Appreciation for brand new books:

• I love the feeling a fresh brand new book has in my hands.
• I love the smoothness of a new cover,
• the crispness of the pages
• how the spine is all pristine.
• As the scent of the printed paper wafts from the pages, I love knowing that I’m the first person to smell these exact pages since they were fresh off the presses.

Appreciation for fiction books:

• I love the way a story draws you in right from the first page.
• I love the way it keeps me interested, entertained and gripped, wanting to know what will happen next.
• I love the way a book can fill me with excitement as I’m *there* as a fly on the wall in exciting scenes.
• I love the way a book can give me butterflies in my stomach when cute romantic things occur.
• I love the way a story can surprise you as it suddenly reveals a huge twist you just didn’t see coming!
• I love the way authors use language with beautiful similies and metaphors and capture the essence of something so artistically and accurately.
• I love how no matter what your mood is, a truly engaging book can offer an escape into another world that takes you away from anything you want to get away from in your surroundings.
• I love how some books can introduce you to new ideas, places and things which may go on to inspire you in your own life.
• I love how the more I read, the more new words I learn and the better my vocabulary gets, without my even really trying.
• I love how I can emotionally connect with a character and really *care* about them.
• I love how reading an author’s words in some way creates this special bond between the author’s intimiate inner world and the readers. I love how we can connect in this way.
• I love how a book can make me smile.
• I love how sometimes when I’m reading in public, the urge to smile or laugh when reading is so strong that I can’t suppress it, despite my best efforts to blend into the straight-faced surroundings.
• I love how a book can make me laugh out loud.
• I love how books can inspire me to want to write too.
• I love how characters who are particularly awesome can inspire me to be a better person.
• I love how I can be so *in* a book and enjoy it so much that time passes without my even noticing. A state of complete enraptured flow.

As I was searching for illustrations for this post, I found this cool poster giving another person’s perspective on why they love reading:

PS. If you love reading too I have two website recommendations for you! One is GoodReads.com, which is a great place to find out which books are rated most highly so you can filter out some of the not-so-great books before purchasing. The second website is for those of you who are adventurous and like reading books that haven’t been reviewed yet. The site is netgalley.com and it’s a place where you can sign up to be a “reader” for books before they have been released. They send you free ebooks in exchange for you writing honest book reviews online. Check those out if they sound interesting to you