There are people who enjoy reading, those who find absolutely no pleasure in it at all, and those who don't have any particularly strong opinions about books. But in the midst of all these people, there are those miraculous and rare humans who love books with a burning passion, who attach themselves emotionally to fictional characters and worlds and can talk for hours on end about stories they've read.
These charming individuals are known as "bookworms," and it is with great pride that I proclaim I myself am one. From a young age, I've had a full bookshelf (or two) and a nose glued constantly between two pages, and my adoration has only grown with age. Lately, I've even been posting videos on BookTube (a YouTube community centered around a shared love of...well, books).
And while I am proud to be a book nerd, I continue to get questioning looks and snide remarks about how I have no social life. In response to that, all I can say is reading, to me, is so much more than comprehending words on a page or a means of escaping reality. In my mind, reading is like therapeutic adventure.
Through reading, a person becomes somebody else. Not literally, but in those moments when your eyes are flitting across the pages at the speed of light, you aren't worrying about anything in the real world. Everything around you becomes a pointless haze as the imaginary scene in your mind steadily grows clearer and more vivid. It's more than just escaping the harshness of reality, because some fictional worlds are infinitely more grim. I like to think of this shift in consciousness as simply the displacement of emotions we receive in the real world.
Think of it this way: When you're upset, do you listen to songs that make you happy or sad?
By listening to happy music while feeling down, you're trying to dig up positive emotions that are already within you. Similarly, by turning on somber music, you're trying to release those unhappy feelings while focusing on the music itself rather than what's actually bothering you.
In a way, that's what reading does, at least the way I view it. When you read a cheerful scene, you're channeling your own positive emotions into the story, which is what gives you that upbeat response.
The reason I connect so easily to nonexistent worlds and form such deep emotional attachments to fictional characters is because reading is one of the very few times I let my true emotions show. Reading is a way for me to really feel what I've been keeping locked up inside. Books are basically my therapists.
Now this is only one out of a long list of reasons why I love reading so much, but it's one of the most important. It shows that, while some people don't get anything out of novels, others understand reading to be a vital way of life.
