Personal Narrative: The Importance Of Reading Books In My Life

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I have loved reading books as long as I can remember. As a toddler, I spent hours quietly looking through books by myself. My mom also read to me and my sister often, probably every day. I remember starting to read on my own around age five. Reading was one of my favorite things to do in my free time. My mother read to me and my sister regularly until we were in our early teens. Before bedtime we would curl up in bed with her as she read. It was something I looked forward to every night, a time of bonding with my mom and sister. She read with animation and changed voices for different characters, making the story come alive. I remember getting caught up in the stories my mother read; it was as if they transported us to another world. My sister …show more content…
After finishing one of the books, my sister and I would act out the story, taking on the roles of the characters. As a child, I was not at all picky with my reading choices. I was open to reading any book. As a teenager, I read a lot of historical fiction, which usually included a romance. Looking back on this time, I think that reading on my own was perhaps a form of escaping from the challenges of life. Although I was a good student, I struggled socially in high school. I found it hard to relate to others my age because I was shy and not interested in their conversations. It was easier for me to be alone. Reading at home offered a comforting diversion from some of my negative experiences and emotions. I was able to get caught up in another world where life was more ideal. I experienced life through books without the discomfort I felt in social situations. Sometimes I stayed up reading until the early hours of the …show more content…
I began doing well in elementary school, and have been a good student ever since. I did well at almost every subject except for art and creative writing. I did not enjoy writing stories, because I always had the hardest time coming up with ideas. I felt like my stories were flat and uninteresting. Although I was reading a lot of interesting stories at home, I had trouble producing such interesting ideas myself. In our family, my sister was considered the creative one; my parents would often praise my sister’s creativity. They were always impressed with my sister’s ideas, and when, on occasion, I was the one that came up with a creative idea, they immediately assumed it was my sister’s idea. My parents didn’t criticize me for not being creative, but, since they didn’t tell me I was creative like they did my sister, I gathered that I simply wasn’t creative. Instead, I was good at math and science and reading, so I began to find my identity in my performance at school. I might not have been creative, but I was

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