I believe that the books you read affect at least two parts of your personality – your writing voice and your attitude. Your writing voice, of course, is just the style which you write in. Your attitude on the other hand, can change anything from your outlook on life to your sensitivity to certain issues.

My own writing voice, for example, is probably an amalgamation of the voices of the hundreds of writers whose books I’ve read. Not all of them made a significant impact, but they did contribute something. Almost every good writer has a unique, distinct voice which allows their readers to distinguish their work from the work of others simply by looking at a passage, even out of context.

Of course, the reader has the choice to block the effects of the book being read, at the cost of immersion and effectively understanding the writer. I prefer not reading a book rather than reading it half-heartedly, especially if the book clashes with my taste or has a conflict with my ideals.

I’m not too sure why I wrote this article, to be honest. In conclusion, this is what this article would have looked like had my writing style been formed entirely through reading J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in The Rye”:

I like reading books. Not those written by those phony writers who get their books all hyped up and get rich all of a sudden and then sell out to the goddamn movies, though. I like books like the Bartimaeus trilogy. It’s about this kid who summons a demon in secret to take revenge for being humiliated and beaten up by a magician in his own home. It killed me.

Most books are meant to be read as the writer wrote them to be read. Most people wouldn’t understand that, though. People never do. They just read books as if it was just another goddamn newspaper or something. They might as well forget them on the train while they’re at it. What the thing with reading books wrong is, it’s that they never satisfy you. I would rather not read a book at all than treat it like just another goddamn newspaper.