Rimsha Chaudhry
English Composition
Essay #1
Professor Khan
“Note to Self: Don’t Pick Up My Sisters Books
Reading and writing have never been my strong suit. Reading was always a task that needed to be finished. Additionally, the writing was still an assignment I dreaded getting in on time. I never found joy in picking up a book and opening it to what seemed like a million words. The writing was the same in a sense. I had to write 500-1000 words on a particular subject that I couldn’t focus on. English was hell until I accidentally picked up my sister’s Harry Potter book and started reading. I couldn’t believe how an author could plant such a picture-perfect image in my head by a mere sentence. I was amazed. The author did a fantastic job creating a movie in my head that seeing the film felt like watching re-runs. Before reading Rowling’s Harry Potter, I was not interested in reading because I thought that school texts did not pique my interest the way that Rowling was able to. Rowling’s formation of words and descriptive details helped me visualize the story in my head, which kept my interest longer than a standard school text would. This experience changed my perception of reading because I realized some writers could capture my imagination, and it encouraged me to take chances on other books in hopes that I could have similar feelings.
Therefore, upon realizing how Harry Potter’s book had piqued my interest, I read a book recommended to me by one of my high school buddies. I had to determine whether the book’s reading will stir deep emotions and offer a sense of renewed imagination just as Harry Potter’s novel. Therefore, I started reading, and page after page, I went. There wasn’t enough time in the day for me to read a whole book without being brutally tired for school the next day. I never thought I would have the same experience and better reading the Crank series when I read Harry Potter. Reading got better for me. I never thought I would have said this in my lifetime, but I started to become excited to come home, throw off my shoes, and crack open a book. It was a whole new world.
The books I read stimulated my mind in a way I had thought only visual aids would. Both books, Ellen Hopkins “Crank” and J.K Rowlings “Harry Potter,” had been fascinating upon reading since Rowling could coin a sentence together, and Hopkins could turn a paragraph into a beautifully expressed poem, which amazed me. Intellectually, I was intrigued to know more. I hung onto every word that was said, hoping that more information would jog my brain into asking more questions that would be answered later. I researched Hopkins’s use of poems instead of paragraphs, wondering why she would write in such a way. Books weren’t supposed to be written in poem form. Books were supposed to be written in paragraph form. They were to start with a sentence showing a slim preview of the rest of the paragraph like a fence.
On the other hand, it is necessary to discuss fences when referring to paragraphs. Alexie Sherman made a good point in his literature called “The Joy or Reading: Superman and Me.” Alexie offers in-depth detail on fences in paragraphs.
“…I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words”.
“The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose.” (1).
I relate to this when speaking of my experience because 1000 words on a page looked abundantly different. There was more to the page than just words; there was a story, a message, etc. The first line gave me an idea of what’s next to come, and then the following sentences strengthened my imagination. Lastly, the concluding sentence would provide a brief yet to the point overview of what was just discussed.
Moreover, Regardless of the number of school texts that I read to ruin my reading idea, I was stunned that I even had this interest in reading after reading Crank. Alexie had stated,
“Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer.” (3).
After such a long time of not focusing on a simple school text, I was surprised that I was rushing home to read the same amount of words on a page but about something I was interested in reading. The use of poems that Hopkins used intrigued me to keep going. It intrigued me to stay on topic and continue to get the full message out of the book. Never did I think my attention would be held on a book, but it was. Surprisingly enough, I read the whole series with ease. I didn’t quite understand why I didn’t like reading after completing an entire trilogy. I was pleasantly surprised to know that my interest could be kept in a particular book.
To conclude, never did I think I was going to be intrigued by reading. I always believed that since reading boring school text, I would never read something that piqued my interest. Upon reading the Harry Potters and Crank series, I finally realized that reading was not so much a burden as I had thought. I had transitioned into someone who could not only bear reading but find enjoyment and appreciation in pieces of writing. Arguably, reading is in the eye of the beholder and will never fully satisfy a visual learner, like me, until there is something to change the reading view.