Me, Myself, and Books

Hi! I wrote this personal essay for Mrs. Inspektor in her AP English Language and Composition class. This assignment was to practice the classic "showing and telling" strategies while exploring something that we really connected to. For me, this was my relationship with books. I tried to portray how they have played a role in my life, but I'll let my narrative speak for itself! I really enjoyed this class with Mrs. Inspektor because of the precise detail and care she gave to every student. It really improved my writing and reading skills and gave me an amazing score on the exam! 

. . . . .

Tick-tock….Tick-tock. I could hear the gentle ticking of my bedroom clock as I crept closer to the nightlight in my room. I gently removed a book from the pile of books on my bookshelf, as if I was playing some form of book Jenga, and quietly cracked the book open. It was way past my bedtime, but I didn’t care. I wanted to read. I flipped the pages as quietly as I could and soon enough, I was lost in the world of the book Maxi’s Secrets. Creak…creak… I could hear my dad ambling up the stairs, but I rashly decided to keep reading as there was no reason for my dad to come in. All of a sudden, a ray of light slashed through my carefully built world and left me scrambling for excuses.

. . . . .

“Ellie…..Ellie….ELLIE!” my older brother shouted.

“Huh?” I responded, not being aware of my surroundings.

“Ugh, you always tune everyone out when you read,” he replied.

“Yeah,” my dad agreed, “you fade into your own world.”

“Oh, ok,” I responded, already looking back at my book. Fifteen minutes later, I looked up and noticed that I was all alone in the living room. Everyone else had gone upstairs. Even though they had left, I didn’t feel lonely as my family members were replaced with Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy from Little Women.

. . . . .

“Hi! My name is Ellie, I am in 4th grade this year and my favorite hobby is probably reading.”

“Hi Ellie! I used to be a bookworm too when I was your age.”

“Oh that’s cool…”

Why did the term “bookworm” feel so wrong? By definition, I was a bookworm, right? I was always reading and rereading books every chance I got. But being described as a bookworm seemed not enough.

I was not a bookworm. I was a book addict.

Every morning, I would wake up and head downstairs to do my first chore of the day, emptying the dishwasher. Every morning instead of going straight to the dishwasher, I would make a quick detour to the nearest bookshelf. Then as I emptied the dishwasher, my right hand would fish around for all the forks while my left pinky strained to keep the book from closing. Later in the day, when I would go to my room to get ready for the day’s activities, I even found a way to maximize the amount of reading while changing —which was done by popping my head in and out of the clothes at an impressive speed. It got to a point where I had read and reread most of the books in our house until I could start at a random page and still know what had happened on the previous page and what was about to happen on the next page.

This addiction to books kept growing as I explored different genres and followed different authors. I used books to escape from stress and often forced myself to finish schoolwork before starting a book, as I wouldn’t be able to put the book down once I started. Books became my safe place—a separate world—where I could simply be an observer with no role.

. . . . .

“Ellie, what do you think about taking one online class this year?” my mom asked.

I agreed and we decided to join a language arts class that one of my friends was also taking. A few weeks into the class, I realized that it was too easy. Because of my previous investments in books, I was at a pretty high reading level, and as a result, the class did not challenge me enough. After talking together, my mom and I decided to take me out of the previous class and enroll me in a harder language arts class which challenged me more. Surprisingly though, this class actually had somewhat of an opposite effect on my relationship with books as I started having to use a computer for most of my homework.

. . . . .

“Hi guys! Welcome to my channel! Today I will be competing with my 6-year-old sister to see

who is better…”

My video on how to parse a compound-complex sentence had just ended and as I was finishing my own example, the next video started playing. This video was definitely not school related, and my first response was to ignore it, as my mom never let me watch these kinds of videos.

But then I realized. My mom wasn’t there.

I felt a rebellious and curious urge to watch the video. There was no one there to stop me. At that moment, it clicked. I could watch whatever I wanted. There were no limits. At that same moment and throughout the rest of that school year, my book addiction started to crumble.

. . . . .

“Ellie, can you empty the dishwasher? Your sister forgot to do it before she left,” my mom asked.

“Yeah sure,” I responded. I grabbed my phone off the counter and opened up a random app, planning to scroll while I emptied the dishwasher. As my right hand fished around for all the forks, my left hand scrolled on the phone. I realized that this felt strangely nostalgic. But instead of a book in my left hand, I now held a phone?

At this moment, I resigned myself to the fact that my book addiction was practically gone. I no longer saw reading as my favorite hobby as it really wasn’t. The last time I had sped through a series or been unable to put a book down was honestly a year ago. With most of my classwork being online and my constant procrastination, my attention span had reached a new low. Books seemed to be close to boring and they started to carry a weight of stress. Every time my teacher would assign a book, whether it was for a book club, or an analysis, I could never enjoy it. I would read the book and understand it, but I didn’t enjoy reading it. There was a sense of pressure and stress behind each chapter I read. Instead of following the plot and being an observer with no role, I pushed myself to dig through the story’s plot looking for any little bits to analyze. Although I had found a new layer of books by analyzing them, I had also lost the ability to enjoy just reading the book.

After my first stressful AP testing season, I wanted to relax and read books, but at the same time, books –especially physical ones–carried the memories of hard analyses and nerve-wracking essays. So, I stayed away. But I could tell I was missing out. I missed the feeling of entering a new world. I missed feeling my emotions swinging throughout the book. I even missed the feeling of disappointment when a good book is finished.

. . . . .

My friend offered to give me some books that she had enjoyed before, and as it would have been rude to refuse the offer, I accepted. When I held that bag of books, I was surprised that I actually felt a tiny sense of excitement. There was still a small sense of pressure and nervousness, but I also felt a large amount of interest and joy. When I cracked open the first book, The Maze Runner, it still took awhile to settle back into the rhythm of reading, but I eventually got sucked in. The feeling felt familiar as I sunk into being an observer in a new dystopian world. As I read, I felt myself digging deeper into the plot and finding little connections between different chapters. But unlike the other books I had read throughout the school year, this digging did not feel invasive. I realized that I could draw a compromise between the skills I learned in analysis and the enjoyment of the plot. One didn’t have to require the absence of another. Instead, I could use both to open a new portal where I could both be an observer with no role and an observer looking for details. That night, I stayed up, not watching any unnecessary videos, or frantically looking for connections in a book, but simply enjoying the plot of The Maze Runner. Even though it was past 1 am, I turned back to my book and faded into the dystopian world with the gentle ticking of our living room clock in the background. Tick-tock….Tick-tock.