What is a Book?

What is a Book?

A book is simply a story. To me, it doesn't matter what form the story comes in, whether its a hardcover, paperback, kindle, nook, or audiobook, as long as the story is told, and the writing that is within it is good.I agree most with Joe Meno's statement about what books are when he says "A book is actually a place, a place where we, as readers, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word into image, connecting these images to memories, dreams and larger ideas". That's really what a book is to me, not a place, but a story that an author tries to tell us by using their words, and making us imagine the story to make it come alive in our heads and our hearts. The magic of being able to dive into a story, and be drawn into it and see the world from a whole new perspective and feel like you're part of the story, is what the magic of a book is and to me, it doesn't really matter what form the book may take.

At home, I have book shelves upon bookshelves full of books that I have read, and I still love to go back and reread them, and feel the weight of them in my hands and flip through the pages. However, I also own a Kindle. I don't have a fancy kindle fire or anything like that, just a plain kindle that lets me read on it. As much as I love reading traditional books, there is something to say about the convenience of the kindle. When I went to Europe last summer, it was much easier to just load 10 books onto my kindle to read on the plane and in hotels, rather than having to pack an additional heavy bag full of the same books, like I have in the past. Even with the kindle, I still buy books from places like Barnes and Noble, simply because holding a book in my hand gives me the satisfaction of seeing it finished and reminds me of good memories from when I read throughout my life.
I think that there will always be some sort of magic in picking  up a book and reading it, flipping through the pages. That's why I think that books will never truly go away, even with the popularity of ebooks increasing all the time. To me, as a proud owner of both a kindle, and hundreds of traditional books, I think that they can coexist, as long as there are still people that are willing to read and hear those stories that the authors wrote for us. To me thats what a book truly is, a great story, a story that can take you to other places and other times and to other people's lives for a while, as we try to escape our own.

Why I Read

Why I Read...

Why do I read? Thats a question that could be answered in many different ways, with many different answers, even for me. The best answer for me, one that encompasses all the other reasons that I read, is simple. I love to read. I alway have actually, even when I was little.

I don't even remember when I really started to read, I just know that I always have. I've always loved that when I pick up a book and start reading, I can be completely drawn into another person's life. I get to experience other worlds, other countries, different times, different creatures and magic, all by simply sitting down and flipping through page after page. I love being able to escape into books and being distracted from real life, and jump into another person's adventures. It's a type of escape mechanism and stress reliever for me, if things are going wrong in my life, reading about someone else's life, where things are going better for them, or sometimes worse, helps me escape and collect myself before I have to face my own life again.

I also love the educational benefits that I get from reading. Since I read so much, and read such varied literature, I have a great vocabulary, that really helps me in English classes, and when taking the SAT and ACT last year. I also have accumulated a large amount of knowledge from reading, some that is useful in conversations, and some just random facts. There have been a lot of conversations where I say something about a unfamiliar topic, that I'm quite sure how I know it, until I realize that I had read it in some book, and remembered it. The educational benefits however, are not as important to the reasons why I read as the fact that I simply like to read. That is the most important reason about why I read.