When I was entering middle school for the first time, one of the things I was most excited for was Blalack’s huge library. I remember stepping in there for the first time during those middle school tours and think to myself “Wow! Look at all of these books! I’ve never seen so many in one place before!” 

I was an avid reader in elementary school because of my librarian. She showed me how fun reading was by getting me to join the book club and by always helping me find books I enjoyed. Entering middle school, however, meant leaving her and my biggest aid to navigating the library behind. 

Middle school came around, and despite my best efforts, I could never find books that interested me. They were always too juvenile, with characters that just stayed as archetypes and with over-the-top drama. This, unfortunately led to the dark era of my experience as a reader. Sixth grade was the first time I had read less than 10 books in a year, and they were all for school only. Next year only got worse. 

When all hope seemed lost for my love for reading, a glimmer of hope came to me in the form of a MAP test 

Yes, you heard that right; testing fueled my love for reading.

Seventh grade rolled around, and I sat with my chromebook in front of me on an excerpt from the MAP fall reading test. It was friendly banter between two characters I didn’t recognize, but I ended up laughing out loud because of it! That got glares from across the room, but I brushed that off. Instead, I scrolled to the bottom of the excerpt and wrote down the author and book it was from. It’s title was “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

After that fateful question, I continued that process for other excerpts I enjoyed. At the end of the test, I ended up with half a page of new opportunities to spark my love for reading again.

Later, after looking the excerpts up, I learned the name of this genre of reading that was new to me: classic novels. The idea of novels from anything older than the 1990’s was an entirely foreign concept to me. I was buzzing with excitement to jump into these stories. They were going to be the ones that saved me from my reading slump. There was just one, very tiny problem. 

I knew absolutely nothing about this genre. 

When looking up these books, I already checked which ones would be available in the Blalack library and had started reading them. I had started with Huckleberry Finn. However, I had no idea where to go from there. Most kids my age weren’t interested in classics, and the poor selection Blalack had showed that well. I also found that classics had so many subgenres. From separating them by subject, to era, to genre, there was so much to work through to actually find one I’d enjoy next. It was too overwhelming for me, especially because classic novels aren’t the best easy-to-read gateway book. I was used to simple dialogue and clear-as-day plot! I never knew that reading could be so hard.

Even though I tried to continue reading after finishing (and adoring) Huckleberry Finn, I was stumped. I didn’t know what book to turn to. It caused me to go another two months without touching a book.

Then, something I never expected to help me read of all things ended up being my saving grace; an anime my sister showed me called “Bungo Stray Dogs” introduced me to new classic novels and gave me a new system to find classics that I used to this day.

The thing about BSD is that each and every character is based off of a classic novel and a book from said author. This led to me exploring lots of new authors, and made me learn that classics aren’t only limited to America and Europe, but can be found all over the world. At first this became very daunting. I already was struggling with all of the other categories of western literature. I didn’t need a whole other continent of books to add to the pile!

That was when I realized something. These authors are actually really cool! Why don’t I just read based off of the authors I like first, and go from there. I then started to research authors I found interesting mentioned in BSs, and I then found the country and era they were from. I turned it into a list, and this became my first TBR. 

This ended up fixing a lot of the problems I have, and gave me the tools necessary to navigate the mess that is classical literature. I moved onto Dostoevsky, then to an assortment of British authors, then tried out Japanese Literature, starting with Dazai Osamu. This eventually led me to reading more YA, more fantasy, and I slowly, but surely, started to restore my love for reading.

When looking back to my reading journey, I’m always amazed at just how everything happened. I would have never thought that Anime and MAP testing would be how I got back to reading.  I’d never though I’d find solutions in some of the weirdest places.