Day 92.

Mini-essay for Brown: why are you interested in your interest?

When I was little I would wake up before the sun and read. In those peaceful hours I learned to love books, the quiet flick of their pages, the front and back covers neat before and after markers. Now I have less time; I read on the bus, while teachers take roll and during passing periods. (I've mastered the walking-while-reading technique.) When I was younger I read for characters that felt like friends, the places I knew like home, the plot that even on a third re-reading kept me in suspense. I still read for all of those reasons, but now I appreciate how literature shows us different versions of ourselves, how it lets us become other people and lets us inside their heads.
I started looking for the deeper meanings in my favorite books—to understand the incongruities as metaphors and symbols, to get at the blood and bone, to find what makes these stories move and breathe. Because when something is important to us we tell a story about it, and I want to tell stories of my own.