Reflective Essay: How Reading Has Changed My Life

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I could still vividly recall the long and boring bus rides that I had to take to go back home from school when I was in sixth grade. I lived on the far west side of Shanghai and the school was on the far east side, so everyday I would spend almost 2 hours on the road per trip. I had always hated this not because of the bumpy roads, but because of the fact that there wasn't internet to surf nor friends to talk to, since most of them are either elementary kids or high schoolers. Therefore, reading was probably the most interesting thing to do that I could think of, despite the fact that I would never even imagining myself having the desire to read a book before this. When I got onto the bus, I would plug in my ear buds, listen to some music, and immerse myself in the sea of Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider spy novel collection. I would …show more content…

It was so new and interest to me that I stayed up all night adjusting its different settings and downloading all the books on Amazon, which I regretted moments after I began reading them. It wasn’t because of the book itself, but rather the reading experience. Until today, I am still not used to reading book digitally. Personally, I prefer the presence of the book in my hands, the weight of it, the texture of the paper, the smell of old books, and most important, to physically flip the page. I feel like flipping pages digitally doesn’t give you the same satisfaction and the feel of achievement as a hard copy of a book would. Pointing at what I am reading is always one of my habits, which will not really happen on a Kindle without accidentally highlighting the words or taping into another application. Even though it is more convenient when you are outside especially if you don’t want to carry all the heavy books in your backpack, it is really an advantage when it coming to someone like me, who probably reads a book once a

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