Zhang Week 3 - Reading Adventures

  I’ve been an avid reader ever since I was able to make sense of words. When I was in elementary school, my mom would bring me to a library every week and would borrow a huge bag of books for me to read. Sometimes we even brought home around twenty books! Of course, I wasn’t able to finish them all in one week, but I kept reading at a decent pace, and very quickly, I had read nearly all of the books in the children's’ section. 

        Although I enjoyed reading most of the books, I definitely had my favorites. I think this is because more than the act of reading in itself, I enjoyed getting immersed in a fictional world with interesting characters time and time again. I remember a few of my favorite series back then were Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Septimus Heap, The Chronicles of Narnia, and a lot more that I can’t recall at the moment because it has been so many years. 

        With series like these which I really loved, I tended to read them at an extremely fast pace. I would scan through chapters without noticing the details and nuances in the writing because I was so desperate to know what would happen next in the story. I’d often feel a little lightheaded after intense sessions of reading because I had processed so much information in a short period of time. Since then, I’ve tried to correct this habit of racing to the end of books because it not only left me with a fraction of understanding of what went on, but also made stories end much sooner. 

        For me, the biggest downside of reading is reaching the end of the story. I’ve never been fully satisfied with endings to books, even if the endings are as optimal and happy as possible. I think it’s because when I read a story with developed world building, I spend days just imagining the scenery and characters in the book, and I almost feel like I’m part of this picture. So, when the story comes to an end, it’s like an unpleasant surprise to me, because I just want to see what happens next in this imaginary world, even if the characters have already gone through enough events to last a lifetime.

        I really miss being able to read a book just for fun everyday. I’ve read a good number of novels and series during high school, but they were mostly crammed into the summer and I also stuck to one genre which made the books a little repetitive. I suspect I won’t have much time to read in college either, but I hope maybe when I’m older and have a job, I can fit a few minutes of reading into my daily schedule. Reading helps me relax while still engaging my mind in a fun way, and I think it would be good for me to do this more often.