Top Ten Reasons I Love Being A Reader

Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly feature created and hosted at The Broke and The Bookish

This is a strange one for me because... I don't know. It's kind of like asking me my favourite thing about breathing or something. Reading is such a natural part of my life now, that I don't even know my favourites. Anyway, in no particular order...

1. I love spending time in other worlds. I'm mainly fantasy, paranormal and science fiction, so spending time in some incredible worlds is a draw. I'm a bit of an escapist reader at heart.

2. I get to experience some beautiful writing.

3. You can learn a lot from books, even if they are considered fictional. There's always something to be gained from them. Even it if isn't information, you pick up new words from reading as well. (And ensure that you are forever explaining what "discombobulated" means to your classmates). Also psychologists have recently been studying something that readers have known all along: we take experiences from books and learn things without physically experiencing them ourselves.

4. I consider the fact that books can make me feel things- sad, happy, afraid- to be a big pro of reading books.

5. The fanart. My goodness the fanart. One day I'm going to make a post featuring all of my favourite fan artists and if will be long. There are some incredible artist out there. And famixes. Just fan-created things. (See 6).

6. The fans themselves. There are some wonderfully intelligent, passionate people- people willing to right long essays on books because they like them, not because an English teacher was making them, and I enjoy reading them. Books often have an incredibly driven, enthusiastic fanbase, and I think that's marvelous. There is an entire organisation of activist that rallies around Harry Potter (The Harry Potter Alliance). I love reading other peoples book blogs, and Booktube is fantastic.

7. Books are a tactile pleasure. I still almost always read hard copies. I haven't been able to convert. I love the feel of books, and the smell of them, and how they look...

8. Bookstores. I purchase a lot of my books online, but I still really like visiting book shops. The main chain where I live is Chapters, and it always smells of new books and coffee.

9. Rereading. I'm a rereader. If I love a book chances are I will read it multiple times. And then read it again. Often, when I finish something, I'm still not quite done with the world and characters.

10. Finding a book I love. I don't think this needs any other explanation.