Summer provides the perfect opportunity for busy students to take a break and catch up on their recreational reading. During the school year it can be hard to find free time to partake in hobbies that you enjoy but that are never a priority. I know I rarely have time during the school months to read the books I like to read. With homework, projects, and extracurricular activities, I end up choosing to do the more urgent tasks instead, leaving reading on the back-burner.

Summer gives me the time and peace-of-mind to finally be able to do one of my favorite things: read. Reading a good book still seems to me an underrated but satisfying way to spend my time. It's quiet, peaceful, restorative, and relaxing. While reading, I can delve into whole new worlds and experience things through the character's eyes. Or, if I'm reading nonfiction, I can learn in-depth about a particular subject that interests me.

Something I love about reading fiction books is that they can be fun, exciting, heart-wrenching, page-turning, edge of your seat, mysterious, and magical. Reading expands your mind: your creativity, your knowledge, your imagination, and your ability to see things from someone else's perspective, which ultimately can help you in the long run.

The great thing about being back in my hometown for the summer is my library. My library card provides me access to so many resources, and not just books! You may not know this, but the library has online databases, can connect you to homework help sites, and has way more materials besides books. People can use the library to borrow CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, and a huge selection of adult and young adult books, all for free. If you're not using your library card, I don't know what you're doing with your life.

With this access to books, I can explore worlds far beyond the Midwest United States, and lose myself in places real and imagined. It's an experience unlike any other, and I highly recommend it. Unlike video games, TV shows, or movies, the reader has the power to imagine the setting how they want to, as well as gradually experience the plot of the characters at their own pace.

Reading is both empowering and fun at the same time, and maybe that's why I like it. I have the choice to choose my own stories and be entertained through the power of my own imagination and capacity for comprehension, thanks to great authors who spend their time thinking of the tales they want to tell us.

Every form of entertainment has its own merits, but reading will always be my favorite. Maybe it reminds me of my childhood spent reading as much as I could, or maybe it reaches at that inner human need of curiosity to always know more. Overall, I know I'll appreciate reading for as much as I can this summer.