My Experience in Reading

Today is approximately three years since I first started to be interested in reading. That was in fifth grade when my primary school held a program called Readathon.

I described my attitude toward reading in fourth-grade in an autobiography:

"I didn't like reading at all. I could only read books that only have four lines on a page. My parents made me do it, and I thought it was boring."

Here's the feeling inside me when I went to the library:

"Seeing so many books made me kind of scared and amazed; I was hoping to find a good book when I spotted Junie B. Jones Aloha-ha-ha on a shelf. I got interested in the title of this book, so I borrowed it and started to read it.

When I started reading, I found out that this book is so funny. There were almost twenty lines on a page. I was so surprised and proud that I could read forty-five pages in one day, five times than before."

Reading is not a thing to be forced. One must be interested in reading in order to learn. For example, when my mother forced me to read in fourth grade, I didn't like reading at all. However, when I was interested myself, I read so much that I couldn't believe it myself.

But how to be interested in reading? Don't start with 300 hundred-page novels or classics with words all over the pages, start with simple books that make you interested, and every time when you start a new series, increase the level a little bit. After weeks, months, and years, you will certainly be surprised. I was in fifth grade when I read Junie B., a first-grade level book. I was even impressed that I read a book with only fifteen lines, forty-five pages a day. Funny, isn't it? However, I read the Narnia series less than a year after it, and the Harry Potter series after 18 months.

Don't be too happy, of course. All of these achievements are based on the genuine love of the book. Don't care about your speed, but how much you can get, what you can learn, and what the author wants to tell us after reading a book. Don't be ashamed that you aren't the best reader in class. Reading is a long-term activity.

After reading one of Junie B.'s books, I also borrowed A to Z mysteries, Magic Tree House, and Ready Freddy. I finished one book from each series. I was amused because of the fun it brought to me, the wonderful adventures in these books.

As the saying goes: A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one. I believe it because, as a matter of fact, I think I have already lived more than one life. Every time I opened a book, I became the main character, and I laughed and cried with them. I live the lives of the character in the book. Sometimes, I was so into one book that it was seconds after I closed the book that I realized that I am in my house, not in one of those adventures.

Junie B is a funny series about Junie B.'s kindergarten and first-grade life. I laughed so much when reading it my stomach hurts. It describes life in a first grader's eyes vividly and its language amazed me. I still used some of them in my compositions.

It is a really easy series for me now. Last year I went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore in California when I found it. I read a book again in about 10 minutes. So don't be disappointed. You can improve much much faster than you ever dreamed.

That was the start of my reading career. The next series is Magic Tree House. I think many people know this series so I am not going into details, just to talk about the series in my eyes.

I am now going to tell you a thing more even more hilarious. I couldn't understand what the first book is about when I first started to read it. It was not until I read it the second time that I began to understand. Then I was amused by the adventures of Jack and Annie, who saved so many people from disasters and helped the great man to success. I began to understand the rest of the series after I finished the first one.

I read the whole Magic Tree House series, all 57 of them. It almost became a tradition for me to borrow a book from the school library before lunch, read through the lunch break, and read through the class break in the afternoon. I usually finish it before school ends and devote my time at home doing homework, studying math, and doing exercises.

After winter vacation, I didn't enjoy some other book series. They have the same style and it was so boring reading them. However, I later found some series as good as Junie B series.

I read many mystery novels. A mystery involves a puzzle to be sold (usually a crime). The author introduces the crime and gives clues to the readers. The clues give readers an impression of the crime.

Mystery usually has a complicated process of analysis. It makes a book fascinating to read when readers are trying to figure out the truth. But also in this process of solving the crime, the author gave the characters a detailed description, usually concerning their reactions and attitudes toward the crime. This often shows the personalities of
people and the meanings behind them.

Now I've read many books, from easy ones to thousand-page ones. I have also read many young adult books, and fantasies. Reading is a process to be enjoyed by everyone, to remove the stress in everyday life.

Books I Read This Summer

The Fault in Our Stars

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, herfinal chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

“Damn near genius . .. The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.”

—Time

The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey ‘there and back again’. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.

"One of the most freshly original and delightfully imaginative books for children that have appeared in many a long day... The Hobbit is a glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and seasoned with a quiet humor that is irrestible... All those, young or old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take The Hobbit to their hearts."

—The New York Times Book Review

A Wizard of Earthsea

The island of Gont is a land famous for wizards. Of these, some say the greatest -and surely the greatest voyager - is the man called Sparrowhawk. As a reckless, awkward boy, he discovered the great power that was in him - with terrifying consequences. Tempted by pride to try spells beyond his means, Sparrowhawk lets loose an evil shadow-beast in his land. Only he can destroy it, and the quest leads him to the farthest corner of Earthsea.

“The most thrilling,wise and beautiful children’s novel ever, it is written in prose as taut and clean as a ship’s sail. " —The Guardian

Treasure Island

When young Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map in a pirate’s chest in his parents’ inn, he is drawn into a world of danger and adventure. He joins the crew setting sail to the Caribbean to seek out the booty and over the course of the voyage confronts mutiny, murder, and the charismatic and devious Long John Silver.

"How perfectly structured and paced it is, every episode carefully weighted, every chapter a cliffhanger, scarcely a word wasted."

—The Times