My sister had just gifted me Catcher in the Rye when I was in about 7th grade. She always made a point of giving us books in the past, but this one really piqued my interest for some reason. I had always known that it was a famous book, so it excited me even more when I opened it. I made it a point to start reading it as soon as possible. After all of the Christmas day festivities were over, I went to my room to start reading it. It was a freezing cold day with a beautiful sunset that I could see out my window which added a lot of comfort, but I was happy to be inside reading, especially given the craziness of the holiday season that was in full swing.
I saw my sister walk in the door and she sat down on one of the open beds and we started talking about the book. I exclaimed to her how much I loved it. How interesting I found Holden, how weird but at the same time exciting the story was. I really don’t think that she thought that this was going to be my reaction, I think that she was just happy that I liked her gift. I was also happy that I had someone to talk with about the story.
The reason why this moment is so important to me is in the past, reading had always been something that elicited positive emotions of happiness or laughter or whatever it may be when reading a story I loved, but for the first time it brought out some boosted self esteem in myself. I was reading a book ahead of my age group, understanding it for the most part, (or so I thought), and I was just genuinely enjoying it. This experience pushed me to not only read books for enjoyment, but to challenge myself as well, to push my limits of literature and reading and see what I could understand.
