#2: Reading novels

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must always find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."

-Confucius

If you want to be taken to another world, portraying a different character, one you’ve always wanted, day dreaming won’t be enough. You need descriptive words carefully arranged in a manner artistically fit for narrative and are figuratively jumping out of the paper to really feel that you are in another world. A world inspired by life’s experiences and realities and made more beautiful by imagination.

My love for reading novels started in second year high school. During break times, I would go to the library and skim titles of prospective finds. When a title caught my interest, I would borrow it.

The novel I most recently read.

The first novel I read back then was something about a frightful summer. I just forgot the title and the author. The plot went on with the main character (a girl) meeting another girl who pretended to be her cousin whose parents died when they lost their house to a blaze and who turned out to be a witch (it was found out that she wasn’t appearing in photographs).

The passion grew more when I read such famous titles as “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden and “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” by controversial author Dan Brown. All of these have movie adaptations which make them more interesting.

I also sank my intellectual curiosity on the world phenomenon Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. I would always snub it before, thinking that the series was just a nonsense children’s magical fantasy, but when I read all seven books in second year college, I realized that the epic tale of Harry Potter was more than just a children’s story book. Since then, I’ve become a Potterhead. I so love the plot I always imagine myself as Harry James Potter, cursing death eaters and counterattacking Voldemort’s Avada Kedavra with Expelliarmus (yeah, I’ve memorized several spells I read in the books).

Great things happen out of the ordinary. Harry Potter sprang to life when J.K. Rowling started writing his story on tissue paper. Making my heart race when the climax comes, reading novels has always been an entry in my “to do” list when I’m not busy. It always ignites my imagination and carries me to different worlds I can only dream of. I will never stop reading. And someday, I will write my own novel and fascinate other bookworms like me.