Yesterday evening, I had the chance to meet a few book bloggers and authors who live in Utah.  I’d post a recap of the fun I had, but I’m waiting for a picture.  I’ll post more when I receive it.

At the party last night, I explained to many of the authors and some of the bloggers that I wasn’t a reader until two and a half years ago.  As I was explaining this, I realized I didn’t really have anything posted about how I found the passion to read on my blog.  Since I blog about the books I read, I thought it would be fitting to post my story.  Lucky for me, I just wrote about this in my English class a few weeks ago.  Because my English essay was so eloquently written, I’ll post it (with a few minor changes) rather than writing it again.  It’s kind of long so enjoy if you take the time to read the whole thing.

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I avoided reading at all costs when I was in high school and during the first couple of years of college.  I knew it was important, yet it didn’t interest me.  When I was assigned a book to read, I’d hunt down obscure movies or read the summations in CliffNotes to pass my quizzes and tests rather than cracking open the dreaded novel.  If there weren’t summations or a movie, I guessed my way through the assignments and was even content with failing that part of the class if it happened.  (It was the one thing in which I didn’t have to be perfect.)  Unfortunately, I missed out on a lot of good novels at a young age.

During high school, I had the opportunity—or should’ve taken the opportunity—to read classics, such as The Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, yet the only two books I read were The Scarlet Letter and Dune.  It was only because the stories interested me enough that I endured the arduous task of reading.  Historical, religious fiction (particularly those dealing with World War II or religious persecution) and science fiction had always captivated me.  Up to that point, however, the only exposure I had to these genres was from movies and television shows.  When I read the synopsis for The Scarlet Letter and Dune, I decided to give them a try.  Even though I enjoyed both novels (Dune being one of my favorites), I still didn’t want to read anything else.

Years after I graduated high school, my interest in reading finally began to peak.  When I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the theater, the complexity and excitement of the story interested me so much I had to know more.  Corey had bought the leather-bound edition of the first book a few months before, but until I saw the movie, I had no interest in it.  I began to read feverishly, hanging on to every word on the page, and finished the book in two days.  After I finished the first book, I didn’t want to wait for the long hold times at the library and I couldn’t afford to buy the next book at the time so I borrowed the second and third books from one of my nieces.  I finished both of them in three days.  At that point, I had to know what happened to Harry and his friends in the fourth book.  My niece was currently reading it and I was too impatient to wait for her to finish.  I bought the fourth book, even though it was financially unwise, and read it in three days.  It was unheard of me to read a book in less than a week and I had read not one but four books in just over a week.

After I finished reading the books in the Harry Potter series, I still didn’t quite have the desire to read more than I already did.  I loved the Harry Potter series and each time a new book in the series was published, I’d reread all the books to prepare for the new adventure.  But, I didn’t branch out more than that.  I’d make up excuses to not read, like “I just don’t have the time,” “I don’t know what to read,” “It takes too much effort,” or “Nothing interests me” because I was simply too lazy to change my attitude toward reading.

In 2007, my co-worker Becky recommended Twilight.  My excuses were still in full force, but, amazingly, I decided to give the book a try.  I had always had an interest in vampires, having watched a couple of television shows and movies, but I was too afraid to venture into that realm of fiction because I had heard the books were extremely scary, gory, and usually contained explicit content—something I wasn’t willing to read.  The world around me ceased to exist (much to Corey’s dismay) while I was reading Twilight; the only thing that mattered was what happened to the characters.  I felt like I was there, experiencing everything they did.  After two days of non-stop reading, I completed the first two books in the Twilight Saga, and all at once my love of reading was ignited.

From that point on, I have felt exhilarated every time I have picked up a novel.  I always want more so I continue to read more and more books.  (As I mentioned in my previous post, I really miss reading for pleasure right now.)  I’ve even read books I never had any interest in before, like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Secret Garden, and Mansfield Park, because I wanted to broaden my horizons.  I was amazed when I finished an astonishing 31 books last year.

Because my love for reading didn’t develop until I was nearly 30 years old, I feel like I have to make up for lost time.  I’ve made a list of all the books I want to read (see my Shelfari and Goodreads shelves), including The Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Even though my list has hundreds of books on it, I look forward to reading them all and enjoying the feelings of wonder, awe, and exhilaration each time I start a new adventure.