I've heard time and time again from various people, "Oh, I don't read" or "I don't like to read". When someone says this, I'm taken aback because I love books so much. Now, if someone says to me, "I haven't read... this or that", I'll be the first one to butt in and recommend something. I may be biased because my love of reading started at a very young age. I can remember spending so much time in my elementary school's library, talking with the libararian about different books and asking her to help me find just the right ones. During my primary school years, I ate up each required reading like I couldn't get enough and I remember each book to this day. The Tripod Trilogy by Johnathan Christopher, The Secret of Nimh, Where the Red Fern Grows to name a few. Our local public library was massive and I remember spending hours upon hours, looking up books, spending most of my free time in the Teen Section of The Sachem Public Library. Anne of Green Gables is a personal favorite. As is the Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber (You can tell I'm coming into my own as a goth). At age 15, we'd moved to another district; along with that, another library, The Mastic Moriches Shirley Community Library. I cannot go into enough detail about this library, it was huge and by far one of my favorite places in town. I got tutored in math there, and I would sneak off to find more books to bring home. I would then branch into adult books like murder mysteries. Dracula, Frankenstein, Maus, Halloween, The Diary of Anne Frank, books on WWII... Still, I never was allowed to read The Silence of the Lambs... Anyway, I would also make sure to enroll that summer for their summer reading program. They were so much fun! Back then, a lot more kids and teens read than they do now. I find it really sad that a lot of teens this day in age go to the library for its computers and not for its vast array of books.
The best job I'd ever gotten was when I was 18. I applied to work at a Barnes & Noble. I would say it would be a reader's dream come true. I read, and drank espresso laced drinks on my breaks. I shamelessly gave unsolicited book recommendations from my place at the cafe register. Oh, no I wasn't on the book floor but you can bet I went to work early, came home late, and I attended and helped out at the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
A lot has happened since then.
I have moved since then, to another town, with a much smaller library. Thankfully the Library System it's a part of is huge as well, so finding books is simple, just type, click, reserve, and pick up. The invention of e-readers was also an awesome thing to happen to me! I remember the day I got my first Kindle. A whole world so much more easily accessible to me appeared. I have since upgraded to the paperwhite. I use websites like bookbub to get emails for daily book deals and keep up with new releases.
Reading opens up a whole world you can't even imagine. It makes you think, shapes who you become as an adult. As a mom, I am always encouraging my kids to read instead of watch TV, to go to the library, I even recommend past books I've read to my 9 year old. If you're not a reader I'm sorry to say you're missing so much. There are lives to live and places to explore if you only turn the page. I for one will be reading until the day I go blind, then it's braille or audiobooks for me. I can only hope that the future generations come back to practice reading as a hobby. In the age of snapchat and Instagram, anyone can post, anyone can blog, but those who do so to spread the word about books and their love of reading well, those are my kind of people.
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