Yesterday, after the meeting I had with my zoology group, Jericho and I went to National Bookstore to help him find a photo album for his portfolio for Psych. We didn't find what we were looking for, so we ended up checking out the books there.

We had this similar love for reading, and we talked about books a lot. We discussed about the books that we read every time we saw a good one on the shelves. We even told each other the books that we wanted to read, and as the conversation went on, I felt this heavy surge of frustration and disappointment.

Before I entered high school, I used to read a whole lot. I read a lot of novels and short stories, poetry collections and anything I could get my hands on. My teachers in Language and Reading have always said that I am a wide reader, but I never really minded these comments because I read because I wanted to read. It was part of my system, and it felt as if I breathed and lived books. I never really see myself as a bookworm, because I perceived reading as a normal thing, a necessity even.

Things changed when I entered high school. All I read then were my textbooks, and I rarely had the time to grab a random book and read it. The novels that I read were required for English. But what makes it worse is that I never really noticed that my once sagacity for reading anything is slipping away from my blood. If ever I had this chance to feed my want to read something out of want, I'd grab a Readers' Digest, Newsweek, the newspaper, or for a quick fix, news from the internet. The number of novels I read were at an all-time low then, and because of this, I call this time of my life a reading drought. Lack of time was a factor, and lack of money to buy new books was another. If I wanted to read a novel, I had to borrow one from my classmates or friends who had a copy of it. I read all of Dan Brown's books in high school, and all of the copies I read were borrowed.

I'm seeing the drought continue now in college. I'm really quite scared that the time will come that I wouldn't read something if it isn't a textbook. I want to bring back that hunger for reading anything---to not think of reading something out of academics a waste of precious time. I want to set aside part of my allowance to save up to buy a new book every two weeks, or, as a cheaper alternative, check out a novel from the library every week for me to read. I really wish that I'd be able to do this this coming semester.

I have to move and act. I really don't want to lose a necessity---no---I don't want to lose a part of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's rare to find a guy who's a book lover, don't you agree?