You Can't Get Any Where In Life If You Give Up, And That Goes For Reading Too.

Some people are picky eaters, I'm a picky reader.

Why!?!??!?! I absolutely detest how difficult it is for me to pick a book I like. I honestly went through about a week (shhh don't tell anyone) where I wasn't reading before I came across Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Don't get me wrong, I was reading! But I wasn't reading whole books. I was reading blurbs and first chapters and first sentences and first words.

Everything was SO boring.

At first I was annoyed... Why couldn't I find any books?! Was something going on where every book in the history of the world was not interesting? Or was it me? Was I not giving it a chance?

The fact of the matter is I am just a really picky reader. Which got me thinking: I don't want to spend the rest of my reading life having to worry about investing more time in finding the right book than it would take to read it.

Then I thought about this: The way a book begins is basically the most important part of the book. As a future writer, I want to draw in as many readers as I can, I want to change as many lives as I can with my words. BUT: My biggest fear is that I loose thousands of readers because I didn't make the first sentence make you want to read more. And then read another sentence and another and another until the words that you have created are part of another person's life and heart.

It is so important to me, not just as a writer but as a fellow reader, as I am an always will be one, that every book I read is exciting and wonderful and makes me sad when I have to put it down.

Unfortunately for me though, I'm not the kind of amazing reader I wish I was that didn't care how boring the beginning of a book was. Because while beginnings are important, there's always the rest of the book to look forward to. I guess as I grow up and continue to live in the world of literature I'll have to give books "second chances." I'll have to teach myself to think every time I think the first sentence is ugly, that there's more and more and more ahead of me.

My mom always says to me when she thinks I'm not reading enough: "To be a great writer, you have to read." And I wish I could say, "I know, I know..." And actually mean it. Sometimes I feel like either I'm too lazy, or, I just really care about what I'm reading, and prefer not to waste any time reading a terrible book while I could be reading a life changing one.

But then that seems a little over-dramatic and then I feel awful because I think I am in fact lazy. The thing is though, I'm not. I just read slower because I think a lot, maybe even too much. And I don't read a lot of books because I'm constantly searching for the right one.

And how special that is, when you do find a book. And how weird that is, when you're done, and you realize, wow. Here I am again. And then I think to myself, that there must be hundreds of more books in the world that will make me feel the same way. "WOW."

And maybe that's one of the reasons that I'm in such a rush to grow up, move on in life, break away from middle school. Because I want to continue to be introduced to amazing books. And read them and love them and live them and then, the best part: Sharing them with others.

I feel so proud to hand someone a book and say to them, "Read this one." And then they do. And they love it. And I just have to sit back for a second and think, "That was because of me."

And they'll introduce it to someone else who will show it to someone else and so on and so on.

Reading is just one big community, one big concept that can connect everyone in the world.

All you need to do is taking a chance.

Read a little past the first sentence.