Certified Bookworm

What does it take to be called a "Bookworm"? 

I have this snippets of memories way back in Grade One where a teacher asked me to read lines and lines of English sentences. I was reading it with ease. But I could not remember how I learned reading. It came to me like breathing. The very first book I finished and reread multiple times during summer break in the small nipa hut of my lola in Ilihan, Poro (a town in Camotes Island) was Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Even if I close my eyes right now, I would still remember its smell, the yellowish pages, the hardbound cover where it shows Dorothy and the rest of her gang following the yellow brick road.

From these early memories, there is nothing more that I would do than to get comfy and read a book.

Am I a bookworm? Well, I can consider myself as such now. (grinning ear to ear) Now that I am nearing my forties and have documented reading more than 500 books in my lifetime. My Goodreads account records 735 books but I only started recording in 2012 so I think I have read more and just could not account the titles.

But I believe that even if you have not read that much, one is still a Bookworm if one has the passion to read and loves to be with books. As long as you enjoy the feeling of reading, then you can be one.

I am currently working on my 2022 Reading Challenge and I am falling short as it is already the sixth month I am five books behind schedule. Still, I am very confident that I can catch up. Novellas will really help and I do not see this as a form of cheating. I am a firm believer that there is no inferior form of literature.

I do not have readers yet but if you happened to read this and would want to begin a reading challenge, start small. Begin with five books in a year and then add more on the next year. I started with 25 books and only made it to 12 but I did not falter. 

Read on fellow Bookworm!

(I am looking forward to writing again. I am so out of practice. I have to figure out if I got mt grammar correct so please bare with me. I am not much of a writer. I used to dream of writing but that would be another story.)