How I Became A Book Lover!

Hello everyone, (I say everyone I don't really know how many of you lovely people are regular readers or one off visitors, regardless thank you for stopping by.)

For today's post I thought I would share how I became the book loving nerd that I am today, because everyone has to start somewhere don't they!

Okay first of you need to know that I'm a dreamer, I was that little girl who could sit by herself for hours and entertain herself with her Barbie’s and her imagination alone (sometimes I didn't even need the Barbie’s I would just talk to myself). I would create names and stories for my toys. I loved the escapism. However as a child I never really read per-say but I loved having books read to me. Lazy I know!

Of course pretty much every child has seen or read the hungry caterpillar at some point in their life and who doesn't love it, I was extremely jealous of my cousin who got a copy so big that it came with a little toy caterpillar that you could put through the holes in the book as though it was actually eating it! (I'm easily entertained)

Everyone has a different story of how they became a book lover. Mine started in 2004 at the age of 10. I had just been to see the film A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I absolutely loved it. Not long after that my dad came home from work one day with the first four books in the series for me to read. Now up until this point I'd never really been a big reader, I read occasionally but nothing on the scale that I do now (where I live on amazon or in Waterstones and W H Smiths searching for new books to read). The first book titled The Bad Beginning is rather short, my copy coming in at just 162 pages. Needless to say as a still fairly young child my attention span wasn't the best and I think the fact that this book was so short helped me in the way that it didn't take me too long to read it and once I had read it I wanted to read the second one and so on.

I don't know how many people have read all the books in the series but I followed them through right until the end I was the avid reader counting down the days until I could get my hands on the next Series of Unfortunate Events book. Obviously I got into the series quite late in their publication being that the first book was released in 1999, so I think in the end I only hand to wait for two or three to be released, but my memories recall waiting for a few of the others perhaps it was my parents making me wait to read the next ones I'm not sure, either way I was completely hooked.

I was drawn into the series from the very start I mean who isn't intrigued by a book were the author continuously tells you not to read it, or I warned you this isn't a positive tale, or if you like happy endings then this book is not for you. Now I don't know about you but that got me intrigued, I mean how bad could the story be?

Here is an opening quote from book 1: The Bad Beginning:

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes."

How can you read that and not be intrigued to read further. I wanted to know what happened, why were they so unfortunate, how unlucky were they? Maybe I'm just nosey. The point is that this series worked for me, it was the series that started it all.

If you're a parent who is trying to encourage their child into reading might I suggest trying them with this book, you never know it just might work, I would recommend it to anyone old or young, I just know that it was a good starting point for me. I loved these books so much that they now sit pride of place on my book shelves.

The strangest thing is that many people credit the Harry Potter books for getting them into reading and may I express my opinion (the rather most unpopular opinion when it comes to Harry Potter) that these books didn't work for me, I read the first, three I enjoyed them well enough but then it got to the Goblet of Fire and I just couldn’t get into it, I prefer my books to get on with the story, you know for things to start happening fairly early my limit, is pretty much 100 pages, if nothing exciting has happened by then, then I feel the author is just unnecessarily padding the book out. So I read the first, 3 and the last Harry Potter books, I've never gone back and read the rest mainly because even parts of the last book bored me I felt the whole bit in the woods was to long winded (don't hate me please, it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it you are free to disagree with me should you choose to.)

My addiction to books has just gotten worse and worse over the years for Christmas about three years ago I think it was I got around 25 books, and pretty much nothing else. There isn't enough room on my bookshelves for the ones I have and I still keep buying more. There was one time when my parents actually told me off for spending too much time reading, that’s right. I was told off for reading too much how often does that happen? I have an aversion to the kindle, like it’s the plague or something I like having the book in my hand, displaying the beautiful covers, it takes the magic away a little bit for me having a book on some rectangular, plastic electronic device, I find I can't lose myself in the books for hours the way that I want to when I need a distraction.

So it is with thanks to my dad, and to Lemony Snicket, that I fell in love with books. Thank You!

Anyway this has been my tale of how I got into reading albeit slightly long winded I hope it wasn't too boring for you all to read, and I shall see you again soon.

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x

NOTE: No copyright infringement intended all quotes belong to Lemony Snicket.