Erick Vargas
ENGL 11000
Professor Carr
12 February 2019
The Importance of Reading
Personal experiences helped shape certain ideas about someone or something. Without having the one on one experience, we are not creating memorable memories, and no longer able to construct new learning experiences. In my literacy history, you can see I did not find reading and writing intriguing, however with significant books such as “The 39 Clues” by Rick Riordan, these changed my view of reading. I was the type of kid where I would make things from cardboard and paper and build all kinds of things. I moved around, jumped, ran, and because of all this I found sitting down and reading a book to be boring. I did not learn the capacity that reading, and writing could have in my life. I was not given a book that I could relate to and find excitement to read, until “The 39 Clues”. Three ways in which this book had a significance on my reading and writing are: it helped me to continue to read, build my vocabulary, and I was able to connect with the story.
I began reading this book in elementary school, the teacher brought us to the library to borrow a book. She told us that we need to pick a book out for our reading log. I looked around the library, read the blurb of many books, but I couldn’t find a book that was interesting. After looking around for a bit, I realized that most of the class finished looking around, so I started to look faster. I picked up the book The 39 Clues, read the blurb, and skimmed through the first page. After reading that book, I realized it’s a series book, so I borrowed the second book, then the third, and so on.
The 39 Clues is a series that is based on the most powerful family and the quest to find 39 clues the are hidden around the world that would reveal the family’s secret. This book has action and mystery, and when reading it, you just want to continue reading and find out what happens next. When I started reading this book, I was excited because before that book I have never felt that urge to read more and find out more about the book. This book helped me to continue reading, knowing that this book is a series, I surely was looking forward to reading more. On the long run, The 39 Clues pushed me to read more mystery books and helped build my analytical skills in literature. The more I read the more into the book I got, I figured out that the type of books I liked were mystery and adventure books. This book also helped me to have a personal experience with reading, having to be forced to read in school is not the same as reading from pleasure.
In reading The 39 Clues, I was able to improve my vocabulary skills. Vocabulary is vital in college, which is something I did not believe. I had always heard that reading increases your vocabulary, but I never believe it was something useful in your life. Not only does your vocabulary help you write but it also helps you construct communication, reading, speaking, listening, and comprehension skills. Also, these will help you in terms of career as it builds a professional ambiance. It helps you in a way in which you will learn words that are sophisticated and advance, which can only help you when building your career. These skills are important to have when in college, because it will help you increase your knowledge and achieve a better grade.
Not only does The 39 Clues provide motivation to continue building my reading and vocabulary skills, it also helped me connect to my own life. In the story, we see how a family attempts to discover a hidden treasure, however what it really did was it helped bring the family together, because the real treasure is family. They are just ending up being against each other because they want to find the secret. This showed me that anything can bring family away from each other and family is most important. However even though they are fighting for a hidden treasure, they are also united because of the same purpose of wanting to find the secret. I can also connect to it because that also helped me get a new hobby. I started getting into magic, it fascinated me watching magicians trick people, making things happen out of thin air and making things disappear. Like the book, magic is a mystery and that intrigued me to learn and appreciate magic. I bought a couple magic sets and watch many YouTube videos, and spent a good amount of time learning and performing in front of friends and family.
Reading The 39 Clues has helped me enjoy reading, increase my vocabulary, and I was able to make connections, which helped me further to enjoy reading. With the genre of the book being mystery, it helped to create a new hobby. It helped shape the reader and writer I am today. Recently the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer has intrigued me just like The 39 Clues did, because for similar reasons I became interested in reading more to find what would happen next.
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