My Reading Journey
I won’t be bold enough to call myself a voracious reader, because I know that am not, but reading is still one of those habits that I picked up when I was young and had never let go. Many of my hobbies come and go, but this one had stayed and have stayed for good, so I consider it worth giving it a section on my page and make endeavors to keep it growing.
The first time I really started to read (outside of the curriculum, for the sheer joy of reading) was back in class 6th when my school librarian had made it compulsory to issue a book each week and to not repeat the same books. And thankfully, comic books were allowed as well. So throughout 6th and 7th standards I was occupied with Asterix and Obelix and the Tintin Adventures comics.
By the end of class 7th I started noticing that many of my classmates have leveled up from the comic world into the novels section of the library and thought to give it a try starting from the Hardy Boys series. I think it was Hardy Boys: Top 10 ways to die that I had read. And as far as I remember it had a story of some celebrity, deaths and the Hardy Brothers trying to uncover the mystery. Was a good read at the time. The Fantastic Four was another such series that I explored throughout class 8th. And obviously there were a bunch of other novels by Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh and the likes.
But the magic happened in class 9th when I read the Harry Potter Series. The sheer engagement and joy that I felt from this series made me more demanding from the books that I used to read. It was the first time that I had experience something like that and had made me bold enough to go for larger series, making me go for Percy Jackson Series, Ram Chandra Series, etc.