Let me tell you a short little story. I just turned 30 years old, I'm not a young adult anymore. BOO!!
I was lucky to have parents that brought me to the library often when I was young, and I would check out books many at a time and read whole books in a day or so. I enjoyed books in elementary school... like Toad & Frog, the Ramona series, Amelia Bedilia...etc. Then in middle school, I started reading books like Goosebumps,The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley books. In High School I started moving on to Christopher Pike & Stephen King for fun and then I really enjoyed the classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, Wuthering Heights, etc.
So... then came college. I was a business major. Guess what books I read? Accounting, Statistics, etc... I took the more than 4 year plan, because I had to work and go to school. Somehow, in all of my studying, I forgot that I actually liked reading for FUN.
Cut to, 2008. People are lugging around these big books at work. When I asked, they told me it was Twilight. And so, the seed was planted. I stalled. The movie came out, didn't watch it. Almost completely forgot about it. Then, I watched a movie called, Adventureland. If you haven't seen it...oh my gosh, I can't say enough about it. It is one of my absolute favorite movies, ever. Funny. Sweet. Sexy. Heartbreaking. And I was introduced to a lovely young actress named Kristen Stewart. So I started doing my research about her other movies, and found that she was actually in Twilight. So, by the time I'd come around to watching Twilight, it was already out on video on demand. I got comfy one night and put it on and just fell in love with the story. Of course, the movie ends on a "cliffy" so I ordered all 4 books and read them in probably 5 days total.
I could. not. stop. reading.
I think people either love the series or hate it, but I will forever be grateful to Twilight for introducing me back into reading Young Adult for FUN. I may be one of the few people that wasn't interested in the Harry Potter books. Those didn't excite me the way Twilight did. Later, the book that started me on a dystopian path was, The Hunger Games. When I devoured the Hunger Games series, I found many others that I absolutely LOVED, like Divergent, Enclave, Matched, Delirium, and Across the Universe.
I really feel certain, that had it not been for my love of everything Twilight, I would never have gone back to Young Adult books and never would found all these other great reads. Thank you, Twilight and Stephenie Meyer, and the beautiful cast of the Twilight movie series for helping me discover reading again.
So... what book are you most grateful for?? Let Beth Revis know and you could win! (See Below)
