A Book ' Came From Jellicoe Road ' By Melina Marchetta

Torbett’s class, the book I most remember reading and having a significant interest in was Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I believe that this novel caught my attention because the main character, Chris McCandless, was a transcendentalist and I had always been interested in the inner goodness of people, and nature like he was. Sherman Alexie once said, “life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community,” which reminds me of McCandless, in the sense that he was a free-spirited man who did not want to be like the “corrupt” society. Through this character and his journey throughout the book, I was able to really connect to reading in a more personal way, which allowed reading to begin impacting me in a much greater way than before. Another example of finding a more comfortable place in reading through a connection with characters was freshman year when I read the book Hold Still by Nina LaCour. LaCour’s novel was a story about suicide and depression, something my peers and I were experiencing at the time, which made it interesting to read and easier to stay engaged. Therefore, I felt like the author approached suicide and depression with respect and honesty, and that gave me a new insight into mental illness. That new insight had a critical impact on me during the time one of my own family members struggled with mental illness and tragically ended her life. Finding these connections when reading is very important for me and my reading and learning experience. It has helped immensely to find out what it is that makes it easier to not only stay engaged while reading, but to be able to go back and comprehend and discuss what the book was about. During my short high school years, I have found that it is the connection to the character or story that allows reading to impact me in the best way

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. ”(George R.R. Martin) This quote shows that when you read a book, you will relate it to your life and the book may have a solution that makes you live a longer and a better life. All authors will have a lesson or a value we can use or follow but the reader needs to decide if the values are valuable for them.

When reading multiple stories from different authors it gives the reader a variety of opportunities to connect with the author’s. It helps the reader better understand what they are reading. I personally connected with two different authors’. My personal upbringing had a tremendous impact on mine, Joe Wilkins, and Sherman Alexie life. It has molded me into the person I am today, but has not limited me in the possibilities for the future.

To be honest, I do not read much. It is not because of my lack of interest, but rather because of the shortness of time in the day. If I had time, the time spent searching for a good book would always deter my desire. However, this summer when I longing for something to do my mother recommended a book that has had a lasting impact. That book was Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People. This book showed me how a man working at a small diner for twenty-one years is able to eventually own a restaurant chain whose average sales per restaurants is $3.1 million. This book showed me that you should always stick to your values and it will pay off. We can look to Truett’s decision to close Chick-fil-a on Sundays continues to even this day and now Chick-fil-a

My passion for reading began the summer before junior high, the English class I would be taking had a required summer reading list. I had no desire to read “boring books” over the summer and summarize them. Fortunately, my parents made me read the first book and I was hooked. Consequently, I became obsessed (in a positive way) with this unbelievable adventure; “The Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen; transported me to the wilderness that summer and sparked my love for reading. From that moment on reading became my favorite pastime. Literature expanded my world beyond the Rio Grande Valley I visited the “Island of the Blue Dolphins”, and decided I needed dogs with “Where the Red Fern Grows”. I have several beloved books that I never get tired of reading,

I selected All The Night We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr because the plot stood out to me more when compared to the other selections and I thought that enabled me to gain a better interest. Although the plot would be something that usually intrigued me, I lost interest in the book within a few chapters. It may or may not have been the book but I feel the major reason is because I’m just not a reading person. But even though every page I continued to read made me want to pull out my hair, I continued all the way until the end because I knew that I had to read a book and I had already gotten so far into the novel that I didn’t want to start a new one because I wouldn't finish it in time. The hardest part about this for me is that I have a ridiculously

Considering about the options for books to go on my personal reading list, there are some that I’ve already read in some that I’ve been meaning to get around to reading for some time, some of a more academic style and some much more mainstream and easily absorbed style. My list of books to emulate and be inspired by contains a broad range of books as my life has contained a broad range of experiences. I have called myself a jack of all trades and follow that statement by describing it as the curse of the inquisitive.

In other words, reading literature goes beyond just the words of the author. As readers, we become more aware of what the narrator and of what the characters might be feeling. There are feelings that form our underlying base of who we are and a lot of the times we avoid them because they’re a constant reminder of what’s real versus what we want to think is real. From time to time literature may make the readers thing of something personal that gives us a sense of reality. Through John Updike’s Rabbit Run, Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings, James Joyce’s Araby, Patrick White’s The Vivesector, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Pierre Menard, Author of the ‘Quixote’ readers come to find a sense of reality within the characters portrayed through these works.

I viewed reading as a chore, was often unenthused, and would mostly annotate on the overarching themes without gathering any meaning from them. Books were merely a series of words printed on paper. This school year, however, I began to understand the allure reading has to offer. I have grown to appreciate reading and the insights a book can offer. When reading our numerous texts, I was able to live vicariously through the characters of the books and relate aspects of their lives to my own. Because all of the books from English I pertain to coming of age, I was able to not only learn about maturation as a process, but understand how it pertains to my own life. Through protagonists such as Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye or Esperanza from The House on Mango Street, I learned about my “misguided desire to preserve childhood innocence” and to empower feminism similar to Holden and Esperanza respectively (Heart of Gold, Raghuram). Gradually, I have finally developed the ability to relate to novels and its characters amidst writing my own story.Whether it be thematic elements or the details of a case I am working on, I have become more observant to even the most trivial details. Now when I read, I not only look at the themes, motifs, and symbols, but also repeated phrases or situations that parallel each others as well as the symbolic meaning behind some ambiguous phrases or scenes. Reading now, in contrast to last summer, is a

Throughout the year, I read in a way that I never did before. I have read books critically before, but never with one lens in mind. Recently, I read a book, between shades of gray by Ruta Sepetys, that followed a family that was in the upper class, but then viewed as criminals when the Russian secret police came and took them away from their home. The techniques used to make the family submit to the NKVD 's control forces the family into a lower class by dehumanizing them. While reading, I found out how similar I was to the main character and how I would never be able to survive what she went through. Several other books I read this year made me question how I am interpreting them based on my background, and from discussions I found out everyone 's different experiences lead them to discover different parts of the same novels we read.

It is nice to take a seat, relax, and break open a book of yours to read. With nothing else in mind, you embark on an adventure as the words guide you through your journey. This is the idea a reader normally accompany the feeling of reading a book. For many other people, like me before, they find it dreadfully painful as for each page turned is like trying to get closer to escape from captivity. I am unsure when my hatred associated with literature started, maybe caused by the hauntingly boring books I was forced to read by my former teachers. However, as time goes by, my attitude towards books gradually lifted when I was unchained from my shackles and allowed the freedom to choose my books. It wasn't that the books were bad, well, maybe, but

Throughout my childhood I enjoyed reading a variety of books as a method of escaping my troubles and delving into someone else’s world for a short time. But it is my belief that being an avid reader also helped me become

As previously stated by reading a lot of books, it has impacted my reading life. What I mean by this is for as long as I could remember reading was not for me because I would only read very few books and all would bore me to death. However, the selection of books that I read this year impacted my reading life by making me way more interested to read on and overall be way more greedy to read. For example, the book The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer made me love reading, and also made me realize certain genres that really interest me. Meaning, the genre of the

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go,” wrote by Dr. Seuss. Whether it’s a blog, tweet, text, newspaper, novel, or a poem, people have always read to expand the mind. They read to escape the moment, to gain information, and to help direct them. On pewinternet.org a survey by Kathryn Zickuhr and Lee Rainie, show that in 2013 only 76% of Americans 18 and older have read a book in the past year. As I consider my reading experiences, I realized reading has provided relieve and comradeship on my journey, guiding me and forming my current feelings on reading. Hence my reading memories have befallen parable in my life.

One of my favorite thing to do I do not have anything else to is reading. Ever since I was a child, books where a source of answers for thins I wanted to know and quench my thirst for knowledge. Yet not only are books a source of knowledge they are also a way to visit fantastical and wonderful worlds whether its Hogwarts, Middle Earth or a dystopian future. A questions that I’m constantly ask is what is my favorite book but I don’t think I have one; every book has it different appeal from the rebellious Holden in The Catcher in the Rye or Jean Valjean in Les Miserables every character its different and I think putting them on a list of whose better it’s not giving them the respect they deserve.