Hi… I’m so so sorry for my terrible lack of posting over the last… well… forever. I’ve always been bad at the whole blogging thing- since my 3rd grade blog about penguins.
I’m also really bad at thinking of book related questions for myself, so I’ll leave you a list of bookish stats plus my personal essay for AP Literature.. Though if you have any and feel like treating me with the same amount of attention Sophie gets, I’d be glad to answer any and all via an actual, non-scheduled Q&A (sorry Soph..)
So yeah:
Last Book Read: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Last Book Bought: Machiavelli’s The Prince
Dream College Themed book: Chasing Vermeer, Blue Balliet
Bookish Philosophy: there is little more underrated than children’s books… but other books are good too
Theme of Spring Break Reading List: Biography/memoir/giant bin of books borrowed from Sophie
Favorite publications: for news, BBC; for general entertainment, The Bloggess all the way
Most anticipated book yet to be released: You Are Here, Jenny Lawson(shh i know its a coloring book)
Best beverage to pair with a book: tea latte or latte in general
Bookish Bad Habits: dog-earing, setting down book face open
MY AP LIT PERSONAL ESSAY
Literature is Not Important to Me
Literature is not important to me, in the same way that drinking water is not important to me. It is something I do frequently, but it is also something I have done for so long that it is no longer a conscientious activity.
I have always had a propensity for words and communication. According to my mother, I began speaking at nine months and my first word was “kitty cat.” At a year I could correctly identify the colors of my crayon box and by fifteen months I could name the letters in my alphabet puzzle. She recalls me reading words by age two, and there are several photos of a very tiny Maiya sitting on a small training toilet or on the floor of my bedroom engrossed in a book. I frustrated my preschool teacher with my refusal to listen to her lessons on letters, and she apparently managed to have me for nearly a year without realizing that I could read. As a first-grader in the Voyager program, I was moved up to a reading group with fourth and fifth graders, and I was quite close with our school librarian, often discussing gardening or crafting as I checked out my strange combination of novels and books on plants and crocheting.
As a result of my constant need for words, I read voraciously and with little discrimination. As a five-year-old, I read the microwave manual as part of a deal in order to be allowed to use the brand new machine, and my parents had to cancel their TIME subscription a few years later, because generally, one does not want their seven-year-old reading something with an intended audience at least a decade older. Many of my fondest memories of summers as an elementary schooler feature large paper bags and corrugated cardboard boxes filled with young adult novels my mother picked up at second-hand stores and garage sales. I would blow through them, and to this day, seventy-some percent of the books in our family library are mine.
A side-effect of my reading was a comically large vocabulary packed into a tiny person, and as many of the words I acquired were ones that I had only read, mispronunciation became a comedic portion of my family’s lives. I once mispronounced “sophisticated” as “soff’ is cated” to my mother’s amusement.
Another side-effect of my obsession with stories is, ironically, my inability to tell a story. The abundance of stories and their many commonalities lead me to jump from tale to tale, never finishing one and going off on a thousand digressions in an attempt to share a brief moment from my life.
While many people will say that books and the characters within become their friends, I have never found this statement to ring true for myself. However, I will admit that books and my love for them have led me to make many friends, whether the librarians at each school or the girl behind me in eighth grade geometry with whom I would eventually start a book blog.
Like drinking water, reading is a necessary part of my life. Without water, I, as a carbon-based biological organism, would die. Without my passion for reading and the love of learning and knowledge that logically follows, my personality would die. Just as water keeps me physically nourished, burying my nose in books provides my mind with sustenance. This leads to an odd paradox in which literature has become so important it becomes commonplace. It is so ingrained within my life that without it, I would not be me.
Small me, on a toilet, reading. This is my personal sacrifice for my lack of blogging
The Mind of a (Book) Dragon 