I still remember discovering Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, with its haunting illustrations by Stephen Gammell, and ever since I've been trying to put it out of my mind.
Some of my favorite books to read in elementary school
Middle school, in many ways, was an awkward transitional time for me, and my literary tastes weren't spared. Having grown too old for Captain Underpants, but not yet being interested in Captain Ahab, I somewhat lost my interest in consistently reading. I didn't give the hobby up though, not by any stretch; I eagerly read all three books in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy, as well as The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, just as I entered the sixth grade. I was simply struggling to decide what books interested me. Tolkien's writing was too slow-burning for 10-year old me, which led me to believe old classics weren't my thing. Yet more lighthearted contemporary books, such as Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick or Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen (both of which I was assigned to read) were flat-out boring to me from what I perceived at the time to be a dull presentation. The only momentary relief I can recall from my loss of interest in books was in eighth grade. As a year-long "Million Word" assignment, we read many different books in my English class that year. The one that I remember most fondly was one of Agatha Christies's many acclaimed novels: And Then There Were None. The "Mistress of Mystery" provided me with a brief respite from my literary estrangement; for a few years, And Then There Were None was my all-time favorite book. As a 13-year old, I considered the book's opening to be quite slow, but once the "soldier" figurines began to disappear, I was hooked. After finishing the book, I was afraid lightning wouldn't strike twice -- that I could never find another book to excite me the way And Then There Were None had. Thus was my mindset as I entered high school.
If middle school was a time of awkward transitions, high school was a time for gradual maturation. In my freshmen year, I can recall nearly all the books I was made to read: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, even Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The only work I'd bother to write home about was George Orwell's 1984, but that certainly wasn't a favorite of mine. Sophomore year was a similar story: over the year, I read How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Black Boy by Richard Wright, plus Shakespeare's Macbeth, and even Beowulf, but of all these works, only Slaughterhouse-Five truly fascinated me. Funnily enough, when the class was asked what they preferred between it and Magoon's novel, they resoundingly voted by a show of hands in favor of How it Went Down. We also read Catcher in the Rye that year, but don't get me started on that...
Junior year, same old story -- at first. The first book we read that year was The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, which caught me off guard. I was surprisingly intrigued by the 404 pages of descriptions on the intricacies of rowing a boat. Some of the other books I read that year were okay, like The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, but while school was making a half-hearted attempt at interesting us in books, something else happened that truly changed my attitude towards reading forever. As a 16-year old, I couldn't connect the dots between the books I enjoyed versus the ones I didn't. I was still too intimidated by the thought of reading Tolstoy, but the contemporary works I was reading in school were much too boring. I had no way of knowing what books were worth reading, and which ones were popular simply for being easy for students to write essays on. And then...
In early 2018, midway through my junior year, I joined 60 million other people (his subscriber count at the time), and became a fan of Felix Kjellberg, aka "PewDiePie." His daily uploads helped to give me something to do in my otherwise boring weekends, and it became my ritual to binge his week of content every Saturday. Just like me, Felix seemed to have been going through a period of maturing, and his content had begun a shift; an example of such a shift was uploaded in early February: a video titled "🙌 BOOK REVIEW 🙌 January."
A 25-minute video of Pewds talking about books(?!) greeted me that morning, and I was immediately uninterested. After watching the first 30 seconds, I realized it was no joke, and promptly closed he video. I watched Felix's content for his humor; I didn't care about his opinions on books. However, a small part of me wanted to humor him and sit through the video, even if it was boring, just to see what he had to say. And now, over three years later, I can say with confidence this was one of the best single decisions I've made. Of the six books he discussed, only two interested me: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde -- which he mentioned is his wife Marzia's favorite book (she has good taste!) -- and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. And yet these two books were all it took; for the first time, I had novels I could genuinely look forward to reading -- two books that I wanted to read, not that my teachers were forcing me to read without any clue what they were. This is what I was missing: a means to learn what books interested me before reading them! After this, Felix kind of made monthly book review videos... but sadly, they didn't last. Whether it was due to potentially poorer watch-time, or the lack of engagement with his audience which he complained of, Pewds only made about ten book review videos over the following year. But this was enough to light my literary fuse; not only had my personal "to-read" list grown from two to two-dozen, but I was now able to explore on my own and expand my palette. Unfortunately, because of school, I couldn't focus on my own reading until I graduated, in mid-2019. But in the meantime, the list of books that awaited me grew and grew.
Speaking of school, my senior year was, you guessed it, just like the rest. I actually enrolled in an AP English Literature class, thinking it would be my favorite course ever, but I ended up disliking it pretty strongly. (As I've said before, I may make an entire post one day dedicated to what I perceive to be the problems with the way English classes approach reading). The books we were made to read included: Candide by Voltaire, which I was quite fond of; Othello by Shakespeare, which I was not fond of; Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which I never finished due to time constraints; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I was eager to read since it had been on my list already; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which we read alongside Huxley's aformentioned masterpiece, much to the chagrin of 451, seeing as how this only served to highlight how much worse it is compared to the former; Hamlet and King Lear, also by Shakespeare, the first of which being the only Shakespeare play I can tolerate at the moment; and finally, three existentialist plays were read in this class: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, and No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. The first two plays were much more entertaining to watch than to read, as that gives the viewer the opportunity to see how the actors play off of each other. For example, in class, we watched excerpts from a production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern starring Daniel Radcliffe and Joshua McGuire, and it was significantly more enjoyable than reading the play alone. The latter of the three plays, No Exit, was my favorite, and, ironically, we ended up running out of time in class and never worked on it, which is a shame, since I would have been happy to write about it.
Once I had graduated from high school, I was finally able to focus on reading the books I wanted to read, at my own pace. I started with The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and since then (June 2019), I've read nearly 20 different books ranging from commercial fiction, to philosophy, to historical/biographical books. To some, 20 books in a year and a half may not seem like much, but it's been the most rewarding hobby I've ever picked up. Being able to explore literature on my own, discovering what kinds interest me, is so liberating after years of mandatory readings in school. Currently, my list of to-read contains over 40 works, which will keep me busy for the next several years. As I check things off the list, I'll no doubt add more in their place, so I think it's safe to say this passion of mine isn't going anywhere!
As I said at the start, my journey of discovering literature is one that anyone can experience. I believe everyone can get excited about reading; if they can figure out what books interest them, they can dig deeper into the vast world of writing and discover even more books they can enjoy. I encourage everybody to try this out; there are so many outlets out there to help you find out what to read! The best part for me is that I've barely begun to scratch the surface myself. I still have a lifetime of reading ahead of me!
That wraps up my preliminary writings for this blog; next time, I'll be writing a review/discussion about the first piece of literary fiction I read on my own accord: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde! Until then, keep contemplating! :)
P.S. this is also the last time I'll force the blog's name into the post title, I promise...
