BEDA 12: My 3 Favorite Books and My Life

Greetings!

I haven't read many books, but I'm really good at giving off the illusion that I have read a lot of books.

Thanks to Twitter, I have made a really, really long list of books I want to read and I've read a lot of awesome books as well.

But even though I've read some really awesome books my three favorite books are books I loved before Twitter.

The first is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Pretty much everyone can appreciate the Harry Potter books for having an awesome story line and for being so well written and researched. If I could be a quarter as amazing as Jo Rowling I would be a MUCH better writer than I am now. Anyway, aside from how the books are written there are two reason why OotP is my favorite Harry Potter book.

Firstly, it's the last book where ALL of my favorite characters are still alive. How Jo managed to successfully kill off all but ONE of them is a stupendous feat of brilliance and torture.

Secondly, I totally lived that book. When I was 15, I was angsty, I was angry, I was in a constant state of discombobulation and I wanted to hit everyone in the face for pretty much no reason--just like Harry Potter. I didn't have a dark wizard stalking my dreams and I wasn't some pretty Asian girl's rebound after I watched her boyfriend die, but I felt like everyone around me was behaving stupidly and secretively and creating unnecessary drama and it drove me mad.

Remember CAPS LOCK HARRY-- yeah, there was a CAPS LOCK APRIL [oddly enough, I typed all of that while holding the "shift" key]. Harry got angry and tore up all the shit in Dumbledore's office. I threw a bottle at my little brother and busted a hole [yes, a clean hole] through his lip. Just like Harry isn't proud of destroying Dumbledore's office, I'm not particularly proud of busting a hole in my brother's lip.

Unlike Harry, I went through six months of stree and anger management to deal with my issues and fortunately no one close to me had to die for me to get my act together.

The point I'm trying to make here is that being 15 was the worst age I could ever possibly be and after reading all of the Harry Potter books, I'd have to say that if you look at Harry from the perspective of him being a normal 15 year old, it was probably the most stressful for him [though running around the forest for months when he was 17 and having your best friend lose their mind was probably pretty awful too--but that's from the stand point of being the "Chosen One].

The second book I love with all my heart and soul is The Giver. A lot of kids in my school could careless for this book because it was summer reading before 10th grade but I loved that book. I read that book in a day because I was so enthralled with it.

And then it touched on my favorite thing ever--the power of love.

In the book the word "love" meant pretty much nothing. You used the word love in situations like "I love these potatoes." But the boy [the main character whose name escapes me. Jonas? Or was that his best friend? I am crap at names.] was obviously able to experience the feeling of love and even though love could lead you do some pretty stupid and sometimes awful things, he though their "perfect" society needed it because everyone needed to feel how amazing and awesome and wonderful the power of love was.

Freaking. Awesome.

It made you question whether or not sacrificing all those things was worth it to have a world without violence and crime and poverty if it also meant having a world without love.

And my third favorite was... Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. I know what you're thinking "What are you 12?" No. I'm 19, and I was 9 when I read that book. Still, 10 years later, I remember the PTS's and "we must increase our bust" and being introduced to the lie that my period would be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Aside from the latter, I'm really glad my mother made me read that book [and I will surely introduce my daughter to it, but let her know ahead of the time about the biggest lie I was ever told]. I read a lot books when I was nine years old that helped shaped me. I read Sorcerers Stone for the first time when I was nine. I read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was nine [I know, intense book for a nine year old but, whatever]. But Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret made me grow up a bit.

It helped me learn about being myself and it made me really love my friends and taught me to really value friendship because sometimes they're the only ones who understand.

I've read other books that have shaped my life, like Looking For Alaska, The Diary of Anne Frank for example. I look forward to reading a lot of other life changing books in the future [and thanks to Twitter I probably will].

Fare thee well,
April