Paperback's Pondering's: The Reader vs. The Non-Reader (Non-Reader's Point of View)

Well this is new. Hello there! My name’s Claudia and my sister Emily asked me if I wanted to write a post for her blog, and to be honest with you, I was kind of apprehensive about it. I’m absolutely terrible at putting my thoughts to paper, and I’d rather have a rant face to face with someone then through the Internet. But, I’ll give it a go. Please bear with me, like I said this is probably going to be very informal and contain many grammatical errors, but hey, we all learn differently, right?             

I’d like to start off this post by saying that a lot of the things I’m going to be talking about are my personal opinions and beliefs. Now you may not agree with my opinion, and that’s totally fine. However, please do recognise that my opinion is not meant to offend of hurt anyone else, and if you respect mine, I’ll respect yours. After all, a little debate is always healthy. Anyways, as you may have guessed by the title, I’m not exactly an avid reader. And when I say this, I mean that I’ve basically only read John Green. A lot of the reviews I see my sister write, I have never even heard of the books, or authors. So this kind of gives you an idea on how many books I’ve actually read.

Now here’s the thing, I don’t actually hate reading or hate books. In fact, I hope that in the coming year I can get a lot more into books. The thing is, it takes A LOT to impress me. Some books I’ve attempted to read are just so boring and so dry and so un-intelligent (in my opinion) that I just can’t get through them. Now here’s a secret, I skipped pages all throughout attempting to read the Harry Potter series, and ended up giving up by the third book because I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on. Now this may be because I don’t have an active imagination, and fantasy books just do not appeal to me at all. 

 Now don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is an amazing person/author, and I can’t even imagine how she came up with this whole series. But for me, I didn’t enjoy it at all. Some might say that it is just because I'm not an avid reader, but at the time I read it, I was pretty much at the same level as my sister. I just could not get through this series. 

Most books that I see my sister reading do not appeal to me at all. I always wonder why there are so many post apocalyptic books nowadays, it just seems so repetitive. I would personally prefer to read more realistic, dark books.  For example, Perks of Being a Wallflower completely knocked it out if the park for me. It left me with amazing lessons and life questions for anyone out there. However it's the more mythical or futuristic books that leave me uninterested. 

Another huge issue: films. Now I don’t understand why book worms get so defensive when a book becomes a movie and non-book readers obsess over it.  You didn’t write the book, you have no control over what people can and cannot see when they go to the movies, and it’s a free freaking country!!!!! If I want to go see every single Harry Potter movie in the theatre, but haven’t read single book, guess what? I’M GOING TO. If I want to buy a Hogwarts sweater and haven’t read a single book but seen the movie, I’M GOING TO. AND WHAT SHOULD IT MATTER TO YOU?! Movies are simply meant to attract more fans. If you've become a fan of a movie, that's great! If that movie happened to be a book first, that's great too! But what does it matter if you haven't read the book? You've seen a movie, and you like that movie, and now you've become a fan. Why.Should.It.Matter? 

 Movies are meant to bring words to life. Movies are meant to inspire more viewers and more people to engage on what was once a novel. After all, the author gave permission for their book to be made into a movie, so I’m not exactly sure why some become so offended. Taking the Harry Potter series for example, great movies. The special effects and acting was amazing. Now I absolutely love movies as well as acting, so yes I do prefer the film rather than the book. The opportunity for an actor to forget their lives and put themselves in another person’s shoes, I just find so incredible.

Well, that was a long post. I don’t know how many of you actually made it to the end, but if you did, thank you. Thank you for hearing my side of the story and actually giving us non-readers some attention. In the end, we’re all the same people in this crazy messed up world, and if we start worrying about ourselves and less about other people, life would be amazing. Well that’s all for me today, thank you for reading to the end if you did, and if you want to comment anything to me/about what I said, negative or positive, please do. My sister said she’d tell me if this got any comments, and I would be happy to reply. Again, I don’t care if you don’t like my opinion, but as long as you respect mine, I’ll respect yours. Thanks again!

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      Claudia