Growing up, the worst part of every summer was receiving a reading list for homework. Even as an avid reader, I hated receiving homework to do over my vacation. If I wanted to read, I wanted to do it for pleasure and plot not as an assignment discussing themes and character development. However, as I get older, I become more and more aware of how little I read nowadays.

With the amount of digital content and social media, I find myself more often on my phone scrolling than turning the pages of a novel. A while back, though, I decided to take a break from social media apps.

Although I have downloaded a few of these apps back on my phone, I now find myself spending more time browsing through the News app on my phone. It was through this that I came across an article about doing summer reading lists as an adult. The headline intrigued me, and as I read through the article, I realized that I should be doing the same thing.

Of course, I read a lot of books throughout the school year due to the fact that I am an English major, but that doesn’t mean I read every great writer’s works. Summer vacation is a time to relax, but it is also a time to work on bettering yourself and pursuing your passions/hobbies. However, I think everyone could benefit from reading more than they do. Reading has been replaced with tweets and headlines that we glimpse at for a second. The sad fact is that there are people out there working tirelessly to bring about new, interesting stories and they just go disregarded.

This summer, I am making it my goal to read more books and utilize my public library. I usually tend to stick to one genre of novel, and I hope creating a reading list with different choices will expand my interests. I think everyone should try their best to read more often, and just reading even one book this summer is a start.