How I’m re-discovering my love of reading

I spent my whole childhood believing that I didn’t really like reading that much because I had only ever read books that I had been told to read. I found it boring and uninteresting. But I liked going into bookshops either way. So one day when I was about 14 or 15 years old I decided to buy a book that I thought was interesting and it was cheap. After that, it was a one-way ticket to becoming absolutely obsessed with reading and I discovered the world of young adult fiction novels and I could very easily read 3 books in one single week from my phone. That was.... until I stopped.

There is also a video on this topic, feel free to check it out:

Ever since I was little and I had no money of my own to be able to buy books I always used to love going into bookshops and looking at all the books they had. I would read their first pages and their descriptions. I used to love the idea of reading but I didn’t really think that I liked reading because the only exposure I’d had to it was school books and some Paulo Coelho books that my sister used to have, which were not really my style.

So whenever I used to go to the mall with my family and I asked them to go into the bookshop there were 2 options:

• Either we would go and they wouldn’t buy me any book because they said that I wouldn’t read it even if they did buy it.
• Or I wouldn’t even ask them to buy me anything because I believed I wouldn’t read it even if they bought it for me.

Or we just wouldn’t go in at all. But still, I loved going to the bookshops either way. And one day when I was already old enough to save the money from my allowance I went into the bookshop and I started going through the books, and I picked up this hardcover book that had an interesting cover and I started reading the first pages. Before each chapter, the book had these sorts of short stories or poems and that was interesting enough for me to decide to buy it. And lucky enough for me, the book was also rather cheap. If I am remembering correctly this was rather close to my birthday because I started reading this book while also listening to Pink’s The Truth About Love album and John Mayer’s Born and Raised album which were the two CDs that I had gotten as a present for my birthday that year. For me, that was an unintentional way of making reading more pleasurable for me, because I have always loved music so mixing it up with reading was the perfect incentive to start reading.

But honestly? That book was so good that I finished reading it in less than a week and I went on to recommend that book to my best friend Isabella, who ended up loving the book just as much as I. Now, whenever I meet someone who loves reading just as much or even more than me I recommend them that book because it’s honestly the single biggest reason that I discovered my love of reading. I haven’t re-read it but it’s definitely on my to-do list because it was so amazing that I even marked some pages with particularly interesting passages. After that, the same friend that I lent the book to (who ended up also loving it) also lent me The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Looking for Alaska by John Green. And I will only say that I swallowed both of those books within a week each, and no other book has been able to make me cry the same way that Looking for Alaska made me cry. I’m talking full-on ugly crying sobbing having a panic attack right alongside the characters of the book. I felt like I was experiencing the same feelings as the character as John was describing them in the chapters.

I went on to buy books in English every time that I traveled with my family and hoarded any digital books that I could get my hands on. So what happened? Why did I ever stop reading?

I honestly cannot say that I know for sure. To an extent, I suppose that it was simply life. In my hometown, there weren’t that many bookshops and the ones there didn’t have the books that I liked. I am also a snob and I have always liked reading books in English instead of in Spanish because it helps me improve my vocabulary and my grammar. Pair that with the fact that as you start growing you naturally have less time for the things that you just like to do because you are bombarded with all of these things that you HAVE to do. I started university and at the same time, I started working as an English teacher. So I think that reading simply took more of a background place in my life.

Until very recently. You see, when I was in the prime of my reading hype I read the Vampire Academy books by Richelle Mead. The movie had just come out and I liked it and I decided that I wanted to read the books. I was in for a TREAT. Because those books are honestly nothing like the movie. Honestly, they made the movie a pseudo-comedy when the book could not be farther from that. But I digress. The point of this story is the fact that when I read those books I REALLY loved them. And it has a spin-off series, Bloodlines, that is ALSO six books, which I also REALLY loved. And I saw the full series of those books in a bookshop earlier this year. And those books are REALLY difficult to find usually so of course... I had no other choice but to buy them.

And since I bought them. I had no other choice but to read them. And when I read them again I could not believe how much I liked them. Don’t get me wrong, these are a bit silly maybe in the way that all young adult fantasy romance novels are silly. But IT’S SO GOOD. The way the characters express their feelings is so dramatic and expressive, it honestly reminded me of myself and I thought “well no wonder I grew up expressing myself the way that I do”. I didn’t actually take note of this but I am pretty sure that I read all 6 of those books in the first three weeks of the year. 6 books in just 3 weeks. That was a lot. And from there I just remembered how much I loved reading. Being so immersed in the pages of a book that you just need to get to the next chapter and suddenly you forget you need to work tomorrow and it’s already 2 in the morning.

So of course, from there I went on a shopping spree.

Since then, I have once again found what it is to find comfort in the pages of a book that take you through experiences that you could not go through yourself otherwise. Finding ways to express feelings that you didn't even know you want to express in the pages of those books.

This year one of my goals was to read a bit more, and I have so far read 5 completely new books, plus all the other Vampire Academy re-reads. So I would say that I am on a good roll, even though I currently have 14 books on my to-read list waiting for me to get off my ass and read them, and I am most likely going to buy more books. But I guess that's one of the joys of reading, you can just get more books and read them at your own pace.