Intro Book Love
Book Love
Hello, wonderful Reader!
Happy February! Welcome to Intro Books! This is my first post about Book Love! Intro Book Love will be an overview of my Book Love vision and of what I am hoping to share with YOU.
Books Are Magic.
Books bring you into new places, new experiences, new relationships, new worlds in faraway places. They are knowledge and wonder, fairytales and fables. Books are people’s dreams, imagination, and creativity put into pages of parchment and ink.
Books are people's hard work and passion. Books bring you into worlds created by the writer's imagination. My dream is to create worlds and spin tales of wonder and beauty like so many writers before me. MY DREAMS TURNED INTO WORKS OF PARCHMENT AND INK.
My Reading Testimony
This post would not be complete without explaining WHY I LOVE BOOKS SO MUCH.
If you can believe it, when I was little I HATED reading. Well…let me explain, I hated reading because I COULD NOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND WORDS. I could not read. Words and letters did not make sense to me. I would see them but I could not understand, I did not know what they meant. Through kindergarten and first grade, you would find me crying most days because I just could not understand written words. I tried and tried and tried but NOTHING EVER WORKED. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read, it was that I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND. It was extremely frustrating, hence the crying. I thought I would never be able to read. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE!
But this (as seen by I am writing a post series called BOOK LOVE) was not the end of my story. I was soon going to learn that NOTHING is impossible.
When I was seven my family served at a church. My dad was the youth pastor and I grew up being in the church. It was a safe place for me. I remember when I was little, whenever my family went to church and the pastor called to “raise your hand to become a Christian and accept Jesus into your life as your Lord and Savior,” I ALWAYS RAISED MY HAND. I always raised my hand because:
1) Yes I was a Christian.
2) I wanted Jesus in my heart and life.
3) Jesus is my Lord and Savoir.
It made perfect sense to my little kid brain that you raise your hand in church. I believed all those things. Yes, I’m gonna raise my hand. So I always did. Every Sunday I would raise my hand, that is till I was seven. Something happened when I was seven, something wondrous and miraculous.
The church was having a movie sermon night in the main sanctuary. That means they would pick a movie and teach a sermon based on the movie’s story and theme. I don’t remember the movie’s name, but I do remember it was set in a diner and surrounded by a small cast of people. One of them ended up being either Jesus or an angel (I can’t remember). It wasn’t a very good or impactful movie (low-budget film) and I do not remember the sermon. But when the pastor asked for people to raise their hands and accept Jesus into their lives, it was different.
Like every time before, I raised my hand and repeated the prayer. BUT SOMETHING CHANGED IN ME.
My chest felt funny and I was hot all over. I ran out of the sanctuary to find my mom just outside the door. I couldn’t stop crying. It was hard to breathe. My mom took me and my baby brother to the nursery. She sat me down on the ground and told me to breathe and tell her everything that happened.
I told her what happened, that I raised my hand and prayed, but I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Mom, understanding what happened, told me that I had just accepted Jesus as my Savior and that HE WAS IN MY HEART NOW. (My mom is incredible and the best mom ever! I am so thankful for her! If you want to know more about her, follow her on her blog Abigail Aviva).
For years I had been raising my hand and praying that prayer, but this time it was different. I don't know what it was then, but now I see that it was God. IT WAS THE HOLY SPIRIT ENTERING ME AND CHANGING MY LIFE. From that day on everything changed.
You may be wondering why this is my “reading testimony”? It is simple. After I gave my life to God and accepted Jesus in my heart as my Lord and Savoir, God gave me a gift. I call it a gift because that is what it is to me.
Like I said before, I could not read. It didn’t make any sense to me. But after this moment I could read clearly. When I say I could read, I mean I COULD READ! I understood everything (yes there were words I would trip up on but I could read). For the first time in my life, the words were clear, the letters made sense. I understood the language of words!
Everything made sense and the only thing I would read—and was the reason how I could read—was the BIBLE. Every day I would read my kiddie Bible. The Bible was the first book I read, the first book I understood and is still my very favorite book to this day. I went from not being able to read a thing to reading the Bible every day. This was my gift—reading.
This is why I love reading! This is why books are so important to me. They were a precious gift given to me. God gave me the gift of books, stories, writing, and worlds of beauty and ink. I will forever cherish His gift to me.
This is my reading testimony.
I want to share with you the wonder of books.
In my next book-focused posts, I will be sharing with you, books I love and that inspire me. The ones I couldn’t put down, the ones which inspire me to write fantastical worlds, the ones I love to read over and over again.
Books are a big part of my life. I love getting lost in their worlds. I also want to help people love reading and get lost in a story.
MY HOPE, MY DREAM IS TO ONE DAY PUBLISH BOOKS FOR OTHERS TO READ. For others to go into my worlds.
The stories I wish to share with you are many.
Some will be classics like Narnia by C. S. Lewis and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. Others will be more modern. Some are fairy tales, others romances. Some are set in magical kingdoms, historical settings, outer space, and more.
All the books I share will be clean and if ever I have any notes of warning (for younger audiences like children) I will be sure to tell. I will also be putting an age rating of how old I recommend readers to be (Nothing will be above a teen rating).
Kids and reading.
All readers are different as are kids. Each child is different with their own interests and likes. For parents, kids, teens, and everyone, my advice is to TRUST YOUR GUT. Trust the silent tug, your conscious, God’s silent voice in where he leads. Everyone is different. Sometimes you may understand why you feel a tug away, others you may not. I say trust your gut, that silent voice.
*To parents and kids, trust each other. HAVE OPEN DISCUSSIONS. Talk to each other. Build a space to talk about the awkward. My mom is a BIG believer in talking, sometimes it is awkward and uncomfortable but I’m always thankful to have those talks instead of being left in the dark. For parents, if there is a book your kids want to read but you feel uncomfortable letting them read it, instead of just forbidding it, tell them why. If your kid knows why you don’t want them to read it, that can help them in understanding why. Now it won’t just be a forbidden thing, but it has been talked about and agreed upon. There is now a reason why instead of “It's forbidden!” Or “Just because.”
*Note: No one has to take this advice, this is just my thoughts and opinion.
Resources:
Below are some resources I love for looking up books. SOMETHING I ALWAYS DO BEFORE READING A BOOK (unless I know the author to be always clean) IS TO LOOK UP THE BOOK FIRST. Sometimes you can get a feeling about a book, a gut reaction saying if you should not read the book (if you have this, LISTEN). Other times (most), you will want to research.
Here are some of my top book research resources from my first favorite to last:
If you liked this post and want to know more about me and my vision, check out:
End Note
My book-hope is for you to fall in love with the magic of reading. To get lost in spun tales and find your next favorite adventure. I hope some of the books I share will find a home on your shelf. There will be a bit of everything so hopefully, you will find your match!
Question Time!
I want to hear from you! GIVE SOME BOOK LOVE! What is one of your favorite books? What is your favorite genre to read (Fantasy, Sci-fi, non-fiction, romance, other)? What are you most excited to learn from Book Love? I would love to chat!
Keep reading to hear about more Book Love and other topics. My next Book Love post will be on one of my all-time favorite books! Tune in NEXT WEEK for “Intro Writing”!
Peace!
—Moriyah ♥️
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