I've always had a love for reading and it's something that I acquired at a young age. I would read basically anything I could get my hands on, and the Scholastic Book Fair was my dream come true. I spent countless hours browsing through the racks of Borders (I only went to Barnes & Noble when I had no choice) and would have the time of my life choosing books. It was a hobby.
I'm more or less a book nerd and am not embarrassed to say the greater part of my teens was spent reading YA books -- and yes, just the romance books. I read the coming-of-age books that followed the predictable plot of half the book-to-movie adaptations that are out there today. I'm not here to trash on the fact that I read those book, though, because one should never be embarrassed of who they were at any point in their lives. I'll still read some of my favorites from the past and enjoy them. I realized I needed to upgrade my book choices when I was suddenly reading about 16-year-olds at the age of 18 -- I just couldn't relate to the characters anymore.
I still made a slow transition and stuck to romance books, but this time it was just coming-of-age all over again but with young adults. I realized if I never tried anything new I would be stuck in the same mentality and only liking these admittedly cheesy books. It was a slow journey but I eventually started picking up books I would have normally never read, and as you predicted this article was going, I ended up loving these new books. This isn't to say that I wouldn't try a book and end up reading the first few chapters and having no motivation to finish it, because I've always done that with books (I've been learning to power through because sometimes I'm wrong and the book is actually good). It was a trial-and-error process.
Through this journey, I've read some of my favorite books to date that I never would've discovered if I had stayed inside of my comfort zone. I guess I'm just trying to say that if we spend our whole lives wrapped in one bubble, we'll never get to explore what's out there in the rest of the world. I'm happy I was able to do this and discover a whole new side to myself.
