Annika+K’s+2018+OpEd+Article

Reading.



Ah those blissful days of reading whenever I wanted... and whatever I wanted.

I love reading. I love escaping and exploring, wandering and wondering, laughing out loud and trying not to let too many of my tears fall on the book’s pages.

A part of my mind is still in the bright, fascinating, supernatural, yet unsettling depths of the Lotus Caves. A part of me (and often times I wish all of me) is still roaming in Narnia with Lucy and Susan, my childhood role models. A part of me still laughs as I hear Mr. Collins’ endlessly boast in his humility to Elizabeth. A part of me still is lonely as I feel the coarse sand and see the grey, angry surf crashing against the shore as a young girl with leprosy, who was exiled without her family to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, looks out on the horizon. A part of me is still with Dill and Scout as they try to escape Boo Radley’s yard, but Dill’s pants get caught and left behind on a fence. A part of me is still walking along the gray, cold beaches of Saint Malo with young, blind girl Marie-Laure, finding seashells on the rainy beaches.

In a way, the best books are horcruxes… a little piece of your heart (or soul, so as not to upset the Harry Potter aficionados) is within the pages.

Whether you understand any of the references I just made, I do not know.

What I do know, however, is that I am frustrated that such an important part of my life, reading, seemingly ceases to exist during the busy school year, no matter how many times I look longingly at my ever-increasing “To-Read” shelf.

The beautiful part about books is that it’s never the same. I am not a huge proponent of re-reading books, but when I re-read my ultimate favorites, the scene replays in my mind. But different details catch my eye as the scene is painted anew.

But, alas, school exists. How horribly ironic that the thing that taught us to read, learn, and grow as young intellectuals, simultaneously extinguishes our minds’ book-craving flames.

Books are special. The best of books stay with you for a long time, or maybe forever. Even the books that haunt and tell of serious, heartbreaking stories are special.

Books are treasures… and deserve to be treated as such.