Usually a teenager on their phone automatically means posting to social media, texting their friends about when to meet up at the mall, or buying random junk on amazon. I’m not going to lie and say that I’m never on my phone. In fact, I spend the majority of my day on my phone. Ninety percent of the time that I am on my phone, I am reading.
Nothing makes me happier than curling up under the covers with my cat Patches on one side of me, and my favorite six pound Harry Potter book on the other. However, that’s not always an option. Unfortuanately, I can not always carry giant books around with me wherever I go, so I have to settle on reading books on my phone. Walking down the hallway in between classes, when all the lights are off right before I go to bed, and walking around the happiest place on earth are all times when I have to settle on reading on my phone. I prefer to read paper books, but sometimes it’s just not an option. So I have to settle on reading on my phone. I read a lot. And I think you should too.
I read everywhere. As soon as I wake up, while I’m getting ready for school, in the car, between classes, on the bus, while I am eating, and even the last second before I go to bed.
There are always ways to make time to read. Some people claim that they don’t have enough time to read because all of their time is taken up between school and after school activities. An average person who sleeps for eight hours, goes to school for six hours, does after school activities for two hours, and does homework for another two hours still has six hours to read and relax.
“I try to read whenever and wherever I can,” says Emily Orzechowski, an avid book reader. “I read on the bus, after school, before cheer and before bed.”
On a person’s thirteenth birthday it’s as if a flip is switched and suddenly reading seems unimportant to them. They don’t want to read; they complain about it the whole time. It could be that reading requires more effort than watching television. Or that books could take a long time to get through. Or simply, books are just not interesting enough. Common excuses, but none are valid.
There are many websites and blogs dedicated to book reviews and things the like that you can use to find a book that interests you. Amazon’s oficial book review blog, Omnivoracious, has author interviews, as well as book reviews. Another good way to find interesting books is The New York Times’ book review website.
I read on my phone a lot. Some apps I use to read include ibooks and Wattpad. Ibooks lets you download published books to read. Some of them are free but most of them are not, which is why I usually use Wattpad. Wattpad is an app that lets writers publish their books for free, and anyone with the app can enjoy them for free. It has a wide variety of themes and types of books.
A lot of people claim they hate reading because books are boring. This is so far from the truth.I understand that I read a lot, and that’s a very large commitment. I think about reading no matter what I do. It’s an addiction. I’ve lost countless hours of sleep from wanting to finish the last one hundred pages of a book or even to start a new book. I’ve cried over the death of fictional characters, and screamed when my favorite characters finally get their happy ending.
Just because you may hate the books you are forced to read in school does not mean that every single book in the entire world is boring. There are over thirty different genres of books ranging from historical fiction to fantasy. When there are so many types of books, I find it hard to believe that someone can not find a single book that interests them. And if you don’t feel like browsing in the library, there are plenty of other ways to search for a good book. I’m not saying that everyone should be as obsessed as I am- just that everyone should read even a tiny bit- because reading makes the world a better place.
