I love to read and I am a reader and no that doesn’t mean that I am a nerd but to be honest it is quite the opposite. My reading has nothing to do with being glamorous or “different” but it’s more about spending my quiet time alone with something that gives me a mental stimulation. Reading has the power to transport you to another world. It takes you to realm where you are given the chance to visualize the story that you read in your own manner. We are able to construct the characters and setting by personal interpretations of what we read. To me it’s just myself into an imaginary world and this escape feels entertaining. I love this escape and sometimes I wonder why people don’t feel the same way.

Growing up, my father used to take me and my sister to Alameda County Library in Fremont, CA which to me was just a huge building filled with books that tell me different stories. It was habit that was taught to us by him and something that I can never let go to this date. Of course book reading is part of our curriculum in school but to read as a passion is something you imbibe with interest. Later in life I realized how some people can think of it as a low-grade shame or a boring habit. In a world where most of my friends were out partying, going to concerts, play videos games and watch latest hit series, reading a book is considered not a good past time and quite lame. Sometimes my books felt like a secret because I didn’t really have a lot of people around me who read that I could share my experiences with. When I would tell people that reading is one of my hobbies, I would get surprised reactions like “You have time for that?”. Overtime I realized that it’s not just a past time but also a part of who I am.

I know people say that there has to be a lot of effort in reading and turning through the pages of a book because the mind has to be slowed down and you have to make sure that you concentrate well to understand the sentences and while this is true to a certain extent, I believe that forcing our mind to slow down to read something of our liking takes us to private journey of storytelling. It’s like it is a form of time travel because it puts me as a captain of a ship where I can imagine the details to my speed. I love movies and tv shows. I am a huge cinema lover but there is this essense in reading that gives you the platform to run your imagination wild. Movies are a storytelling of a director’s view but reading a beautiful paragraph about something can let your mind wander off into creative visual thinking. It is like your own form of entertainment because everyone’e visualization is different and that is the best part. A book is like a blueprint for your imagination.

I personally don’t prefer to read many self-help books because I feel that they just preach you and tell you what to do. Who in this current world would want to be told what to do? Haha. I tried reading the famous ones like “The power of your subconscious mind” and “Think like a monk” but I personally don’t like to be given lessons. I know these are best sellers and that some people do find that given certain lessons and advice helps them to get empowered, inspired and motivated but I feel that learning things in life should come from understanding the depth of something knowledgable through stories. I feel that morals, culture and modern events, societal events, personal issues can be embedded into literature that give us insight into life. I can’t say for others but at least that works for me. Although, there are a few selective decent reads in that genre.

Fiction is great to read and I adore it because there are so many impossible and imaginary stories to get entertained with. It allows us to see different creative perspectives in storytelling and enjoy them. Other than that, I also enjoy reading mythology, contemporary fiction and philosophical fiction.