My Grandfather was the first person in my family to go to college and get a bachelors degree. He was always an avid writer. He preferred writing letters to any other form of communication. I can always expect at certain points during the year that I will receive a letter from my grandfather. At the same time, this has always kept my writing skills up as I always send him back a letter. I find it comforting almost to know that even though many people have lost the art of letter writing, that my grandfather and I continue correspondence through letters.
After my grandfather, my father and all of my uncles then went to college as well. Therefore it was expected that my brother and I would at least complete our undergraduate education. My mother's family is not as educated as my fathers. While most of my cousins have at least attended some college, among the older generation only a few of my uncles have finished college. My mother attended some college, but only has an associates degree.
For a long time when I read, I just got bored with the books I was reading, finding myself not really getting into the story. When I was very little I liked to read because it helped to stimulate my imagination, and now that I was older, books that were about ordinary life just did not excite me anymore. After I saw the movie, "I Robot," and found out that it was based on a book by Isaac Asimov, gave reading it a try. What I found through this book that reading about science fiction and the future genuinely excited me.
As I grew older I ventured more into the genre and found the books my Michael Crichton. I immediately fell in love with his writing. Crichton had ways of building suspense in his books that I had not read before. He described the personalities of his characters not just through adjectives, but through stories that revealed the background information far better than any one word could do. Books like Jurassic Park captured my imagination as Michael Crichton was able to take things that would have been unbelievable and make them seem almost believable in modern times.
Growing up, as I learned to read and to understand the world, I always looked to my brother as a role model for how I wanted to be academically. Thus I would always strive to be like him in my reading. I remember many a day when I would sneak into his room and look at the books he had on his bookshelf. They were so much more advanced than those that I had stored away in my room. One very exciting day, my brother decided to get rid of his old books and give them to me. Such a treasure he had bestowed upon me. I had so many books that I had only dreamed about, with mystical names like, "The Phantom Tollbooth" and "Time Cat."
At the same time that I was idolizing my brother, I was envying him for his great knowledge. I wanted to understand as much as he did, and the only way I assumed I could do that was to read, and so I read as much as I could. I tried to learn as much about the world through books as I could so I could match his great intellect.
I have always been a fairly avid reader on my own time. I have won awards for my writing and been published, but I do not choose to write in my spare time now. Writing for me is a task which I only really do when I have to. Reading however is something I do almost daily. I enjoy reading the occasional novel, but the majority of my reading that I do on a day to day basis is going through news websites or news magazines reading about current events of today.
As I said earlier, I was published in high school with a short story and with two poems that I had written, but these were not initially written voluntarily. Rather they were written as assignments for a creative writing class that I took when I was in my sophomore year of high school. Looking back on the things that I have written, I find it interesting that although I am a very good writer, I do not write for pleasure, I only do it when I have to for various reasons.
When I was very little, my mother would try to give me as many educational opportunities as she could before I started kindergarten. This included every Tuesday morning we would visit the public library for the weekly book reading. It was such a special event for me that my mother made sure to put it on the calendar she made for each week so we would be sure not to forget.
One of my favorite books that they read at the library was "Where the Wild Things Are." I remember how I loved this book, and using my imagination to put myself in the story as they read it. When I was a child, reading was not just about experiencing my own world, it was about experiencing a different world. Using my imagination to see great new things that no one had ever seen before.
