My Reader Story

Today I want to tell you my story as a reader. Since I run a book blog, I think it's nice for the people who read it to know more about me and my reading history. You see posts like this go around all over booktube and book blogs, so it's nothing new, but I think my story is quite different from most people. I'll explain why.

Until the age of 16, I hated reading. Yes, I did, wtf was wrong with my younger self. I thought it was boring and was annoyed by the fact that I couldn't read fast at all (about 20 pages an hour if I really tried). I went to a school with pretty dumb people who already called me weird for no reason and if I would just be sitting there reading a book I was scared I'd be bullied. Besides that there was nobody around me who read; my parents don't read and nobody at school did. This is also why I never read the popular books that every child has read like Harry Potter, Narnia and Percy Jackson.

Now that I think about it, that's not entirely true. When I was 14, my mom suddenly came home with three books for me, that she had gotten as an early birthday present. The books were the Hunger Game trilogy, translated into Dutch, because my English was horrible at that time. I was so surprised that my mom had gotten me books, but the first movie had just come out and I was so happy that she bought them for me. I ended up loving these books and last year actually repurchased them in English. In two weeks I read all three of them, but after that I just stopped reading again. Except for the books they made me read in school.

All of that changed when I went to college. In the Netherlands the school system is a bit different, I went to college when I was 16, where I started studying journalism. Slowly, at the beginning of the year, I started noticing that almost everybody in my class read books, except for me. Whenever I heard people talking about books I felt myself getting excited about them as well. That's when I decided that I was going to get my first (English) book. Wow, I know right.

 But which book does a 16 year old girl choose as her first English read? Well, A Game Of Thrones by George R R Martin, of course. I am a huge Game Of Thrones fan and this just felt like the right book for me to buy. At this point I had no idea that it was super long and pretty difficult to read. I started the book in September and ended up finishing it in November. Once I finished it I immediately got the second book and started reading.

In January of 2015, I went to Waterstones for the first time. At this point I had started watching Booktube videos and made a Goodreads account on which I added books to my TBR pile. In Waterstones I came across a book called Throne Of Glass by Sarah J Maas. While writing about this I almost feel like crying, because this book and this author means so incredibly much to me. What most people have with Harry Potter; that it changed their lives in such a good way, I have with Throne Of Glass. The concept sounded very intriguing when I heard Booktubers talking about it, so I purchased the first novel in the series. I loved it so incredibly much that I finished it in 5 days and got the second and third book online. 

For the first time in my entire life I experienced the feeling of being so in love with a book that's it's the only thing you think about and just long to get home to read more. That's when all hell broke loose. I read all the popular novels: Divergent, Red Queen, Shatter me, The Mortal Instruments. I moved to a different house in April of 2015 and got my first real bookshelf. I remember how first I had one shelf filled with books, which soon became two and became three. Before I knew it my entire bookshelf was filled.

In March of 2015 I made my book Tumblr, b00kishfantasy, and started following book blogs, talking to people about books and posting pictures that I took myself. To my great surprise I saw my followers count shooting up and my the time I reached June, my blog had about 3000 followers. I met some really amazing people on Tumblr that I still talk to almost every day.

Another amazing thing that happened during college is that my best friend, who I share this blog with, and I started writing our own book 'The Nameless'. The feeling of reading a book is incredible, but actually writing one myself was even better. A year later, in June of 2016, we finished the book that we love with all our hearts. Of course our goal is to get it published, which isn't going great yet, but we won't give up. One day this story will be printed as an actual book that every single one of you can read. 

I am currently in my final year of college and can't even imagine my life without books and my Tumblr and blog. Even though I am planning on studying something completely different after this (Animation of the Utrecht University of Arts), I will never stop reading and I will never stop writing. 

This was my story as a reader. I would love to read yours as well, so please comment them down below and thank you all so much for sticking with me through this journey.

~ Amber