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My all-time favorite book first learning to read.

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My all-time favorite book first learning to read.

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My mom has been a kindergarten teacher for the past 30 years, and since I was her first child, she started working with me on reading and writing as soon as I learned to talk. By the time I entered kindergarten, I was already ahead and reading at a 2nd-grade level.

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The first book I picked up a second time in kindergarten

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The first book I picked up a second time in kindergarten

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A big reason I didn’t grow up loving reading as much as the rest of my family is because my dad’s side was obsessed with movies. Whenever I spent summers with my dad or Nana, we would watch endless movies and shows. By the time I was two years old, I refused to leave the TV screen because I loved watching movies so much. Books started to feel boring to me since they couldn’t give me the same surreal feeling of seeing something come to life on the screen.

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My mom’s first recommendation that I actually liked. It’s a series I didn’t finish, but I’d like to reread.

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My mom’s first recommendation that I actually liked. It’s a series I didn’t finish, but I’d like to reread.

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Another book series I enjoyed in 4th–6th grade but never finished.

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Another book series I enjoyed in 4th–6th grade but never finished.

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The first school-assigned book I really liked in high school

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The first school-assigned book I really liked in high school

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Although I did well in language arts and was usually ahead of my grade level, I never connected with English the way I did with math. I loved math because there was no confusion — you either knew how to solve the problem or you didn’t. Language arts, on the other hand, required more critical thinking and had multiple ways to approach a problem, which made it harder for me to enjoy.

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I read about 20 of these books, and this one was my favorite — mostly because of her name, obviously.

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I read about 20 of these books, and this one was my favorite — mostly because of her name, obviously.

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It’s kind of ironic that I don’t like reading, because my mom and grandma read every single day for at least an hour or more. My mom usually finishes at least one book a week, sometimes even more. Growing up, she would read with me in bed every night to make sure I got my reading log hours done for homework. But I never understood why I had to read books when I could just watch an amazing movie instead. My love for television quickly took over my interest in reading. Another reason might be that my mom was so adamant about reading that it started to feel like a chore, not something I actually enjoyed.

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Because I didn’t enjoy reading as much as I liked movies, I didn’t read many books in school outside of the ones that were assigned. I think this is another reason why I started to dislike reading — most of the assigned books felt boring or too confusing, and I often had to look up summaries online just to understand them. I did enjoy the analysis part of reading, like poetry and symbolism, but having to read long books that I usually couldn’t understand made me dislike reading even more, especially in middle school.