In an era where the media consumed us and TV shows and social media is all we can do in our free time, there are still some sentimentalists - like myself - that rather to spend this time with a book in their hands.
Why? In my case, is a matter of excess of free time - I always loved reading but I used to do it when I was on vacations or at night because I couldn't sleep. The rest of my time was divided by work, friends, TV and lots of WhatsApps, FB post, Instagram photo, tweets, etc. And, don't get me wrong, I still spend a lot of time doing those stuffs, specially in social media; I found it amazing how a page can connect people all around the world!!!!
But one day my life changed and I found myself with a lot of time to spare, so I took the easy way and started by watching TV shows and movies - and you know what I figured out? That this wasn't enough!! I got excited with a lot of this stories, but at the end, I always wanted MORE - so I started to get bored by it. Plus, my eyes were begging me to stop staring at a screen most of the day! (You may think that know I am killing them with words, which is correct! hahahah)
That was when I grab my first book at 9 in the morning and started spending my days immerse in the pages of it. This was about 3 years ago - and I committed the big and amazing mistake of started with something like the Game of Thrones series!!! 🙈 I got so obsess that I finished the entire 5 books in two weeks, which is no easy task considering the amount of characters involved in the story.
By the time I finished, I was exhausted so I felt into something a little bit lighter - The Fifty Shades of Grey series - I know, completely lunatic change of taste, right? Hahaha. Well, it turns out that, aside form the fact that E.L. James cannot write a shit, I loved the way this book made me feel. At least the first one and couple of chapters of the second one. And I found myself addicted to this kind of feeling! Seeking it in every book I read from then on. I re-read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility - then I started looking for book adaptations so I went from The secret diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (Fun Fact: this one is amazing and their even making a movie out of it).
Then I moved myself to romantic novels with a bit of spice on it - Novels by Erin Nicholas, Katy Evans, Noelle Adams, Toni Aleo, Kelly Oram, Lauren Layne, etc. Of course, I also revisited some of my YA favorite books - The Twilight saga, The Hunger Games - and added new ones to my list of read-books - Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Vampire Academy and Bloodlines by Rachelle Mead, The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare, and Fire and Thorns series by Rae Carson. Finally, I came back to classics such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and, recently, Emma.
You can see that I read almost anything that cross my hands and the point of this, and of the story I just told you, is that reading a book is not about the author, or how well is written, or how many awards won, is about the way you feel when you finish it. Is how you can get so involved with the characters and the story that you become one of them, and you suffer or laugh with their adventures. Is about the way you want to know more about the universe where the book take place. And finally, is about traveling without leaving your own house, because a book can take you places that you never knew before. For me, this is the essence of READING. And no TV show or social media can do this, at least not with the same strength.
So GRAB A BOOK!!!!, any book - because reading, as dreaming, is NOT overrated!
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