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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by  The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here.  This week’s topic is :

Reasons Why I Love:  Reading

Lots of reasons.  First and foremost I guess I take after my dad, he loves to read and had a good collection of books that I could tuck in to, plus I had a teacher in my early years who really encouraged reading and recommended books to us.  So, what else do I get from reading:

1. Well, it’s a hobby and I think hobbies are important for us all. It gives us something of our own to delve into and become absorbed with.
2. Escapism.  I don’t suppose this needs too much explanation really.  Sometimes when you’re reading it’s like you’ve become completely involved with what’s going on to such an extent that you really have escaped from the everyday world around you – so much so that you miss your train stop, or randomly make strange noises out loud, or become immune to everyone and everything around you.
3. Travel – similarly to escapism, reading can take you on wild adventures to all sorts of places, both real and imaginary, certainly places that you won’t see unless in your wildest dreams.  I’ve been into deepest space, Middle Earth and even the centre of the earth.  I’ve been 20,000 leagues beneath the sea and stranded on a remote island.
4. Great characters.  Goodies and baddies alike.  Great characters are what really makes the book for me.  I want to feel an attachment, if there’s a romance I want the chemistry to sizzle, if there’s an evil so and so I need to feel the motivation, not just some crazy machiavellian character twirling his moustache.  I want strong friendships and people that I care about who don’t totally step out of character just to make a plot point.
5. Reading community..  Obviously this is a fairly recent development for me but being a part of the reading community is something that I love.  It’s where I get most of my book recommendations from and it’s the place where I can chat a never ending stream of babble about books and people don’t mind, in fact they positively encourage it.
6. Blogging.  This is also a fairly new addition to my hobby and it’s a part that definitely helped me to form connections with the reading community at large.  I confess that when I first started blogging I never expected anybody to visit my little corner let alone try and connect and it’s become something that I thoroughly enjoy.
7. Events.  Another obvious one but there’s usually lots of events going on in fact I’d say you can pretty much fill up your entire yearly calendar with events of one type or another.  Take for example the Wyrd and Wonder event mentioned above.  Vintage Sci Fi which usually takes place in January or any number of readathons that are constantly buzzing around the blogosphere.  Choose your own catnip and jump on in.
8. Easily transportable.  Lets just be honest, reading is a hobby that you can take with you anywhere.  You can make use of travel time, fill in a lunch hour and even multi task if you like audio.  Is there anything better than a hobby that you can always crack open.
9. Shopping.  I really don’t enjoy shopping – unless it’s books – and then I can spend hours and hours browsing.  I do love my kindle these days and I will warn you that ‘one click’ is practically addictive.  And, with my new found love of audio I can also shop on Audible too.
10. That’s it for me.  I’m sure there are plenty more reasons that will spring to mind as soon as this is posted but for now – did I miss one of your favourite reasons for reading??