What is a Book?

A book is a thing you can use to relax and escape to another place. You can use this book to image another world and create your own stories and pictures. A book is like a vacation, there are so many choices of where to go (what to read) and so many activities you can do while you are there. You can even write a book so that it is your exact vacation, so that you are doing what you want on that vacation, and so you can imagine the perfect vacation.

Every book is different, some have pictures to guide you through the story, and some have lots of words to tell you a story and let you imagine your own pictures and scenarios. Each book looks different. There are small books and big books and books that have accessories - like maps and compasses - to help you interact more with the story.

I agreed with Joe Meno’s definition of a book because he stated, “For me, a book, in whatever form it takes – hardbound copy, paperback, electronic version, online instrument, text download on a cell phone, even a story read orally – a book is actually a place, a place where we, as readers, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word into image”. I agreed with this because people read books many different ways but no matter which way they read a book they are able to take the words the author wrote and translate them into their own images.

Joe Meno had lots of great things to say about what a book was to him and one of my favorite things he said was “but the book in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it”. I thought this was amazing because that is my favorite part about reading, the fact that you can share with people what you thought the characters looked like and compare

it to their image of what the person looked like.
I think that there is a difference between reading on a Kindle, an iPad, or a phone and reading from an actual book. The difference is that in an actual book you can smell the old or new pages and in a book you can look at the color of the cover page and you can see how the rustic and discolored look of the pages gives it character and on a tablet or electronic device you get none of that. One last thing I like about books is that every time you buy a book you can call it yours and soon enough you will have shelves of books you can look back on.

Why I Read

I read because it allows me to escape into a different mindset so for the period of time you are reading you aren't thinking about anything but the book and the characters. It also helps you relax and I also like that there are books about everything and there are so many different genres so whatever you want to read about there is probably a book somewhere about it and you can never run out of books to read because new ones are coming out all the time! You also have the option of reading independently or in a group like a book club. One thing I like about reading in book clubs is that when you talk about the book it allows you to see what other people interpreted from a chapter or what they think about the characters and this shows you how differently people interpret a book. One last thing I like about reading is that it can also give you ideas for writing your own books or articles and it can help expand your horizon to new vocabulary by reading books with a bigger word range. Because of all these things I like to read!