Hey, you all.
I've been MIA for a long period of time and I can't thank Zemira enough to be so kind and patient with me.
I know I know, I sometimes talk about things you probably wouldn't want to waste your time with (OR MAYBE YOU COULD, because then you're cool), but I promise to makes this as interactive as possible. Today, I want you as a fellow book reader, to come forward and tell me what a particular book or books in general mean to you? You could pick a single book or you could start talking about the entire bookdom for all I know. My purpose here is to not just create an interactive atmosphere but to also use this moment as an opportunity for me, to be better.
I won't go into the details of it. All I can say to you is that I am at a point in my life where, like many, I'm trying to find myself and make sense of what's going on. So here's how I've interpreted my situation:
My existence is based on an amusement park. An amusement park has it's opening and closing time and consists of various fun rides, places to eat and just relax or, I don't know, whatever it is you do at an amusement park.
In an amusement park, you're your own master. It is upto you to climb into or onto a ride and experience that rush. But sometimes, while you think that you know what you're doing, you're sometimes caught off guard. For some of us, being caught off guard signifies spontaneity and exhilaration and feeling alive and in most cases, that person and that experience is me. But sometimes, things that catch you off guard literally throw you off balance and you're still riding on that damn cart but you just don't what you're doing here. You're lost.
Today that is me.
I'd like to believe that it isn't something serious. I'd like to believe that life is throwing a huge snowball at me and that it expects me to fight back, and I'm trying. I'm trying so hard.
Life got into the way. I had no time for reading books anymore. It's quite sad actually. My best friend called me the other day and asked me if I could recommend some books to her and all I said was that I was clueless. I couldn't finish the book that I had started and honestly, I didn't even feel like picking up a book. Call it a reading slump, maybe.
But then yesterday something magical happened.
For the first time in so many months, I thought, without any struggle, to finally pick up a book and read.
Mind you, it hasn't been that simple. I'm still struggling but I'm so much happier when I'm reading a book.
This is what books mean to me. Books are not just my source of entertainment and fantasyland. It's not just a portal to an entirely different world. These books are a part of me. I felt complete after reading a book. Maybe I feel this way because in the kind of 'world' I live, I'm confused as fuck about what I want to do in life and while people may say that things will eventually better, the stress of the future is never too far away. Perhaps I fell way more into the gloomy pit of feeling lost because I lost confidence in one thing that I knew to be true, with all my heart and that if I wasn't good at anything at else, I was good at something and that was reading a book. So when I stopped reading, I also stopped activating a very interesting and important side of me.
I wondered that if a single book (it was East of Eden by John Steinbeck btw.) had the power to pick me up from where I fell down, what roles do these books play in the lives of my friends?
I can't promise you that my posture right now wouldn't crumble, but I can tell you this, that there will always be this one thing to pick me up right back from where I feel and that my friends, is a book.
Maybe you won't read it or maybe you will, but if you do, it is my sincerest request to share something. Keeping my ulterior motives aside, maybe this in a way could help you too? Or you you could always be funny and make me laugh because I'm always open to that. YA Fanatic is always open to that and so is Zemira.
