Here at Paperback Pals, we love books. Like, love, Love, LOVE, LOVE books. However, we are extremely aware of the dreaded book haters. You haters find books boring, think it’s a waste of time, have only negative thoughts toward books, and sometimes will do 
whatever it takes to avoid conversation on books. You simply refuse to use your creativity to indulge in our mystical world. See the picture on the right? You who are appalled by the thought of reading will hastily snatch for the cell phone, no matter how outdated it is. I mean, who has iPhone 3G’s anymore? On the other hand, we book lovers will see this giant book and squeal at the thought of a long journey to a wonderful place in the depths of our imagination. Book haters, we are not telling you to get off our website. We are actually urging you to stay. Please, keep reading as we try and convince you to join our fandom. Hopefully, you will start to understand our way of thinking. Come to the dark side-we have books!!!! For those of you who didn’t get the last sentence, there is a saying, “Come to the dark side-we have cookies!” The only difference is that language arts geeks aren’t on the dark side. Reading and writing isn’t bad for you, or evil.
Now, the most common reason why people don’t like to read is school. For the record, we haven’t met a soul who doesn’t think a smidgen of school is not that great. If you stop associating reading with school, a part of that negative connotation (an idea or feeling that follows a word around) goes away.
So why is it school’s fault that people don’t like to read? Well, there are many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that you have to constantly annotate, or add post-its stating your ideas while reading. Sometimes, you have to answer questions while reading. Or, you are only allowed to read a certain amount of the book at a time. Now why is this bad? Well, you shouldn’t be censoring your thoughts while reading, because reading is about letting your mind wander into another world, relax, and just imagine. Now, how are you suppose to do that if you are constantly thinking about a certain question you are suppose to answer? Or a requirement you have to fill? Another reason that you won’t be able to truly enjoy reading is because you have to keep stopping throughout the book. Sure, you have to do that in your reading outside of school too, because you can’t read 24/7. But if you are disrupting your book because of school when you easily could have kept going, that’s just not right.
Reading is all about letting your self wash down the drain, and be transported into another world. You don’t have to read just because something terribly tragic happened to you, and you want to go to “a happy place”, but merely to just have some fun! For those of you who are just starting to get into reading, we suggest you try fantasy. It really captures you. We definitely recommend Rick Riordan, whose novels are great for readers of all ages! Well, maybe the youngest age would be 9, but we know parents who have read and loved him too.
Okay, that wasn’t very convincing, but just pick up some books from the library that look interesting, and READ! Trust us, you’ll be surprised how compelled you will to keep on reading after, say, half the book (some books just start slower than others but pick right up during the next book in the series). We’re not sure when your mind will be changed, because truth be told, we don’t remember when we started loving books. It just happened. You should just give reading a chance and let it cast it’s spell upon you. Once you’ve joined the dark side, please help others get there too.
-Lexi & Novella
Paperback Pals 