Happy Book Lover’s Day

Angela Guiao
MSMU Class of 2021

(8/2021) I still remember the moment I fell in love with books. I was in third grade, and my classmates were having a read off. Basically, they would take turns and time each other as they read out loud, and whoever could read the fastest would be considered super cool, and everyone else would be in awe of them for the rest of the day.

I read a lot as a kid. My mother immigrated here from the Philippines when she was younger and thought it was very important for me to speak and read English, not only fluently, but better than anyone else. This meant I was not allowed T.V. or video games, and I was only allowed to read books.

When you’re younger, you never really think about the process. I knew I could read, and I noticed that I read a lot more than most of the other kids in my class, but I didn’t think of myself as a book lover. All I know is that when D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read) time came around, I never had a problem picking up a book and reading.

Anyways, my friends were having a read off, and someone called me over to take my turn. I picked up the book "Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off" because I knew that the sentences were much shorter and far fewer than the books my friends were picking up to read (obviously, we didn’t have a set of rules, or else we’d all be reading the same book). But I picked it up, and my friends starting counting- One Mississippi! Two Mississippi! Three Mississippi! And 7 Mississippi’s later, I flipped the last page and was done. I gained quite the reputation then, which now that I look back on it, was a very nerdy thing to be proud of.

But since then, I was known as the fast girl reader in Mrs. Scott’s class, and I thought it was my duty to always be seen with a book. And I realized that the bigger and more difficult the book I held, the cooler I seemed to get.

As a result, I was in the third grade and carrying around a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Fellowship of the Ring". Now, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I was definitely not some reading genius, and I absolutely did not have the brain cells at that age to process what Mr. Tolkien had written. But I had watched the movie and saw that it had the same title. I put two-and-two together and figured if anybody tried to ask me what it was about, I would tell them what happened in the movie. When my friends saw me carrying a chapter book- an extremely thick chapter book with very tiny print, I might add- they thought I was even cooler.

As time went by, I became more and more devoted to my role as the cool, fast reader kid. So, during lunch or recess, if they allowed me, I’d spend time in the library. Being that I did actually enjoy reading, probably not to the extent that I let on however. I began to challenge myself more and more with the books I decided to read.

And that is where my journey began.

I started out with the well-known books: The Junie B. Jones series and the Magic Treehouse stories, then as I got older, I started reading books like "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, and the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. Eventually, I started reading the controversial books like the "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger and "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. I even found my favorite book of all time, "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbit.

And the older I got, the more I realized that I wasn’t reading the books just so that my friends thought I was cool, but because I loved becoming immersed in the world each book was about.

Reading a book is a special experience. It is similar to watching T.V., but in my opinion, it is much more captivating than any T.V. show. The joy you feel while reading a book, while dissecting every line and every word just in case there is a hidden meaning or clue, is an incredibly unique and magical experience.

Despite the individual nature of reading, we share the joy and sadness and emotions with all the other readers. You feel it. You imagine the world in your own brain without the influence of other’s interpretation. And, I think, that is a feeling that no television or movie adaptation can recreate.

As I got even older, reading books was no longer cool. Everyone had iPhones and Macbooks, Youtube and TikTok. There were so many outlets that allowed us to distract ourselves, quickly and without effort. The hassle of going to the store to pick up a book was no longer on trend. Why would you read a book when you can watch a thousand videos in the same time span? Why buy paper copies when you can digitally save them onto your phone?

Reading became less and less about the experience. And more and more people decided to wait until Hollywood made a movie about a story instead of actually reading the book.

But I believe we should preserve the existence of our books. One day, our hard drives will stop working and our technology will become out of date, and there will be no existing transcripts of our ideas than those that exist in books.

No matter how advanced technology becomes, nothing can imitate the feeling of a page against your fingers, or the smell of freshly printed ink. Books are transportation devices, vessels for ideas to stay immortal, and they should be treated as such.

I hope this month, you pick up a book and allow yourself to be transported on an adventure.

Happy Book Lover’s Day.

Read other articles by Angela Tongohan