I Love to Read

We have posters at our library in West Bloomfield featuring local folks who 'like to read'.  While never having been on a poster, I truly do spend a lot of time reading.

While having lunch in a local restaurant one day, the waitress asked what I was reading while waiting for my order.  Unfortunately, while the book was on the 'bestseller list', it turned out to be not worth my time.  She recommended 'The Hunger Games' trilogy.  When she described the basis for the story, I kinda thought it would not interest me.  Boy, was I wrong.

I whipped through all three books in no time at all.  I told everyone I knew about them.  One of the people I mentioned them to is a young pastry chef I work with.  She said she did not enjoy reading because she reads too slowly, but she was interested because her mother and younger sister were both reading them.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen yesterday and the first thing I heard was 'Denise, you were so right'.  She said that her mother and sister dragged her to the movies to see 'The Hunger Games' and she went right home and started reading the book.  Yesterday she couldn't wait to leave work so she could go home and start reading 'Catching Fire', the second book in the trilogy.  (The last one is 'Mockingjay')

She literally could not stop asking questions and talking about the book.  I was so happy for her.

I think that in school, instead of seeing reading as pleasure, we see it as work.  We are told to read something and then our teacher tells us that we did not get the point of the story when we write up our book report.  I got so tired of being told that the author was saying something other than what I got out of the story.  Once I even wrote a poem and asked to have it interpreted by various friends.  Not one understood what I had been trying to say.  Did I say it wrong or did they bring their own vision into my words?

I am very happy that there are books out there that encourage young people to read.  'The Hunger Games' was targeted for the middle school reader.  Like the Harry Potter books, this new trilogy will appeal to just about any adult that I have met.  If you haven't read them, I highly recommend that you try them.  They will definitely make you think about the world in which we live.