Recently, I have been trying to figure out what exactly it is I want to do with my life, and I just keep coming back to books. I do not know what it is that I want to do with them exactly — if I want to read them, write them or edit them. All I know is the fact that reading is a huge part of my life. I have always been the person with stacks of books in my room, piled on top of others because my bookshelf was filled up a long time ago. I keep books in the Kindle app of my iPhone so I am never without a read. I bring them with me anytime I spend the night somewhere. In bookstores, my behavior resembles that of the classic “kid in a candy factory.”
But, I do not think it is enough to say that I love books. And honestly, sometimes I do not. Sometimes there is some dreadfully boring “classic” I have to read for school and just cannot manage to finish. Sometimes a book hurts me with a heartbreaking ending or annoys me with a cheap, unfulfilling ending and I throw it across the floor. Sometimes I just do not feel like reading anything new, and I move the book I have been waiting to read forever to the back of my shelf to open up one I have reread hundreds of times. So why do I do this? Why does anyone? What does it mean to be a bookworm if sometimes books drive you crazy?
For me, it is not about how much I love books. I think it is more about how I feel. Being a reader is such a big part of who I am. I will actually spend and have spent full weekends in my room finishing a book. I can ignore almost anything while I am reading. I do not always love books, but I feel like I can actually be somewhere else while I am reading. I think it is that feeling that I love. Because no matter how sad or boring or amazing or confusing the book is, it is still describing a place that I could not otherwise get to. By opening a book, we get to travel to Paris, to Nebraska, to Panem, to Hogsmeade. We actually get to be a part of a story other than our own, and see the world in a way that we would not usually. We get to experience the sights and sounds of these places, not only from our own perspectives but also from the perspective of the characters we read about. We get to travel from our couches to a deserted island and back every time we read.
So, I do not really know what I want to do with this knowledge. But I do know that one thing I have in common with so many other “bookworms” is that we love the feeling. We love to go places without moving our feet, meet people without uttering a word, fight monsters without picking up a sword.
We love the feeling of reading.
