Oh, the fascinating topic of reading books. I would compare it to eating vegetables. A lot of us young people don’t really like it, and there is definitely a positive correlation between an increase in age and an increase in your taste for reading. Pretty much all old people like to read. Throughout your childhood, your parents would always tell you it’s important to do it, and that you will live a better life if you do so. By doing it, you feel accomplished, in part because society has made the act of reading an admirable quality, saying it’s necessary if you are to become your best self.  There are hundreds of books out there that are dull and tasteless, but if you can find just the right combination of content and style, it will engage you and take you for a pleasing ride. When someone forces you to read, you usually just have to fight through it and choke it down. Wow, I can’t have been the first one to have brought up this groundbreaking analogy…

So just like eating vegetables, reading books is usually more of a chore, but every once in a while you will find just the right one that hits the spot and engages your interest so much that you forget you are even eating vegetables. Oh, wait. So much that you forget you are actually reading a book. And this is what happened to me – and quite a few others judging by what I have heard from fellow classmates – with the book assigned in this class, the Glass Castle. The experience of reading the first half of the book was very similar to eating my Mom’s grilled lemon parmesan garlic asparagus. Who would’ve thought asparagus could taste that good?

I’m not sure exactly yet what it was about the Glass Castle that fully engaged me and caught my interest, but I have a few ideas. First off, Jeannette Walls’ style of writing is incredibly unique and appealing. It is very matter-of-fact, descriptive, and fast-paced, a style of writing I was not expecting to see in a college English class. Second, I am fascinated by the way she grew up in comparison to my childhood – it is a sort of crazy childhood that I feel part of us all would’ve loved to have been a part of, had we not been subjected to a relatively normal one in comparison to hers. Growing up is such an enchanting topic in American society, idealized and romanticized in many different ways, and hers is definitely a storybook one. Finally, it comes down to the fact that her childhood is so completely unpredictable that I have no idea what is going to come next – and I have to read to find out! That quality in itself is something that I believe all authors try to achieve in some way or another, and she does a great job of it. Overall, I am just genuinely happy that this asparagus my Mom made me eat is grilled, seasoned with lemon, parmesan, and garlic, and is so delicious that I forgot I was even eating vegetables.