The One Book That Changes Everything

As a child, I always found joy in read­ing. Fond mem­o­ries flood my mind of los­ing myself in the cap­ti­vat­ing tales of the Mag­ic Tree House and A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events dur­ing my ele­men­tary school years. Tran­si­tion­ing to mid­dle school, I eager­ly wait­ed for my turn in the school library to get my hands on the newest book in The Hunger Games tril­o­gy. Read­ing was a con­stant com­pan­ion through­out my child­hood, until I entered high school. 

I’m not exact­ly sure why, but my inter­est in read­ing dropped when I was in high school. Instead of find­ing joy in read­ing, I found it to be a chore and avoid­ed it all costs. While I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the required read­ing for nov­el stud­ies and read the text­book when I had to, the joy and enthu­si­asm I once felt for immers­ing myself in sto­ries seemed to evap­o­rate. Unlike in ele­men­tary and mid­dle school, where teach­ers encour­aged read­ing for plea­sure, high school seemed to pri­or­i­tize aca­d­e­mics over per­son­al enjoy­ment. Grad­u­al­ly, the mem­o­ries of los­ing myself in the pages of a cap­ti­vat­ing book fad­ed into the back­ground of my mind, over­shad­owed by the demands and pres­sures of stay­ing caught up on assignments.

A year after I grad­u­at­ed, I was on the phone with my old­er sis­ter, Emi­ly, when she rec­om­mend­ed a book to me; Circe by Made­line Miller. Ini­tial­ly I was­n’t inter­est­ed; I haven’t read for fun in years, and I doubt­ed I would be able to read an entire book. She was per­sis­tent though, and her excite­ment and pas­sion about the sto­ry even­tu­al­ly wore me down. I pur­chased the book at Indi­go, and went home to read it. I spent the next few days on the porch swing out­side, sit­ting on the couch, and lay­ing in bed- absolute­ly and com­plete­ly lost in the book. I called Emi­ly the sec­ond I fin­ished, excit­ed to dis­cuss the sto­ry and share my thoughts with her. She was equal­ly as excit­ed to talk about Circe; we chat­ted for awhile before she said “If you liked that one, you should check out her oth­er book- The Song of Achilles.” It did­n’t take any con­vinc­ing this time. I went back to the store, pur­chased the book, and went home to start reading. 

I sit at home, 7 years lat­er, look­ing at my book­shelf filled with my favourite sto­ries. More than half of the books I own were rec­om­mend­ed by Emi­ly. It does­n’t seem like much, talk­ing about books over a phone call, but these con­ver­sa­tions about read­ing brought me back to one of the things I love most in life. I real­ize now that I nev­er lost my love for read­ing, I just for­got about it. Emi­ly helped me remem­ber. As I move for­ward in life, I hope to be the Emi­ly in my stu­dents’ lives. I want to be the per­son my stu­dents are excit­ed to talk to about their favourite books, and the per­son they trust to rec­om­mend new things to read. This book changed every­thing for me.