My Literary Autobiography!

Literary History

Comparing my school and home experiences with reading, I would say that they are completely different. The main difference is choice. This is probably why I feel that my school experiences with reading were mostly negative. The books that I clearly remember disliking were the ones we were forced to read throughout middle and high school. Being the age I was, most of the books we read were boring and had absolutely no relation to my life. We read books like "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Great Gatsby," and "Native Son." I had trouble understanding these books and could not appreciate them. At the age I am at now, I would really love to go back and read these books to get a new experience with them. By doing this, I feel that I would get a deeper understanding of them and a whole new appreciation. My school experiences with reading were mostly negative (with a few exceptions) due to the fact that we were forced to read books that I found no personal connection to.



My home experiences with reading are my favorite part of my literary history! My experiences here were so positive and enjoyable. As a child, my mom would read my siblings and I books all the time. I loved reading stories. On Saturday mornings, I would take all of my stuffed animals and put them in a big circle on my parents' bed and read books to them, pretending that they were my class. When I was an emergent reader, I read books and was read to frequently. As I grew up, my home experience continued to be positive, and I grew to love reading books all the time, especially series books. I loved that I already knew the characters and could easily tell what was happening in the story. When I read books that were interesting to me and ones that I could relate to, I enjoyed them so much more. This also caused me to write all the time. I wrote stories whenever I could, having a lot of notebooks in my room. In the fifth grade, an author came to our school and I actually asked her if she could help me publish one of my books. Needless to say, my home experiences with reading were so positive that I loved to read and write all the time, considering them hobbies of mine. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that I could choose any book to read or any idea to write about. I was not being forced to do anything, I made the choice of what I wanted to read.


My favorite books as a child were "Goodnight Moon," "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," "Go Dog Go," and "Barnyard Dance." As I mentioned above, I loved reading series books. In elementary school I read the "Magic Treehouse" series. In middle school I read "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and "The A-list" series. In high school I read the "Gossip Girl" series, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series, and the "Twilight" series. I loved reading books that were interesting to me and could relate to my life.

 Current Literary Attitudes and Interests

 I currently enjoy reading for the most part. It truly just depends on what I am reading. In my spare time, I like to relax. Sometimes I consider reading relaxing, so I would find this enjoyable. One big factor has to do with choice. As I mentioned before, If I am being forced to read something uninteresting, I have less motivation to do it. I do see myself as a reader because I truly enjoy the concept of reading and absolutely love getting lost in a good book. However, at this time in my life when I have a lot of boring textbooks to read for my classes, reading can seem like a task instead of a pleasure.


During the school year when I become extremely busy with classes and reading textbooks, I am sad to say that I do not read for pleasure. The worst part about this is that I love reading outside of school and am always looking forward to starting a new book. The problem is that I just do not have the time. When I do have spare time in college, I usually like to relax my eyes and brain, not stimulate them with a good book. If I did not have so much homework and school reading on a daily basis, I would definitely make time for outside reading. During breaks in the school year (like summer and Christmas), I always am starting a new book, excited to have an opportunity to read something that I actually enjoy reading.

It is hard to pick a favorite genre of mine because all of the books I read have different plots and meanings. The one reoccurring theme that I can think of is romance. Every recent book that I have read has some sort of love scenario. Recently I have been reading books by Nicholas Sparks, Jodi Picoult, Stephenie Meyer, Emily Giffin, and Suzanne Collins. I really enjoy all of the different writing styles and stories these authors have to share. I plan to read several books by these authors this summer and am very excited.


Future Literacy Goals

My personal reading goals are just to read more things that I enjoy and to find more time to do this! I really do consider reading a hobby of mine and a true interest. I want to make time to really enjoy reading new books in a non-stressful environment unlike college. I also want to find more authors and books that I can really appreciate and add to my list of favorites. As for my professional reading goal, I want to read more books that will help me become a better teacher! I want to be the best teacher for my students that I possibly can, and I know books are a perfect way to gain insight about teaching. Hopefully I can use books to my advantage to help me in a professional environment.