Considering I am doing an English Literature degree it is evident that I am a fan of reading. But some of the main questions I have been asked since starting this degree are:
How do you read so much? Don't you get bored? I can barely finish a book, how do you read so read so many?
And I have to reply by saying, 'because I enjoy it' or some other generic answer because it would take too long to explain why or how I read so much and why I enjoy it. And in all honesty I doubt the person asking is actually asking, if you know what I mean.
But I do think it is an interesting question, why do I read so much? Why do I love it? Because reading is such a personal and individual experience. Everyone gets something different from it and no two people will read the same book and have an identical experience. And that is just one thing I love about reading!
How interesting is it that two people can read the exact same words in the exact same order and not read the same thing? Isn't it incredible that books can impact people so deeply and in so many different ways?
I love reading because you can go months unsatisfied by everything you read because it just doesn't quite hit that spot, and then you can read something and it's like a light goes on. I find that when I read, I get these little epiphanies. Random moments when what I'm reading just clicks and I'm like 'yes I get that' or 'I totally agree' and it's a brilliant feeling. Somehow by reading things you can connect with people you've never met and probably will never meet on this level that is unlike any other. It's this mutual agreement and satisfaction that you're not alone in what you think.
Books can make you laugh, cry, get angry, feel, understand. Texts can teach you things, make you ask questions. Reading is so provocative. It makes you think and interact.
What an incredible device reading is when it can do all that and more. It actually makes me sad to think that people don't read, or can't read! There is so much that is being missed.
If I had the power to advocate anything, it would be to get more people interested in reading things, whether that's novels or reports or articles. Just go for it, you never know you might just enjoy it!
Love, Beth xo
It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure – mysterious, unknown, useless as it is - is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgement when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading. -Virginia Woolf
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