one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish...pop quiz, in-class essay, and life draining lectures!!

so do you remember back in the day when your parents read to you and you LOVED it, or at least i did. i loved reading and i loved it when my parents read me a bedtime story. reading with my parents is one of my most cherrished memories as a little kid. but then came the day that i started to hate reading with a passion!! i don't even know what happened, it was just like i loved it one day and the next i hated it. i remember reading all the childrens classics like: 'Goodnight Moon,' 'Harold and His Purple Crayon,' and who could forget all the adventures of Spot! and i remember all the not so memorable books of my more 'mature' years like: O' Pioneers , Grapes of Wrath , and everybody's favorite Oliver Twist. I remember doing a BookIT and making up books and authors to get by. I remember having summer reading and never actually doing it!although im ashamed to admit it, sparknotes become one of my trusted resources for english class. im sure my story of reading frustration is a universal coming of age story. but over the last few years and especially last six months i have rediscovered the excitement i once had for reading. obviously it's not as pure and idealistic as when i was a little tike but i have found that reading truly does open the mind to a new world. i am especially in love with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell, Spinal Cord Perception by Joshua Stephen Porter, Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill, and basically all poetry ever just to name a few. reading is by no means as important as say starvation, human trafficking, poverty, homelessness, or sweat shop scandals but i honestly believe we as a society have learned to hate reading and learning and have thus become a close minded and judgemental as people due to a lack of opening up to new ideas and letting our imagination roam. our great minds never get used and our poor imaginations get caged up when we are little and told that we shouldn't think big and that we can't change the world. i don't think that reading can change the world, i only believe that God and his true love living inside of us and through us can do that. but i do believe that it can change our perception of the world and open our minds to new and exciting ideas.