One of the greatest gifts my family gave me was a love for reading. My mom and I would lie around, side by side, reading our respective books from the time I was a little girl. Even though she was getting her PhD in English and reading 18th century literature and I was reading Judy Blume, she always told me that what I read wasn’t important so long as I had a love for reading. I did—and still do. Reading is also, I believe, one of the only ways to get better at writing. Writing classes can be great when the teacher and students are just right but in my experience, that is rarely the case. If you’re reading something you love, it’s always just right.
My biggest problem with reading is that I have to be moderately obsessed
with a book to want to finish; if I’m not looking forward to picking it up again
with something of a passion, I’ll sometimes just abandon it part of the way
through. But I look at reading the same way I do exercise or eating well: it’s
important to find what you love about it so it can remain a pleasure and not be
a chore.
{Anna David is the author of Party Girl, Bought, Reality Matters, Falling For Me, By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There and True Tales of Lust and Love. Her website can be found here.}
