reading is fun!

i really wished i read more. i used to read a lot in elementary school. the number of books you can read were the instagram likes of my childhood. my friends and i would bring 5 books to school at a time to show off. now looking back on it, we were kinda crazy for books. one of my friends, dylan, would max out the number of books you can borrow at one time: 30.

what happened to the reading craze?

while i was cleaning my room, i found all my schoolwork from elementary school and i threw away pretty much everything except one thing. in 5th grade, we had to log in our reading and had a monthly goal of 400 pages and i read 2099... that's a lot. this reading log required me to log in the date, the title of the book, the author, and number of pages read. in this month of november 2013, i read a total of 13 books. t h i r t e e n?? last year, my new year's resolution was to read 10 books outside of school and i read 7... reading 13 books in 23 days is insane. according to the log, for the most part, i would read a book a day (some took 2 days). now, i complain about reading 20 pages a night, which makes me kinda sad to think about. if 10 year old me can read 202 pages in one day, 15 year old me should be able to read one 20 page chapter. to be fair, i was reading geronimo stilton (aka a lot of pictures).

although i stopped reading for pleasure regularly, i still read (sometimes). and like my little self, i still like reading books in one sitting. if it's a book i'm interesting in, i will not put it down until i'm down reading it. i think that's how my procrastination sprouted...by reading instead of anything else. last year on multiple occasions, i would read a 200 or 300 page book on a school night. how you ask? well i didn't finish ANY of my homework, walked around the house reading it, ate dinner with it, sat in my bath towel reading it, and went to sleep at 1 in the morning... so yeah that's how.

two weeks ago was spring break, and my family and i went to texas. right before we left for the airport, i looked at my bookshelf and picked a book a friend recommended to me and shoved it in my backpack. in my head i was like "yeah i am not going to read this bc i always bring books on vacation and never read em". then i head to the airport and surprise, i started reading it and liking it. i was about halfway this 300 page book after my 2 hour flight to los angeles. now on my 4 hour flight to houston, i finished it and it was just so good, i started reading it again. and for the first 5 days of the trip, i read this book six times. yeah, i really liked it. i also made my parents drive me to different book stores to check if the sequel was there and no hope. then i finally made the desperate decision to buy the e book on my dad's iPad. the last two days of the trip, i read the sequel three times. now that i'm writing this, i sound a little crazy. but seriously if you like dystopian novels, read stung by bethany wiggins.

fun fact: i got glasses in third grade because i was reading in the dark when i was supposed to be asleep. now my vision is getting worse because i am on my phone in the dark when i am supposed to be asleep. just imagine how much smarter i would be if i read instead of going on my phone.


 some of my elementary school faves