College Students, Stand Up For Your Right For Books

Reading is not something that we all pursue in our daily lives, especially college students. When was the last time you saw a college student reading for fun? There are a select few of us who do make time to indulge in good book, but it is rare. All that this demographic reads are textbooks, social media pages, and price tags.

I'm not writing this to hate on my generation, I'm writing this to make you all aware of a problem - a serious one. People of this generation do not have the time to read and if they do want to, there is nothing out on the shelves geared towards 18-25 year olds.

First of all, when you are in college, your amount of free time is very limited. Between club meetings, classes, studying etc, you barely have enough time to shower and feed yourself. Only if you're lucky can you squeeze some Netflix or a workout into your spare moments. Books are far from your mind in those times, which is extremely unfortunate because the joys and educational value that come along with reading a good book are not being taken advantage of. From reading, I oddly enough feel like it has helped me with ways to communicate with other people, do's and don'ts of life, and most importantly, how to have a creative mind/to think out of the box. Yes, most books are fiction, but they all have morals to them or underlying "based on real life" to some extent. College is the time were a lot of people experience identity crises or are lost in some way and I believe books can help. Reading about someone in a similar experience can aide them, even if it is fiction. Which leads me to my next point: it would be extremely helpful to have college students reading. However, it is very hard to get a generation to start reading when there isn't a market in the book industry for them.

Growing up, books have always been apart of my life. When I was a child, I read children's books. When I was a tween, I read books like Judy Moody or Judy Blume. When I was a teen, I read young adult books. Once I hit 18 and left high school, however, I had a very difficult time finding novels to read. There are a million and one adult books, a whole lot of young adult fiction, and lots of children's books, but where are the books for the adults who are not yet fully treated like adults? That is, books that address who we are in college, when we are in that weird age where by law we are considered adults? The awkward age when some people can drink, some are living on our own/ being independent? We are a troubled age, which makes for a juicy story? Yet no one is writing about us.

I get it, college students don't have time to read and or don't think they want to read so they aren't on the priority list of publishers and writers to market to. However, it is a vicious cycle because maybe if there were interesting books that don't focus on high school or the real world after college, they would make the time to pick up a book. One thinks the other doesn't want the books and the other doesn't want them because the other won't make them. I believe college students are the perfect market for books: we go to college to get an education, so why not add to our education in a creative way. We all need some form of break from our schoolwork, so why can't snuggling up with a book be an option for all?