To Read is To Live 🔖

Reading is a part of everyday life for most adults. Everyone reads daily, whether it be social media or sitting down with a hardcover or paperback. We read to understand, learn, and grow; it is an essential part of living. It's inescapable. It is our history, our present, and our future. Literature allows us to expand our minds and express and compound our feelings. It could be a dazzling romance or a seething mystery. As long as we read and feel something, it is all worth it! 

Finding enjoyment in reading has been difficult for me for the last two or so years because I could never find the time or the energy. Now that I am taking courses toward my master's degree, I read every day and night, and it's usually dreadful. Through my lack of reading, I have hindered my ability to understand the meaning of words in a larger context. I am in the military, and the military literature does not follow the style of writing or reading that I got used to in college; everything is very simplified and easier to digest. Writing for my military job has done me a great disservice (as you can see from this sentence). So, in an effort to expand my mind and vocabulary, I have set a reading goal for this year! I hope to surpass the goal, but as long as I can reach my initial goal, I will be happy. 

My goal is to read 50 books in the year 2024! I have already finished two in these first two weeks of the year, and I'm actually excited to start my next one. I've got four books on my January reading list, and I am still working on my list for February, but If I read four books each month, I will reach 48 books by next January. Just need to determine which months I would like to read five books. 

So far, with the first two books I've read, I realize that I enjoy thrillers and murder mysteries. I know I will like books about womanhood or girlhood, and a book I read last year by Toni Morrison made me realize that I also like drama and stories about strife. It's human to immerse yourself in a world where a character loves and hurts and feels real emotions. Real in the sense of not only the female experience but the black female experience. I feel emotions very strongly, and sometimes it's nice to feel someone else emotions. Reading stories that make you step outside yourself is a great way to gain emotional intelligence. 

So far, for January, I've read two books and really enjoyed both! The first was The Silent Patient by Alex Michaeladis, which is considered a horror thriller. It was great, and I'm interested in reading more by him. The second book was a mystery classic that I wish I would've read sooner, And Then There Were None by Agatha Cristie. It was wonderfully suspenseful, and the twist at the end surprised me. I started to read Murder on the Orient Express but realized that it wasn't on my reading list for this month, so I postponed it! I will be reading it sometime this year, though!

The next two books I will be reading for January are All About Love by bell hooks and America's Great-Power Opportunity by Ali Wyne. They are both for enjoyment but the first is for emotional growth and the other will help me improve my political knowledge. 

                                                                        Happy Reading!