So far, for my passion blog, I’ve shared stories about places I’ve been able to travel to over the years. Traveling, as I’ve said countless times before, is one of my absolute favorite things to do. However, for when I can’t be lucky enough to explore the world around me, I often instead explore the world of books.

Reading has been one of my lifelong passions, and for this blog, I will be writing about some of my favorite books and how they affected me. I wholeheartedly believe that books have the ability to make us think differently, and view the world around us differently. By sharing some of my favorite novels, I will be paying tribute to the stories that have shaped me into the person I am today.

To begin this blog, I’m going to talk about one of the very first books I read that truly made me passionate about reading: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Although published in 1813, it is, to this day, one of the most beloved novels in the English language, and for good reason. It provides a humorous outlook on societal life and standards of 19th century England, features complex, flawed, well-developed characters, and tells a good love story, to boot. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the novel, however, was that it showed a complex, clever woman at the center of the story in a time where women in novels did little else but cry and faint.

I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was nine years old. Desperate to be exactly like my fifteen-year-old sister, I devoured any book she claimed was worth reading. I read, all day and night, for four days straight. Of course, I hardly understood a word of it, and had a dictionary by my side, which I turned to nearly every other line. Once I actually understood the plot and the characters, I fell in love with it. I wanted to be exactly like the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, when I grew up. In fact, to this day, I think there are very few female protagonists in novels that are as well-written as Jane Austen’s characters. For that fact alone, I will always love Austen and her novels. She did something no woman was expected to do, and created characters that have shown women for over two centuries that we can be far more than side characters who cry and faint in the background. It also features one of the best love stories ever told – even though it is about far more than who marries who. I think one of the greatest strengths of the novel is not simply the “falling in love” part, but the growth of the characters – Elizabeth Bennet and the infamous Mr. Darcy – who can actually love each other. The novel has a way of stealthily maturing the characters without the reader even realizing it, which perhaps just makes them more human and more realistic.

For these reasons, among many others, I love this novel. I think there’s always going to be a special place in people’s hearts for the books that made people fall in love with stories. I’ve reread this book at least twice each year since I was nine years old, and even though I can practically recite each line by heart now, there’s always a bit of magic that flows like a current from the book each and every time I pick it up.