Reading History

           Though I adore reading now, I used to cringe at the thought of opening a book. Sadly, my entire history of reading outside of school did not begin until about a year ago when my mother bought me a book for Christmas. As I ripped open the wrapping paper on Christmas morning only to discover the boredom of just another book I was never going to read, my first thought was, “does my mother even know me?” I mean, from the perspective of a teenage girl who had probably never read more than ten books for fun in the entire fifteen years of life, I was rather confused as to what my mother’s motives were.

            Eventually though, after I ate a few candy canes and built some snowmen, I took a closer look at the book. It was Elixir by Hilary Duff. Yes, I know, Hilary Duff. Though it was pretty much guaranteed to be a superficial, predictable, chick-lit novel, I figured, why not? So I picked up the book one night and started to read. Needless to say, I went to sleep at four in the morning that night. I was so drawn to the characters and the plot that I refused to rest until I knew what happened on the very last page of that book.

            Once I was finished with it, I started to think, “Wow, what if there are other good books out there?” I cannot express how ridiculous this sounds to me now. Of course there are good books out there! It only took me about five minutes of searching through some books I found in our basement (and I swear there were cobwebs on them) to discover more books that looked promising. Ever since then, I’ve always had a book in hand. I mostly read fantasy, though every now and then I like to pick up a chick-lit book that reminds me of the first really enjoyable book I received that fateful Christmas morning.