A Good Kind of Lost

I LOVE reading.

There are very few things that top being lost in a book. I just adore that feeling when you are sucked in a book and can't put it down.

My very favorite is when the author pulls a twist that you could have never seen coming in your life. You're thinking things are going this way and then BAM! everything changes. Oh man I love a good surprise.

I just finished reading this book:

So good! It's the first book in the...continuation series of Percy Jackson. I'll rephrase that.

Rick Riordan wrote a five-book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, starting with The Lightning Thief. I bought those books last fall as an investment for my future classroom library and finally read them in February. So awesome! I couldn't put them down. Critics say that they are comparable to Harry Potter...I agree. And that's saying something, since I've always said Harry was my one true love. Well, this is the first book in a new series that Riordan is writing which is basically a continuation of the first series. New main characters, but the old ones are there too, ya dig?

Anyways, I read this 550 page book in just a few short days. It was awesome. And I'm not just referring to the book itself. The fascination I had with reading the story was awesome. I seriously cannot express the love I have for that feeling of being sucked into a good book. But I know that it's one of the reasons I want to be a teacher. I'm super excited about sharing awesome books like Percy Jackson with my students. I'm also super excited about sharing them with my own children. You had better believe that I'm gonna have nightly read alouds with my kids until they move out of the house. Haha, well, we'll see.

I think what I like so much about reading is that it's an escape from reality. I know that in past times when I've been in a rough patch where life is just seemingly awful, reading has been one of the only escapes that has helped me. I get so lost in the world of the book that I forget about my own world. I'm so concerned with the lives of the characters I forget about my own life. It's a wonderful escape.

While I was sweeping at work today I was thinking though how reading books like this makes my life seem so boring. How awesome would it be if I had an exciting life like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter or the Pevensies or Taran and Eilonwy? It would be so cool to be introduced to an awesome world like Camp Half-Blood or Hogwarts. To know that your life has an awesomely cool purpose, like saving the world.

But, I guess that's the beauty about our world. We get to use our imagination and escape to these wonderfully magical worlds, but then when we come back to reality we get to shape our own lives and come up with our own purpose. I strongly believe that you can make yourself whatever you want to be. So I'm not a child of a Greek god, that doesn't mean I can't save the world, does it?

Well, I have no idea what the main idea of this post is. It was supposed to be just how I love to read, but I obviously went in some different directions with that original train of thought. Maybe the whole purpose was just an advertising ploy to get you all to read Percy Jackson. I should be getting paid for this.