I don’t know about you, but I was that kid who used to curl up on a couch for hours at a time and just read. I liked going to Barnes & Noble, picking out a random book, and getting lost in it. Reading was fun. It was a hobby.

The wonderful thing about reading is it gives you an escape from reality, which doesn’t mean reality is bad. It just means you can focus on the drama and problems of other people and characters without having to deal with those issues. You get all of the excitement of experiencing crazy plot twists without any actual consequences. It’s wonderful.

However, what I like most about reading is that it keeps my mind engaged. I can easily binge an entire series on Netflix, but watching television is kind of a passive activity for me. Unless the show is super interesting, I don’t think much about what I’m watching. I just watch it.

Alternatively, reading words on a page causes me to focus on them and their meaning. Why did the author choose this specific word? Why did the character do this activity? Why is this item being mentioned in great detail? I want to follow the author’s train of thought as I read because I want to see how each component of the book comes together in order to create a story.

I’ll admit, I don’t read as much as I used to. I lost my passion for it. High school made me tired, and it took the fun out of reading. I was told what to read, when to read it by, how to take notes on it, and what to write about it.

We even had these quizzes where we would only be given a quote from the book. Then, we had to identify what character said it, the situation that it was said in, and what it meant. It was frustrating because I would spend hours reading for homework, and I still wouldn’t recognize the quote sometimes.

Class books were exhausting because no matter how much you liked the book, you still spent way too much time analyzing it and working with the text. It made reading very demotivating.

Now, I’m in college, and I haven’t read books all school year, which I’m kind of ashamed of. However, my new English class has us read 12 books in seven weeks. Last week, I read Nella Larsen’s novella, Passing, and it was wonderful. It reminded me why I enjoyed reading so much as a child, and it made me excited about this course.

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that sometimes we forget how good a book can be in today’s world of technology. Maybe you’re like me and used to love reading and didn’t keep up with it or maybe you never liked it because of how your school had you read books. Whatever the case, I recommend trying a new book. Maybe you’ll like it more than you expect.