My 12th grade English teacher had a sign hanging in her classroom that said "He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it."

11th and 12th grade English classes, which were mostly focused on American and British literature respectively, came very close to putting me off reading entirely. Two solid years of having obsolete, stuffy, dull, usually mean spirited and miserable stories crammed down your throat, and the ideas and feelings you glean from these old pieces of shit are to be turned in for a grade. I got the distinct impression that my teachers were pushing their own personal ideas as objectively correct.

The novel that brought me back was Lincoln Child's Utopia. It's a book written in 2002 about some adventure plot set in a slightly futuristic amusement park. The main character had a daughter, a teenage girl, who had an mp3 player and was constantly listening to music. And it was that little detail that snapped me--a teenage boy who had an mp3 player and was constantly listening to music--back into liking books again. It felt so weird, and forbidden, and wonderful that there was someone like me in my time in a goddamn book. Oh yeah, books don't have to be 150 years old and about miserable people making each other miserable!