Reading Timeline

When I was little I stayed with my grandparents while my parents were at work. My grandmother would take me to the library for “story time” and that was when I was first introduced to reading. At story time they would read us your basic children stories but my favorite was always the Madeline series. I remember these stories the best because they would always start with the same line, “In an old house in Paris covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…” I also remember reading Goodnight Moon over and over again. I think I liked this book the best because I memorized the whole thing and I would say the lines like I was reading, but I really just had the whole book memorized.

When I started elementary school we would go the library once a week and it was mandatory for us to check out a book. Everyone would check out Scooby Doo or the Goosebumps series but I would tend to check out books about horses. In second and third grade I started to get interested in the Judy Moody and the Nancy Drew series. I found Judy Moody to be hilarious and the suspense of Nancy Drew always kept me on edge. During this time was also when I discovered the Harry Potter series. We would get Scholastic Book order forms every month and my mom would let me order one book a month. One month I chose to order Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I remember, I was so excited to get this book that I started reading it on my way home from school. Ever since that day I have been a total Harry Potter nerd. I would say that this was the first time that I started to really use my imagination in my writings and not just write the story and paper with generic answers. I remember in middle school having to write a whole book that we would have to also illustrate. There were three books total that we had to make but the one that I remember the most was the called Jake. It was about a magical pig, I know that this sounds very strange for someone to be writing about but for a sixth grader it was cool. I remember my teacher being so impressed with my story because of how imaginative it was compared to everyone else’s generic stories. I really pride myself on my creativity because I feel like I think of things that other people wouldn’t even dream of thinking about. I feel like that helps me not only in my writing, but also in my reading because I am able to bring the stories closer to home.


  

In middle school and high school we had mandatory reading books that we would have to take tests on. I really didn’t like reading these books because the tests were always so tricky; it didn’t matter if you read the book or not everyone would always seem to fail. This was when I started to turn away from reading because I would get so discouraged by the tests. However there were some books that I did enjoy reading, they were by the author Ernest Hemingway. The first book by Hemingway that I read was A Farewell to Arms. Shortly after we had to read The Sun Also Rises. During this time we had to write a research paper on an American author I knew right away that I wanted Hemingway. Learning about Hemingway’s life and his writing style really got me more interested in reading and writing. I decided to give the mandatory reading books and I started to read more regularly.  Another writer that had an impact on me was the poet, Emily Dickinson. I find her poems so profound, you can really feel her pain and the troubles she was having through her writing.  My favorite poem by Dickinson is After a Hundred Years. You can really understand how she is feeling about life and how she feels about people in this poem. She is talking about a grave that when it is a new thing people will come and visit the deceased but once it has been there for some time less and less people will visit the grave and eventually no one will come and it will be overcome with weeds. I think this is how she felt about her own life because as she grew up she just sat in her room writing and no one came to visit her. I think that what made her writing so great were her pain and her troubles. To be an author you have to have life experiences and you have to have that built up pain and anguish inside of you; Hemingway and Dickinson both felt the same way, and even though it is sad it is what made their writing so great.  Earnest Hemmingway and Emily Dickinson are defiantly my two favorite writers of all time, and if I had to read anything today it would be by them.