Today’s blog post is going to be a discussion. The topic is
thanks to the #BroodyBFF’s Challenge #9- The Love of Reading!
I don’t think I have the knowledge about The Book™ that
made me a reader, but I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember. My
childhood classics- Lyle the Crocodile, Horrible Harry, Magic Tree House- grew
into a lifetime of reading- Animorphs, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Harry
Potter, The Inheritance Cycle.
My love of reading comes from a child-like sense of wonder
and the desire for exploration. Reading gives me thousands of lives and
experiences. I don’t have to make the same mistakes humanity has already made,
there is learning on top of the emotional connect and sense of community.
Additionally, reading will take me to places I will never get to see and
experience. Whether the setting is far away and expensive to travel to or is a fictional
location, reading is like going on vacation.
People I will never meet, plots that will never happen,
things too terrible and too good to be true, that all occurs in the books that
I read- especially since my favorite genres are Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Is it an escape
from reality? I’m not quite sure. I feel like I am growing as a person
through my reading, and that it is not quite the same as reality escaping but more of a
way to further understand the reality around me. Reading makes it easier for me
to imagine life from other perspectives, which I think is an important skill.
Could my YA perspectives be written a bit more diversely? Heck yeah, and I know
that we are getting there. The YA community seems to be the most outspoken
about stereotypes and wanting real diversity from the publishing business and I
know I am going to watch a new generation of writers bloom.
I love reading now, and I love the direction I’m seeing the
industry head in. I’m currently reading Warcross by Marie Lu and one of her
anecdotes about her writing was how long it took her to write an Asian-American
character. It was a scary thing, the possibility of being rejected as a writer simply
because publishing houses will only have a handful of token POC books each
season. Her struggle about not openly describing characters the way she pictured
them struck me, and it is so powerful that her MC in Warcross is Chinese-American. I hope all of the tremendous success this book is having will only propel the
confidence of not only herself, but other authors to continue being true to
themselves!
A toast to reading- may it never stagnate, and may the well
of good literature never run dry.
You can check out my fellow #BroodyBFF responses on Twitter!
Brooding YA Hero: Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me
The BroodyBFF's street team will run from May to November, so check back here at Love at First Write regularly for new challenges and updates, and follow me and @broodingyahero on Twitter to see the hashtags, visual challenges, and #BroodyChats!
