I love reading. I read a lot, and I have three bookshelves in my room, just so that I can have room for the hundreds of books I currently possess. Most of which are a mix between fantasy adventure, and bad romance stories.

Everyone says reading is like seeing a movie in your head, but it is so much more than that. I love that I can be completely transported into a new world. It’s like everything around me dissolves, and then I am standing behind the main characters, following them around wherever they go. It doesn’t take me long to be invested with the fictional people, or to care about them more than I want to admit.

When I was younger, my mom said that it was like pulling teeth to get me to read, and it didn’t click with me until I was in the fourth grade. Now it honestly boggles my mind when people claim to hate reading. I can’t imagine my life without it, and reading a novel has become a de-stressor.

One day I could be a witch, learning from Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series, or I could be standing in the middle of the forest watching vampires play baseball in the Twilight trilogy. I could be anywhere in the world in a blink of an eye. Books, to me, are like my own personal teleporter.

Despite the amount of books that I have in my room, I have read a select few, over and over again. I lose myself in my favorite adventures, or my favorite, bad romances. It is not unusual for me to read several books is the span of a few weeks.

Over the years, Barnes and Noble has become a store that I can’t resist going into. I feel like a kid in a candy store. I don’t even want to know the amount of money I have spent in that store.

Books have not only allowed me to lose myself, but they have given me a broader vocabulary, and so much information that I don’t know where to store it all. Someday, I want to be able to write my own novel. I don’t know what I want it to be about yet, but I do know that I want to give someone the option to transport to another world, just like I got with my favorite authors. I want someone else’s’ day to be just a little bit better when they read whatever story I decide to write.

I am forever grateful to those authors who created a gateway for me to enter when I’m feeling sad, or when I am upset over something stupid. I hope people continue to create, so others can feel as I did while reading a good book.