Happy World Book Day!

I love books, always have done, ever since I was a small kid. I was lucky enough to be brought up by a Mum who is a true bookworm, and so was always being read to, and reading by myself. It was to a point where I was reading on twenty minute car journey's (without feeling sick, might I add), and I ran out of room on my shelves, so had to get rid of a load (which hurt, a lot). I read so much that by the time I was ten, I had run out of children's books to read and so started on Kathy Reiches - and I'm really not joking on that one either. At ten, I was reading Kathy Reiches' Bones series.
As a high schooler, I read nearly the entire Angus, Thongs, And Perfect Snogging books in two weeks, which inspired several more trips to Waterstones to pick up book-to-film/film-to-book adaptions. I had to slow down a bit for my GCSE's and A levels (and to start writing too, of course), but I still kept at it really quite diligently.
Even now, I'm a big fan of books, I want to be an author when I graduate, so of course I love books. As I write this, I'm listening to a song called Boys In Books Are Better by Carrie Hope Fletcher, because I relate to it so much. If you haven't heard that song, here's the link:

But what is it about books that I love so much? Well, that's a hard question, because there's so much. 

There's the escapism element, for a start. I love getting lost in a story line, being completely and utterly swept up in it all. I tend to read teen fiction and things about the supernatural, I love getting so lost in it, I forget that vampires/werewolves/whichever mythical creature is involved isn't real. 

Falling for the characters is another reason, because as Carrie above says, boys in books really are better. Who wants a real guy when you can read about Finnick Odair or Draco Malfoy? (I'm a Slytherin, what can I say?) Nobody! Fictional men may not be perfect, they may have their flaws, but damn it I love them anyway (even when most of them are dead... and not coming back). 

Finding strength in characters too, I have always looked up to strong female characters. So while I fall for Kili, Draco and Shane Collins, I'm also looking up to Katniss, Eve Rosser and Valkyrie Cain. I love to read about these brilliant outcasts, who come in and save the world. Sometimes I like to imagine that I'd be as amazing as them in the same situation, even when I know that I'd die within five minutes. It's fun to pretend for a little while, after all. 

Before I spend the next six years telling you all the reasons why I love books, I should probably wrap this up. Basically, I love it all. Books are an incredible thing. They provide hours of entertainment, introduce us to new concepts, inspire us, and so much more. And all of it with just words, just 26 letters, rearranged again and again, to make sentences, which make paragraphs, which makes stories. Honestly, where would we be without stories? Without Harry Potter, without Bilbo Baggins, without Skullduggery Pleasant? Nowhere, we would be bored, we wouldn't know what adventure and bravery was. 

But with books, we can sail the high seas, fight the Capital, stop Valentine. We fall in love, solve mysteries and crimes, travel to far off places - some of which don't even exist. We can do all of that and more. For someone like me, who's socially awkward and doesn't like to leave the house all too often, a book is a godsend. 

So what is it that I love about books? Everything, really. I love it all. Books are magical things, and if everybody spent more time reading them, I think we would all be that little bit more magical ourselves.