Introduction and Reading Autobiography

Hello, fellow book lovers. My name is Marianna and in this blog, I will be writing about books I’m reading during my literature course.

I love reading. Always have and always will. My love emerged from the moment I was able to read by myself. I’m trilingual so my mother always read Dutch books to me before bed to enforce the language. I went to a Greek school where I read plenty of Greek novels and mythologies. However, I found that I loved the English written word more than any book I’d read in either Greek or Dutch. 

I started reading at quite a young age and my mother and my Dutch teacher always encouraged me to read, which is how I fell in love with books. As a child, I loved the “De Griezelbus” series written by Paul van Loon. I enjoyed jumping in a world filled with fantasy and mysterious events. 

Later on, I started reading more crime novels such as “Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King and every now and then I would pick up a palette cleanser – young adult romance novels. And so, for the majority of my teens, “Paper Towns” by John Green was my favorite young adult novel. 

I kept switching between these two. Once more grown up, I started to find it more challenging to jump into a fictional world where the reality is augmented or filled with surreal realities. My interest really lay in characters who struggled with something internally, whether it be a mental illness or any other inner conflict. I loved Stephen King’s effortless writing skills and I was easily gripped by his stories. After all, I am a horror lover and so, to jump into a world with evil for the entertainment part of it was fascinating to me.

To this day, I explicitly read books in English. I find the English language much easier to follow, and English written word just has a nicer ring to my mind. I read less than I used to, I find myself more encompassed in worlds of video games but once I jump into a novel that has me reading non-stop, I am reminded of how much I actually love that books are a way to go to a different world and connect with characters to a great extent.

During this course, I am revisiting some novels I loved as a teenager and I will get to read several other books that I just didn’t get round to reading when I was younger.