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This book was the first book i remember reading, my mom would read this as a bedtime story and i will always remember the repetitive style of this book. 

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When i first learned my ABC's I had just been adopted. I previously spoke Amharic witch I shortly forgot all of.

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When I first learned to read a map, I asked where I was from and learned to navigate my way through unfamiliar letters and blobs my mom called "words" to find the city I was looking for.

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I must've read this book more than 1,000 times. I remember feeling like George because I too had been taken from Africa by a tall white person who happens to wear a lot of yellow. Although my adoption was legal, I still felt like an outsider within my own family. That's why I liked this series so much.

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Me in kindergarten tracing letters with my favorite teacher

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When I was a bit older my mom would read to me the Madeline books. My mom Is french and in an attempt to teach me french she read me a lot of books in french. This one I remember because Madeline gets appendicitis, and from that day forward whenever i'd get a stomach ache i'd beg to have appendicitis.

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Around second grade my teachers started to notice that I was terrible at spelling. So I got a spelling tutor. She was this old woman who was also my neighbor. I'd go over to her house after school for all of second and third grade

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This was the first audiobook I ever owned. I think I was in third grade when my mom introduced me to audiobooks. I was convinced that i wouldn’t understand what was going on without the pictures. But somehow I did, and this began my lifelong love of audiobooks.

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At some point around 3rd grade I discovered that if I read, No one would bother me for anything. So I made it my mission to be left alone as much as possible. I started reading wherever I went.

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A big part of my life in Forth grade was pretending to read during Independent Reading time (IR time). I would sit there, book open, just looking at the pictures. I had no objection to reading, However, I did object to reading logs. I had picked the Judy Blume books because the authors' name and the title's name were the same, So my lie was actually pretty solid. I learned to Initial my moms' name perfectly on the. boxes next to each day. By the end of fourth grade, I was a Genius at lying and the best part was that I never got caught. until now. where I'm admitting to this whole thing.

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This was the first real chapter book I read. It didn't have any pictures and despite only being about 150 pages long it had about thirty chapters. This book was one of my first introductions to the Holocaust. This book really showed me how peoples slight differences became amplified when everyone was so similar. I think this was my first "big girl" book that I ever read cover to cover and all by myself.

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In sixth grade we read Percy Jackson and the lightning thief, I remember questioning my English Teachers sanity. I wondered why we were reading a fantasy book-- especially one that up until then I'd reserved only for those weird kids who would bark at the teachers. But I actually ended up liking it. The way that It meshed Greek Mythology and The modern life of a teenage boy amazed me. It was truly one of those books that made me feel special.

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In 8th grade we read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream. I got to read the lines of Titania, and that was one of the highlights of my middle school career. Because like most sane-minded people I considered Titania to be superior to King Oberon in every way, Maybe even better that Puck himself.

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the second semester of tenth grade I read this book. I was used to eating lunch alone and I wanted to do something more productive than sitting on my phone, but something more fun than doing my homework. So when I had about 30 copies of this book in my teachers' classroom I jumped at the opportunity to read this. the thing was once I was past the 30-page benchmark, I became obsessed. This kicked off my reading "phase" where I'd finish most books in less than three days.

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I read this book during my reading phase. And this one is very important. It started to help me value stories that are told from a perspective other than mine. While The Underground Railroad is told from the perspective of a black woman, Looking for Alaska  is told from the perspective of Pudge, a rich while Floridian Male. This book is about Alaska who i found myself relating, and somewhat started to become. After reading this, I read the books referenced by this book. such as: The General and his Labyrinth and Cats Cradle.

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I read this after Looking for Alaska. This book was surprisingly easy to find and i think it's important because after reading this book in less than a day-- on my way to New York-- I became obsessed with the entire series. This is the first book collection I've been adamant on collecting and reading all of. So far I've read: Deadeye Dick, Slaughterhouse-5, Tiers of the Titan, and God bless you Mr. Rosewater. I still have a far way to go, but i'm excited to read as much Vonnegut as I can.

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This book was very hard to find. I had to go to the Coop, The Harvard Bookstore and Porter Square Books to find this. None of them had it. I went to New York a few days after looking for it and found it at a used bookstore by NYU. It was exactly $7. I started reading it on a bench in Central Park, I'm about forty pages in a just basking in the sun-soaked park when a man who seems to be in his forties sits next to me. He reads for some while then hands me a new book: Writing in Restaurants by David Mamet.

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He goes on to tell me his whole life story and how he'd spent time traveling up and down the east coast on his motorcycle. How he'd just gotten back from San Fransisco. Basically, because of this book and The General and his Labyrinth, I talked with a complete stranger for about two hours. During. that trip I finished the book at one of my moms' friend's houses. This book taught me to believe in opportunity and this book is really special to me because It was given to me by a complete stranger. Readers support readers. Hence the foundation of libraries or even schools. Places for people to enjoy reading were established because people who read support other people who read and eventually go on to write.

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I never take book recommendations from my friends. But for some reason I did. Late August, exactly two days before I started school my friend recommend me this book. They were going to boarding school so this was my last chance to see them before they left so I wanted to read this book and talk about it with them. As I read Chance's story unfold I also came to understand that things can go just as quickly as they come. This book opened me up to theology and books about understanding ones own life.

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The Catcher and The Rye has been a monumental book for me because its one of the only books I've re-read. For fun. Normally I'll only re-read a passage because I wasn't paying attention the first time. But, with this book even if i was paying close attention Id still miss stuff. even If i read at the pace a snail moved I still wouldn't be able to absorb all the information. This is why it's one of my favorite books. It's forced me to slow down and enjoy the book. And had also helped me stop viewing re-reading as a sign of bad reading, but merely as a sign of general enjoyment.

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"He was gone. He had disappeared overnight. Saeed trusted him so they stayed where they were for a week, stayed in the same spot in the same camp, but never saw him again [...] Saeed prayed not only for the man's return but for his safety, until he felt foolish to pray for this man any longer" (Hamid 114)

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"He was gone. He had disappeared overnight. Saeed trusted him so they stayed where they were for a week, stayed in the same spot in the same camp, but never saw him again [...] Saeed prayed not only for the man's return but for his safety, until he felt foolish to pray for this man any longer" (Hamid 114)

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Hamid had multiple reasons for adding this passage into the book. Saeed being deceived by someone he thought to be a friend not only shows the desperation among those who enter these unknown doors, but Saeed feeling foolish praying for a man who'd betrayed him shows his own growth. On a larger scale, this shows how migration can change one's attitude towards the people around them. Someone who was once wide-eyed and hopeful can become burdened by what their eyes forced them to see. Saeed becoming a bit less empathetic helps the reader understand the psychodynamic complexity that is migration.