Reading, anyone?

I love to read not just to improve my vocabulary but more importantly to relax. You see, when I read, I am transported to another world of romance, adventure, drama and suspense. I particularly love to read romance novels and usually do not bother to check who the author is as long as I like the book.

The age of E-books have become a fancy among book worms like me. Close friends send me e-copies of books they have read which they know I would also like. When I was in elementary, my favorites were the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. I often imagined myself solving crimes alongside Nancy or beat the Hardy Boys in discovering clues to solve the puzzles. Highschool saw me reading Mills and Boons and Harlequin Romances. I also fell in love with the Scottish warriors and their feisty ladies as well as the knights-in-shining-armor- type love stories. Reading then was my escape from the harshness of puberty and highschool life.

The strains of college forced me to concentrate on reading biochemistry and math books rather than Daniel Steel. But I discovered that the halls of the Xavier University Library is a treasure trove of Leon Uris, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy collections. I would go the Fiction Section and be lost in the world of espionage, betrayal, suspense and death.

When it became a fashion to turn bestseller books to movies, I thought that it might work. I saw the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code movie and was unsatisfied. The movie failed to capture the thrill of the book version and left out some details that are essential to the story. Those that did not read the book do not share my thoughts and were content with the way the movie was done. But for those like me that read the book first before watching the movie largely decided that the movie did not do justice to the book.

I hope that my children will inherit my love for reading because literature is not limited to only prose and poetry but also to Pugad Baboy.