The Uttermost Ends of the Earth

To honour the fact that this is my first post, I guessed writing about first times was appropriate...

The first time you open a book, it's not only a story, but a whole new world that you are discovering. But of course I'm not inventing anything new, and all those out there who love books know exactly what I'm talking about, and are probably leaving this page this very minute. But this isn't the subject of my post.

No, when I'm mentioning first times, I have in mind the first time you read a book which changes you're life forever, however small the change.

It's that first time when you open a book that will stay with you for the rest of your life, a book that you read twice or three times and still feel the need to go back to and read again.

It's that book from which you learned lessons of life, that made you cry so hard your head hurt, that made you laugh so loud you woke up your mom next door.

And sometimes, it's those books that you can't discriminate, you have to love them all the same, for so many different reasons.

Many of the books on my reading list have been described as such books, and I was curious to see if I would agree or not with that general point of view.

As for the books I've read, many of them have stayed with me, some of which are connected to this post.

Nevertheless, this post is not a review of those incredible stories, but about how they affected me, often when growing up.

What all of those books have in common is the power they had on me when I read them for the first time. Not only did they take me to another world. but they made me think about our own, very real world.

They made me realise how crucial relationships are in shaping our identities and personalities, they made me question our society and its drives, often too focused on personal gain and greed than on global prosperity.

More importantly, they pushed me to challenge my own goals and dreams, my own ambitions for my future on this planet.

Was I going to sit idly around while people took advantage of the less fortunate?

Was I going to sit in a lecture theatre listening to a subject I have no interest in just to make that much more money?

Was I going to passively live my life, waiting for others to change things around me, to live their lives fully, and letting a minority of individuals control my life?

Or was I going to follow what I believed was my purpose, and voice the concerns I had about how our world is now changing for the worse?

Because that's what books do, they make you think, they make you question things around you that you might not have seen, that you might have been ignoring all along.