Hello everyone! Welcome back to yet another one of my Confessions of A Reader posts. For today’s topic of discussion, I’ve decided to confess to you all about my love of rereading books.
Ever since I discovered my love of reading, I also came to realize how much I love rereading books I enjoy. I think part of the reason why I love it is because I feel like you discover something different every time you read a book. Even when you’re reading a book you’ve read once before, you notice something different than the previous times.
The reason I enjoy rereading books is because it allows me to relive some of the best moments in a book I love. It reminds me of the reason I enjoy a particular book and helps me notice story elements I didn’t see before. I also find with rereading books making even more memories so that whenever I do reread a book again, I have more memories associated with the book.
I also love rereading books because it’s nice to see myself enjoying a book all over again. Whenever you read a particular book and see that you really enjoy it, sometimes when you read it a second time your feelings aren’t the same. As you get older or change as a person, your perception of a particular book might change along with you. I’ve noticed this happen to me, but discover myself still enjoying the books I’m rereading. I just see certain moments in the book through different eyes than my first go around.
There isn’t anything a book in particular needs to do for me to consider rereading it. If there’s a book in particular I enjoy and find myself wanting to read it again, I’ll do it no questions asked. As long as I enjoyed reading it the first time chances are I’ll read it again.
But I sometimes also give a book I never finished reading a second chance. The reason I attempt to read a book I never finished a second time is because I want to like the book and want to see how the story turns out. I also wonder if my thoughts on a book will change at all if I read it at a different point in my life. Or if I’ll still not finish the book once again.
I really love rereading books. It allows me the opportunity to notice something different in a book I love while also letting me relive the moments in a book I enjoyed. I also find that with time, rereading a book has benefits, such as giving you a different perception of the book you love.
But what about you? Do you enjoy rereading books at all? If so, what do you look for when deciding on a book to reread? Or are you like me and just reread books whenever you feel like it?
Please let me know your thoughts and feelings in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts on this blog post.
Hello everyone! I’m sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve written a blog post. I didn’t mean to take so long to write on here again, just really couldn’t think of anything to write and am dealing with some personal things right now. Either way, I’m back with another confessions post that I hope you all will enjoy.
For this confessions post, I’d like to say I don’t read books because they are popular. What I mean is that I don’t particularly like to read the books everyone else is talking about. Not unless the story, plot or something else in it makes me fascinated enough to want to check it out right away and see what the fuss is all about.
I’ve actually come to discover for the most part that I don’t particularly enjoy reading the books considered popular in the world today. What’s made me come to this realization is my review of The Girl On the Train, my experience with reading The Handmaid’s Tale so far and looking back at my experiences with reading other popular books. For those who haven’t read my book review of The Girl on the Train, I can tell you I wasn’t particularly fond of that book. I found none of the characters likeable and the plot was terribly formulated even though it definitely kept me reading until the end. It was a disappointing read for me and left me really looking for another book to make up for it. My experience with The Handmaid’s Tale so far hasn’t really been any better. I don’t know what it is in particular about this book I’m not enjoying, I just know I’m not enjoying it because I’ve already stopped reading it and am in no hurry to continue where I left off. Now when I started reading this book, I was excited to see where the story would take me. I didn’t have any thoughts or opinions before that made me believe I wouldn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t until I started reading The Handmaid’s Tale that I realized I wasn’t enjoying it quite as much as I was hoping for. I’ve had this same experience with other popular books in the past where I tried to read them and I just wasn’t into what I was reading. One particular book that comes to mind is The Lord of the Rings. I’ve tried getting into these books on several occasions only to stop reading at around the same part of the story. Like my experience with The Handmaid’s Tale, I’ve tried getting into these books only to find myself stopping and not wanting to continue where I left off.
The book I’m currently trying to finish reading. It’s not my least favorite read, but I’m having a hard time really getting into it. Image can be found here.
There are of course exceptions to my preferences, like my love for the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games, and Game of Thrones. I’ve enjoyed reading all of these books, but for other reasons that had nothing to do at all with their popularity. Each of these books made me feel like I could be in the world the author was describing and made me feel like I was a part of the character’s journey. I also discovered my love for these books right before their popularity, at a time when other readers had their sights on enjoying other books.
I’d also like to bring up classics in this discussion. The books which are by authors that everyone seems to have read at some point in their lives. These books get read due to required reading for school, or because you as a reader want to check them out yourself due to your own curiosity. The reason I want to bring these books into this discussion on reading books for popularity is because these books are just as popular among readers today. What I’ve come to discover when it comes to me reading classic books is that I either like what I’m reading or hate it completely. It’s a lot like when I read popular books that I don’t enjoy them because I have a hard time reading them. But sometimes I hate them because I don’t like the characters. Like whenever I had to read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights for one of my college English classes. I was interested in reading it, but found that I didn’t enjoy it because I really hated all of the characters. So I found myself unable to get into it.
However, I’ve also found a lot of classic books that I do enjoy reading and would definitely read again. Some of my favorite classic books are Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I’ve also enjoyed reading some of Shakespeare’s works with Macbeth being my favorite of his works that I’ve read so far. All of these books I enjoyed at a different time in my life and for different reasons too. Dracula is a classic I enjoy because I love the unique way the story is told and I enjoyed reading a story that I can thank for bringing vampires into the world the way we see them in stories today. I love both Pride & Prejudice and The Great Gatsby because I find both books to be just really great stories. With both of these classics, I had no trouble picking them back up and wanting to continue to explore the world that could be found within each of their pages.
But at the same time, there are still a lot of classics I have yet to read. The classic books that come to mind for me are books I personally hope to one day read because they all sound like something I might possibly enjoy. These books include To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
However, despite the amount of classic books I hope to one day read, I don’t want to read any of these books or any other books because of their popularity. I like to read books because it’s something I enjoy.
What about you, my readers? How do you feel about popular books and classics? Are there any in particular you are interested in reading? Please leave your thoughts and feelings in the comments below.
One of many reasons I enjoy reading so much is because I see it as quite the adventure. Every time I pick up a book I’ve never read before, I don’t know what I’ll find within the story’s pages. To me, every book I read is an adventure because you never know where the story will take you.
To me, reading is a journey for each individual reader. As readers, we each have our own preferences. Usually, there’s a specific reason for that. For example, the first book you truly read was a specific style that made you realize you actually love reading more than you initially thought you did. Or it could be you find yourself connecting more with the overall message or themes in a particular genre of writing so you read that genre more than others. Those preferences result in the reader exploring other narratives that follow that particular genre, causing them to go on their individual reading journeys.
I also see reading as an adventure because it sets your imagination on fire. Reading gives you the unique ability to dream, to see the stories you read on the page come to life before your very eyes. It allows you the possibility to imagine a variety of different outcomes for the characters and come up with ideas of where you think the story will go. Reading allows you to dream eyes open, to see where a story will take you.
Every time I pick up a book, I never know where the story will take me. This is the magic of reading because it allows you to go on your own adventure, to meet characters and see within your mind’s eye places that you never thought existed. This is one of many reasons I enjoy reading so much and can’t wait to see where my reading journey takes me next.
Hello everyone, fellow readers and bloggers alike! Since I started doing my Confessions of A Writer posts, I’ve found I’ve enjoyed talking about writing and I know I’ll enjoy talking about my reading tastes just as much. So it is with great excitement that I bring to you what will be my first of what I hope will be many Confessions of A Reader.
With this first post, I’d like to talk about a struggle I know all readers face: choosing what book to read. Finding the next book to read is always one of the things I struggle with the most when it comes to my own reading. It’s not because there aren’t too many books to choose from, but because there are so many wonderful reading options I never know where to begin.
I mostly read young adult literature, fantasy and mystery. However, I’m not always in the mood to read these books and will definitely go outside of these genres to find something that strikes my fancy.
The way I choose what book to read next is completely random. It entirely depends on what I have going on in my life and if I have any books on my shelf at home that I haven’t read that I’d like to give a try. But even that isn’t a complete guarantee either because I never know when I’ll stumble upon a book I really want to read. For example, The Creeping is a book that was once on my Goodreads to be read list that I decided to buy on my tablet with some Barnes & Noble gift card money I was given for Christmas. Then a couple weeks ago, my boyfriend and I went to Greenville for a day. Along the way, we stopped at 2nd & Charles, which is a local second hand bookstore here in South Carolina. I bought a couple books there with a gift card my boyfriend gave to me as a birthday present, and am planning on reading those books next.
These are the books I bought at 2nd & Charles in Greenville.
But after I’m done reading these books, I don’t know what I’ll read next. I’ll have to see what I feel like reading on my shelf or maybe I’ll go to my local library and read some books from there.
Either way, readers have a difficult time choosing what book to read next. Because there are just too many books in the world to choose from and not enough time to read them all.
What about you? Do you struggle with choosing what book to read next? And what is your strategy to choose what book you want to read next?
Rainy Day's Books, Video Games and Other Writings 