Reading is a relief from the reality that we all live in, and I believe that reading can teach you lessons, make you forget about problems and bring you to a place no one else has been to, as you are able to subjectify the experiences within a book. Reading to me has not been as much a chore in life, as many find it.
I read every night before bed and will pick up my book whenever I find nothing else to do. Though most of my reading would probably be online, on a website known as Reddit, where I read the works of others. This is most convenient as I have my phone on me at most times and it is very easily accessible if I'm commuting or sitting in a restaurant waiting for food to arrive.
It is unsurprising that the reading habits of adolescents is declining, as there proves to be a myriad of distractions in the current day and age, many of which have become problematic. Why read a 400 page book when its so much easier to simply scroll through social media, where the colorful images of what your friends have been up to are waiting to be liked, commented on and shared? And many authors don't present themselves in such a way that no one has heard of before, with all their clichés of the importance of reading and prospects of good grades. People's priorities have changed from reading John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Passage to grinding a thousand wins in their favorite video game. So what if my grades drop? It's not like I'm gonna become a doctor.
Reading should be more of something where people find enjoyment out of, instead of a mandated task that inflicts moral admonishment when not fulfilled to a satisfactory standard. (Personally, I find John Keats’ In drear-nighted December very hard to comprehend and very hard to find enjoyment in reading.)
Many people might argue that they have no time in their day, but until you actual count every second you're not hunched over your computer or going around running errands, you can find a lot of time to do the simple task of reading.
I've read two books by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known by his pen name Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. At first reading, these two books are very confounding, considering that they are regarded as children's classics. But then I realized that they shine because they have been written in such a way that children can relate to, with Alice thinking about the smallest things and how the Queen in the first book acts in such an authoritarian manner. It ended really pleasantly, with how all the characters had been conjured up by Alice through the surrounding sounds. These two books are categorized under 100 great novels by dead authors.
The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells really intrigued me in the word choices that the author used since it gave an insight as to how people at the time spoke. Instead of "imagination" and "remember", there was "fancy" and "recollect" instead. But, more importantly, the question of whether Doctor Moreau's vivisections on his imported animals was ethical was very interesting to think about. My favorite part was near the end when Prendick had to find a way to survive long enough on the island and the deterioration of the monsters' human traits. This book in categorized under a book more than 100 years old.
Books on a Desert Island
James Dashner, The Kill Order
Favorite book in The Maze Runner series.
John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, The Book of General Ignorance
A non-fiction book filled with many false facts people believe to be true.
Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates
A considerably dense book about the Golden Age of Piracy.
Stephen King, Desperation
A group of people try to escape from a big, strong, possessed police officer in a deserted town with weird rocks.
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
As title mentions, its a book about everything concerning the future of humanity and what we should watch out for
