My Book Lover Story

On one of the off-season episodes of the Fandesals Podcast (episode embedded below), my co-host Judith shared her book lover origin story. As someone who loves to read books myself, I thought it would be great to share my journey with books. I hope people can relate to it and remind them of their book-lover stories too. 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

It was my parents who started my love for books. I remember growing up with shelves of children’s books that they encouraged me to read: Disney books, Dr. Seuss, Alice in Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh. I regret not being able to keep those books when we moved because they were significant parts of my childhood.

In elementary school and high school, I discovered other genres: I discovered mysteries with Nancy Drew books and teen/love stories with Sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High stories. But this was also the time that my father introduced me to fantasy books. I remember first reading The Hobbit around this time. I loved it! This was the time when I started to fall in love with writing as well. All the books I have read sparked my imagination and I began to create stories of my own, about worlds and people I have created in my head.

As I got older, I started to veer towards the romance genre and chick lit, mostly from Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, and Cecelia Ahern. I also got into more fantasy and young adult books from writers such as Melissa Dela Cruz. I particularly loved reading books that mixed real-world characters with a fantasy world. I cannot explain why, but that form of escapism is something that I enjoyed reading about. 

During a significant health scare years back, I started reading inspirational books like The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. More recently, because of the stress brought on by the pandemic, I have been into more books that are in the self-help category. Things that deal a bit with psychology, spirituality, and philosophy. Books about positive thinking and the power of the mind and all that.

Lately, I have been in a bit of a book-reading slump. Reading has been a struggle for me. I start but hardly finish. Sometimes if I start and finish, it either takes me a long time to do so or it takes me a while between books. Considering the number of books I used to read in a year, it feels odd to only finish books I can count with one hand in a year. I miss reading as much as I used to, but I cannot force myself to go back to my old pace. I feel like if I did that, I would start to hate reading and I do not want that to happen. I am taking things one book at a time. Hopefully one day I will get my groove back.

One way I am trying to get back into my book-loving life is to blog about it. I hope by writing about the books I read on this blog I can get back to figuring out what I have loved about reading books in the first place. 

For now, I am also trying to draft books of my own. I have ideas and outlines that I have compiled through the years that I have yet to write out in full. I do not have a fixed genre of books. Right now, the outlines are a mix of romance, historical fiction, thriller, and fantasy genres. I have been trying to get into books of similar genres to get an idea of how to write down my books and I am hoping to get something finished soon. I know I have been saying that for years, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that I get things done this time around. 

Books have been a part of my life since childhood, and I feel that they will be a part of my life for a long time. I have gone from physical reading to e-books and audiobooks, exploring various genres and becoming a fan of certain writers and series as I go along. This is a love I will never get tired of, no matter how many reading slumps I go into. 

I hope more people can get into reading and loving the experience of the written (or spoken, as with audiobooks) word. There is so much to discover, learn and imagine. Books are amazing. We need more people to understand that!