Top 5 Reasons I Love Reading

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm. If you haven’t visited her site yet, you definitely need to check it out. Her Top 5 lists are always fun to read and her book reviews are great.

This weeks Top 5 topic is “Top 5 reasons I love reading.” This is a little harder for me to answer because I’ve never really broken up why I love reading; I just do.

 

1) I guess if I’m being honest with myself, the number one reason I love reading is Harry Potter. As a child and a teen I didn’t like reading at all. Reading was something you were required to do for school and usually you had to read the book that your teacher chose and that was approved by the school district. While I can appreciate those books now, I never got into them as a child and I NEVER chose to read for fun.

In college I had a class called “Children’s Literature”. We were required to read 5 books in 10 genres so that we had a list of books we wanted for our own classrooms. While perusing titles, I came across an article about a fairly new book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (does this date me?). The article was about how a large group of parents, back East, were boycotting it and trying to get it removed from schools because it was devil worshiping. That totally made me curious and I picked up a copy later that same day.

Twenty-something years later and I have read the series more times than I can count and every Halloween I have an awesome Harry Potter display in my front yard.

The best part, though, is that I learned that there were amazing books out there. Books that I loved and that I wanted to spend my free time reading.

 

2) The 2nd reason I Love reading is that I love being able to travel to different worlds through the books I read. I am definitely a fantasy fan so visiting worlds full of fae or wandering down dark streets full of vampires is my idea of the perfect recipe for a relaxing evening at home.

 

3) I can read almost anywhere. Whether it’s a cozy night at home or a doctors waiting room, I can happily enjoy my books. I love to read in the mornings while riding my bike trainer and have been known to put in extra time because I want to see what happens next and once I’m off my bike I can no longer justify reading when I have a million other things to get done. And while it’s not recommended that you read while driving, an audio book is a great way to fill in the time while sitting in rush-hour traffic.

 

4) There are so many stories being told. Have you noticed that the movie industry has run out of ideas? It seems like every single movie is a book adaptation and even the good ones aren’t nearly as good as the book. You never hear of authors running out of ideas and creating “song adaptations”. There are just so many stories out there waiting to be read and no matter how much time I spend reading, I will never be able to read them all.

 

5) It’s a treasure hunt. You know when you find that perfect book and once it’s over, all you want is to find another book that will give you that same feeling of obsessiveness? I love that. It’s like going on a treasure hunt. You have to follow the clues (a.k.a. recommendations) of others, read countless blurbs & countless reviews, until you find that book that just might be your next obsession. Then you read it and maybe you were right and maybe you were wrong but when it’s over, you go right back on the hunt.

 

These are the reasons that I love reading so much. Let me know what your top 5 reasons are.