How I Fell In Love With Books Essay

I belong to the generation that grew up with cartoons and video games. Books were regarded to as an outdated tool for entertainment. My parents required psychical effort to make me do my homework and read obligatory school material. In my imagination, books were something that could be attributed to school and only a person who read them had to do it. However, one book changed my opinion about books, prose and poetry. Now, I only feel remorse that I did not start reading books earlier. The moment I read the book "The adventures of Tom Sawyer", I realized that books are much more than a just a piece of paper. This happened at the end of summer and I was 10 years old.
The end of summer was nearly approaching. The days become shorter and the notion that the school was approaching followed me everywhere I went. After a moth of endless playing of video games, visiting the local swimming pool, and doing nothing, my parents thought that it was time for me to read a book that was standing at the corner of my room, piled under my notebooks. The dust on the book was lying silently in the corner and the thickness of the layers of dust enlarged a lot since my last birthday when I had received the book as a present from my grandparents. The name of the book was "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". In the back of my mind, I remembered a movie with a similar title and decided that it was boring and that I would not engage into this mission. However, it came all of a sudden. My parents gave me an ultimatum: I will read the book and I can play video games in the evening or they will take away my computer and console. I had to read it.
It took me a whole day to read the first page of the book. After each sentence I read, I contemplated about irrelevant things. I calculated how many pages I need to read in order to finish the book in three days or if I can watch the movie again and retell the book based on the movie or when will I read the book: I did everything except reading the book. I looked through the window and imagined my parents' horror after seeing my letter where it stated that I had escaped because they forced me to read the book. Finally, the time for their return from the job was approaching and I decided to focus on reading the first five pages. Two hours passed and I was still reading the book. It captured my mind and I could sense and feel the Mississippi River, I could feel whatever Tom was feeling. It was magnificent, it was similar to drug addiction that forced me to read page after page. In a couple of days I read the book and asked for more.
After that summer, my computer became an unnecessary toy and an object for completing my homework. I became the regular member of our school library. This book introduced me into the magnificent world of the variety of character and adventures. There is no equally interesting video game to any book. The world that books invite us to visit and explore is the world that feeds our soul and makes us better persons. Perfectly arranged words lure our senses to dive into the unknown. They break social and racial barriers, allow unimaginable and incompatible. The smell of fresh paper between your fingers cannot be replaced with anything. Since that summer, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" has a special place on my bookshelf and I read the book over three times. One of these days, I will start reading the book again because each time it offers a new perspective and a new interpretation.