Day 5 - Books

Let's face it, we all want to escape reality every once in awhile. And who doesn't like feeling slightly superior to those around them or like a member of a special, elite club? That's what books are great for.

Recently I decided that reading is important to me. Important enough to actually do it. You see, lots of people say reading is important, but from the way they live their lives you'd never know it because the last thing they read was the Dewey Defeats Truman headline. OK, exaggeration alert, I know. Anyway, I decided that it was important. I wanted to read some of the books I've heard so much about. So many cultural references come from classic literature, and our world has known so many great (or interesting, at the least) authors.

So I began to read all the books I've heard so referenced  but have never read (well some I re-read, but I think they still count because it's been a long time since I've read them). Here's a list of what I got through this year:
A Tale of Two Cities
Catch-22
Farenheit 451
The Lovely Bones
Wuthering Heights
Same Kind of Different as Me
Eating Animals
The Hobbit
The Chronicles of Narnia (all 7)
Harry Potter (all 7)
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (two stories, one book)
Persuasion
The Hunger Games Trilogy
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Fountainhead
The Brothers Karamazov (audio book, but whatever)
And now I'm currently about half way through Oliver Twist

These books have made me think about issues I didn't care about before. Some have opened my eyes to needs or problems in my own life. Some have been purely enjoyable with no need for introspection. I've laughed aloud, I've cried and I've stayed awake until unreasonable hours to finish books. I haven't agreed with everything every author has asserted, but I've learned and grown from each book. When days have been tough or situations have been difficult, I've been able to escape to a different world with these books. Some days, they've been all I've had to look forward to. As my life changes I don't think I'll be able to keep up this pace of reading so many books every year. But I do plan to continue reading whenever I can.

For all they've helped me to see in the world and in myself, I am thankful for books.