30 Day Writing Challenge: A Book You Love and One You Didn't

I must be the world's pickiest reader. It's funny, actually; for an English teacher who dreams of becoming an author one day, I'm not that great of a reader. I'm pretty slow. I get distracted easily. I have to really fall in love with something to really push through and read it. Even if I like a book, but I don't love it, it could take me months to finish. Case in point: The Watchmen graphic novel. I started it a couple months ago. I'm over halfway done, but thanks to becoming busy and distracted, I still haven't finished it. Hollow City, Miss Peregrine #2? I bought that book ages ago. Still haven't read past the first page. I enjoy reading, I do, but I have to be extremely motivated to do it, and to be honest, I have a really hard time finding books that I absolutely love and cannot put down.

The first book that fits this description that comes to my mind is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It is the first book I ever remember reading thinking, "I'm dying to know what happens next!" I think that perhaps it was easier for me to read than some other books because I could clearly picture the characters and the setting and the tone. After all, I had seen the first two films already before reading any of the books, so when I read about Harry, I pictured Daniel Radcliffe. Hermione was Emma Watson. It was a breeze to get through, perhaps because it didn't require as much of my imagination, I don't know. But I devoured the rest of the Harry Potter series after that. In fact, I bought the final book in London the day it was released. The next day, I cracked open the cover when we took off from Heathrow, and finished the last page as we descended into Sky Harbor. 13 hours in the air, every minute spent reading the last installment of a series that showed me I could truly fall in love with a world created by words.

Since then, I have desperately struggled to find another book or series that would capture my attention the way Harry Potter did. The Hunger Games came close. I blew through those books a few years ago. The Godfather was a surprising treat, and The Great Gatsby is a beautiful classic. I read everything Nick Hornby writes. I think he's quite genius. I tend to gravitate toward Young Adult literature, though. It's easy to read, entertaining, and high drama. I've tried to read the popular ones. City of Bones was exhausting. The Divergent Series fell far short of my expectations, though I read all of them as well. I read Uglies, but it wasn't interesting enough to move me along to the second book. I read Twilight, of course, and that was a few months of my life I'll never get back. Like I mentioned, I read the first Miss Peregrine book, and it was alright enough that I want to read the next one. I still haven't decided if I really like it or not. John Green's books leave me frustrated because he writes teenagers as if they're middle-aged doctoral candidates. I spend all day with teenagers; they don't talk like that. I guess there's a lot of books I didn't really love. If I were to pick one off the top of my head, I'd go with Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. At ASU, these indie hipsters in my English classes wouldn't shut up about Kurt Vonnegut. I'd read a few of his short stories and liked them well enough, so I picked up Slaughterhouse-Five. I couldn't get into it at all. War and aliens and madness? I actually read an analysis online because I was so confused about what he was trying to do. Once I figured it out, once I got it, I still didn't like it. Nothing like learning you're not a Vonnegut fan to make you feel like a literary outcast.

Now that summer is right around the corner, I'm looking for book suggestions! So far my summer reading list includes The Westing Game, The Razor's Edge, Crime & Punishment, Hollow City, and Love in the Time of Cholera. Anything else I HAVE to read this summer? Let me know in the comments!

Artwork courtesy of I don't know where I got this picture but I love it.