Reading is one of my favourite things to do. I love to read fiction novels, with my favourite book series being Harry Potter. I grew up with the novels and so feel like they are almost part of my family. Despite Harry Potter being my favourite book series, Stephen King is my favourite author. I am obsessed with the way he writes. Anytime I read one of his books I feel like I am a character within it, which is a bittersweet experience being that it is normally a creepy situation that scares you to know end. I feel like my love of reading horror should have ‘set me up’ for reading ‘Room’ however I did not enjoy the book one bit.
‘Room’ had been recommended to me by several people before attending university but I had never had any interest in reading it. However, seeing as it plays a major part in the Literacy for Understanding course I obviously had to read it. From the onset and throughout, I felt very uncomfortable. All that I could do was picture someone I know in that situation and that gave me a gut-wrenching feeling. Being that I am constantly surrounded by children, with me babysitting just about every night, I seen parts of Jack in all of them. For them to be in that kind of situation would be horrible and that made me very emotional. It didn’t help that after researching the book, I learned that Emma Donoghue had written the book after hearing about the little boy in the Josef Fritzl case, that information on its own sent a shiver up my spine.
In terms of recommending the book to someone else it would have to be an individual that likes dark themes in my opinion. This is not a book for a young person who likes dramas, it would have to be a mature individual in order for the person to fully grasp the meaning/concept of the book.
I consider myself to be an advanced reader in terms of the ranges of texts I read however ‘Room’ was one of the very few books that challenged my reading ability. Due to me feeling uncomfortable with the book as a whole, I found it extremely difficult to understand leading me to re-read a lot of it just to understand what was happening in the chapter. ‘Room’ has certainly developed resilience in my reading skills. There were times that I wanted to stop reading it but seeing as it was for University I couldn’t do that. This gave me a huge sense of relief and accomplishment when I finished the last page.
If anything, due to ‘Room’ being such a bad experience for me, it has put me off going out of my comfort zone in terms of what I read. I can understand why the book was chosen for our course as many of the language concepts covered in lectures and workshops could be seen in Jack’s language allowing us to see an almost real life context of how language develops in children. Therefore, ‘Room’ has opened my eyes as to how fiction can be used in academic study as it can hold some benefit to the reader, however, it was still one of the worst books that I have read, not for the content, but for the feelings that it gave me whilst I was reading.
