Life in the books

You’re flying on the back of a dragon, wind whooshing in your hair, swooping down into a mountainside cave. Inside the cave, hundreds of dragons erupt with immense power. It amazes you, yet, they accept you as one of them. Their monstrous roars reverberate against the walls and… and you hear your mother call from downstairs, “Alexis, come down for dinner!”

For Alexis Dick ’21, reading is an adventure in itself. She has been reading for as long as she can remember, and her collection of over 400 books never bores her. In fact, everyone in her family is a book worm. When Dick was young, her parents would read her “Winnie the Pooh” before bedtime, leading her into a love for books.

Nowadays, she ends up reading for hours each day. Fareeha Ahmad ’2l, a good friend of Dick, finds it hard to find time to hang out with Dick because of this,  “She reads all the time. Every time I want to hang out with her there’s always something to read. Like, she makes time for reading.”

Although, Dick wasn’t always able to look at reading with such ease, as she does today. “I was reading a college level in 6th grade. The struggle was that I was reading the elementary school books in half an hour,” Dick said, “I was getting above the reading level of the books that were available to me, but the subject content in the books that I was reading was not matching my reading level.” Dick’s parents didn’t like her reading violent teen-rated books at her age. As Dick grew, she eventually matured into the types of books appropriate for her reading level.

Dick doesn’t participate in any book clubs, preferring to read at her own pace. She keeps a pile of unread books, so there’s always something to read. To keep her selection strong, often times Dick will go to Barnes & Nobles with a set amount to spend, usually amounting to 5-10 novels. “Usually it’s the title or cover that catches my attention. I’ll just wander and see what looks interesting,” Dick says.

Along with reading, Dick is a writer too. Mainly, she will write short stories; however, she does have a google doc over 100 pages long of short stories. Dick gets inspiration for writing from her favorite author, Marie Lu. Lu writes very descriptive and compelling dystopian novels. This translates into Dick’s own writing style, “They are all originals,” Dick says, “the main one is about a girl named Farren, she is colorblind, but she can travel to an alternate reality where she can see color. She meets this guy named Faust, they explore the reality [together].” It’s a 20 page story called “Switch.” Ahmad “She writes short stories… she reads a lot so she must be a great writer too. Anytime we get her a book and we gift it to her, she says that she already has that book.

In the future, Dick aspires to be writer, “I want to write, but that’s not a realistic job because not very many writers make it far.” Instead, she plans to have a majors in english and education in order to become an elementary teacher. First through third grade stand out as what grades she would like to teach.

“Books mean a lot to me… as a kid books shaped my life. I took all the life lessons from the books and applied it all to the world,” Dick says, “You never realize how much what you read and what you watch… how they shape your life, and how what you learn from them apply to what you should and shouldn’t do.”