I'm
honored to be placed on Timbercrest's "Top Readers" list, for the
number of pages I read during winter quarter. It's the first time I've
been on this list. The total number of pages I read was over 3,000.
That may seem like a lot, but the top kid in our grade, Matt Bennett, read over
10,000! I wonder what books he reads. Mine were virtually all
Stephen King books.
Here is
my reading log going back to the fall of '97:
Peter
Pan, JM Barrie
Tarzan,
ER Burroughs
Grimm's
Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm
The
Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
White
Fang, Jack London
Call of
the Wild, Jack London
National
Geographic Atlas of the World
The
Phantom Tollbooth, Norman Juster
The
Chosen, Chaim Potok
Rumble
Fish, SE Hinton
Journey
to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne
The Man
Without a Face, Isabelle Allende
Mysterious
Island, Jules Verne
Around
the World In 80 Days, Jules Verne
Robinson
Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
The Eyes
of the Dragon, Stephen King
The
Waste Lands, Stephen King
The
Stand, Stephen King
Salem's
Lot, Stephen King
Firestarter,
Stephen King
The Dead
Zone, Stephen King
Night
Shift, Stephen King
The
Tommyknockers, Stephen King
Skeleton
Crew, Stephen King
I love
reading because it takes you places in your mind. In each of these books,
you get to become the person you are reading about. A magical
transformation takes place as you get drawn into the pages. Reality gets
replaced by a personal one, with objects you choose to interact with, no matter
how they are described. It is the ultimate substitution for experience,
providing all the things we can possibly learn without actually doing them.
