This has been a trend in the booktube sphere and I thought I would share what I remember about how I got started reading and the evolution of my reading through my life up until now.
I was introduced to reading through my parents. They always read books to me when I was young. The main books that I remember reading when I was in early elementary school were the Little Golden Books, mainly Disney ones and I still own all of them now. I loved picture books and I remember A Bad Case of the Stripes was a favorite of mine.
Mid-Elementary school lent itself to chapter books, I read everything from Amber Brown to Magic Tree House books. I read poetry from Shel Silverstein. Some of my favorite books were Because of Winn Dixie, Fever 1793, and Caddie Woodlawn. I don’t really remember how much reading was apart of my life but I do know I enjoyed book fairs and the books I do remember reading.
Late-elementary/middle school was where I really blossomed as a reader. I began reading Harry Potter, Series of Unfortunate Events, The Princess Diaries, and Lurlene McDaniel books. This was my horse phase, I read all of the horse books I could get my hands on, my favorites being the Heartland books. I also read a lot of the Dear America and Royal Diaries books and even was part of a book club for the Dear America books. These books were my intro to historical fiction and lead me to reading more about Pocahontas, Hellen Keller, and Anne Frank among many other historically significant people as well has historical events such as the sinking of the Titanic. At this point I had become a library card holder and begged to go to the library whenever I could. I checked out 5 books or more every two weeks and devoured them.
This was a huge turning point in my reading. My school had this program called Reading Counts where we earned points for the books we read and we had to earn so many points a marking period (basically like the current Accelerated Reader program). My school also gave prizes to the top reader of the grade, and I am a competitive person so that program did it’s magic for me because I became an avid reader!
I am very thankful that my parents never tried to shelter my reading. I was allowed to read whatever I wanted. I discovered a lot of things through reading. I learned many lessons about life, love, and friendship through the words in hundreds of different books. I remember checking out books with titles like “When Dad Killed Mom” and my mom supporting my choices and just reminding me that if I had questions I could talk to her. It was so nice to not be hindered by someone else’s prejudices and being able to read what I wanted. Most of my character and personality has come from the books that I have read and I feel like I grew wiser faster than most of my age group because of the opportunities I had through reading.
In high school I think I read more than I paid attention during class. High School was where I discovered Scott Westerfeld, Anna Godbersen, and so many other fantastic writers. I also got pulled into the Twilight craze in my senior year. I stuck with mostly YA books in high school with the occasional classic and play title that I had to read. I also branched into poetry and really began to enjoy the genre because of Emily Dickinson and Mattie Stepanek. This was also where I started trying to keep track of how many books I read in a year, but that was pretty hard without the discovery of GoodReads.
In college I used reading as my escape even more. I devoured the Maximum Ride Series, the Mortal Instruments, and the Millennium trilogy. By this point I had reread Harry Potter for the 10th time and still loved every word. I discovered John Green, the Gone Series, Hunger Games, and read so many different kinds of books.
After college to now I have transferred into a hobbyist reader. It is the thing that I love to do in my free time. I reread some favorites but more recently I have been focusing on collecting classics that I haven’t read and growing my TBR exponentially. I am still an avid reader and I have a set reading goal each year now that I have GoodReads helping me keep track. I am still a huge fan of YA but I have also been reading middle grades and adult. I also discovered how to get ARC’s from NetGalley and began reviewing books.
I am now a teacher and am working a full time job so my reviewing has fallen off in consistency but if you would like me to write a full review of a book that I have read this year please let me know and I will get one done asap! Thanks for reading!
