My Favorite Thing to Read

There are a lot of things I like to read.  I like to think I read a lot, but the sad truth is that I don't.  I'm sure I've read more than the average person, but it doesn't change the fact that I could read a lot more than I do.  What I don't understand is how other people look at reading with such contempt.  They cannot grasp the fact that, even if schools force you to read material you don't like, there's still tons of interesting and entertaining material that's begging to be read.

Out of all the things I like to read, I'm going to say that I love novels the most.  They're just entertaining in so many ways.  If you want something more specific, then I'd say I like... dramatic novels the most.  Comedies are sometimes funny, but I've never really laughed out loud (read: LOL) from a novel before, and I doubt I ever will.  In fact, sometimes the humor of a novel just goes right over my head.  I can read an entire novel before I find out it was supposed to be funny.  It's hard for me to read a joke and understand it's a joke, I need the delivery to be clearly a joke.  Maybe I'm just stupid.  That's probably it...

Moreover, novels just expand my thoughts.  I know my favorite book I've ever read that still gets me: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  This novel wasn't touching, it wasn't gentle; it attacked me with full force.  It follows a 9-year-old girl's journey through Nazi Germany during World War II.  What's more: The novel is narrated by Death.  Instead of viewing him as a malevolent creature, Zusack envisions him as tired and downtrodden.  The novel creates a force of sadness and deprivation that benefits from the child's discover of a new world, literature, while the entire world around her changes drastically.  The plot only thickens when her family hides a Jew, who seems to meld the two worlds into one, defacing Hitler's Mein Kampf with the story of himself.

The mere fact that a novel is able to parasitically enter into my body and burrow directly into my heart is what exemplifies all that literature is.  To read is something that is so needed, so wanted by a human soul, that depraving said soul of this unalienable ability would be torture.  Maybe I'm being dramatic, but I guess that's just how I feel.

Seriously, read this book.

The Book Thief