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From a really young age, my mother wanted me and my siblings to be big readers. I knew my alphabet and how to write some before I even went to school, and she always made sure to read to us at every chance. One of the picture books I really remember loving was called Stone Soup, a book about two hungry men coming into a town to ask for food.

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As a testament to how much my mother wanted me and my siblings to read, she would always sign us up for the Summer Reading Club our town library had every single year. Along with keeping track of just your page count, they also would have you complete these sort-of challenges that could win you free books. We all, of course, got as much as we could, and we'd go once a week and check out the max my mother's card would let us have - I think 25 books? There were 5 of us, so we always grabbed extra.

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When I was young and in school, we had to take AR Tests, which comprised of about 10 questions you would answer about a book you read, and each book was worth a certain number of points. You had a certain number of points you were supposed to reach by the end of the month, and While other students were set at 10 or 20, my teacher would always set me at at least 50 because of how much I read, and what I read. I finished the Harry Potter series when I was in the 4th grade.

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I was a voracious reader in elementary school - teachers had to write on my report card that I would read instead of listening to them lecture. I think I mostly read because I didn't really have many friends. In middle school - or Jr. High like my school calls it - I read in all of my extra time that I had in classes as well, but more because I started reading more classic books for classes, while also continuing to read all of the fantasy books I've been obsessed with my whole literary career. I put a picture of the first book in a series by T.A. Barrows that my Grandpa Eldon recommended to me - he was really into fantasy books as well and was actually reading the series when I was a baby.

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While I had social media in middle school, I'm going to go ahead and place it right before high school. While posts and articles are certainly not the same as reading an actual book, I think social media has been something that has really shaped our generation in the way that we read - we want info quick and easy, and I think it's a big reason why we don't like reading actual books as much anymore.

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You may or may not have heard of this before, but Homestuck is a webcomic that I read throughout high school. It's completely peculiar - like most high school freshman. However,  I thought I'd include it because of how long it is - 8126 pages, 14915 panels, 817929 words. That's about 282% the size of the Lord of the Rings, 176% the size of the King James Bible, 125% the size of the Harry Potter series, or 77% the size of A Song Of Ice And Fire (the five books so far).

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In high school, I still did all of my personal reading, but I had to read much more of what my teachers wanted than what I wanted. Of course, I read all of the high school classics - The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, stuff like that. However, two teachers really stand out - Mrs. Hicks, my AP Lang & Comp teacher, and Ms. Hasy, my AP Lit teacher (Who also happened to be my Journalism teacher). Both my junior and senior years were filled with strong books that I really remember. For my final project senior year, I had to do a double Pecha Kucha on Toni Morrison, and I read five of her books for that project.

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My senior year of high school, I was also a Writing Fellow for the whole school. When I wasn't needed doing that, I was actually under the two librarians in my school, Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. Anthony. They both added to my reading just as much as any of my high school teachers, but not without adding a bit of sass along with it.

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Coming into college, by reading really dropped off. I've read a couple novels here and there, and I read news articles more and more now, but I still haven't gotten back into the stride like I would want to be. Over quarantine, I bought a new Kindle, and I started reading more that way, and I've almost finished another real novel this semester. I have this bookmark that has a list of "Books to Read Before You Die", and I think I'm going to try to read them all before I graduate with my bachelor's. Right now, I'm reading a novel called A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.