{"id":4017,"date":"2025-03-26T11:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T15:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/?p=4017"},"modified":"2025-03-26T11:37:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T15:37:13","slug":"josie-blosser-27-why-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/2025\/03\/26\/josie-blosser-27-why-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Josie Blosser (’27): For the Love of a Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

If someone were to ask why I chose to become an English Literature major, at first the question might make me laugh. When I think back on my life, it feels obvious, it\u2019s hard to imagine myself ever choosing a different path. I\u2019ve loved reading my whole life, after all. And yet, I realize that I really didn\u2019t decide to become an English Literature major until my freshman year of high school. While there are many different reasons why choosing this major was the right decision for me, I was set on this path by a single book, <\/span>The Goldfinch <\/span><\/i>by Donna Tartt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I first read <\/span>The Goldfinch<\/span><\/i> at fourteen years old I had only recently decided that journalism wasn\u2019t for me, after realizing I did not have an interest in making a career of writing. Additionally, at this age, I was primarily reading romance novels. While I loved them at the time, since reading <\/span>The Goldfinch<\/span><\/i> I have rarely picked up a romance novel, largely because I didn\u2019t connect to them in the same way that I felt connected to <\/span>The Goldfinch<\/span><\/i>. While I was at an age where I would naturally move away from tween romance novels, and begin to read more advanced literature, it was far more than that. I was enraptured by her beautiful prose, in-depth characters, and thematic relevance to my life. I never felt that the romance novels I previously read had these things, or even comparable complexity in their subject matter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Goldfinch<\/span><\/i> is a coming-of-age story, in which you stay with the protagonist Theodore Decker from ages thirteen to twenty-seven. Due to this, he felt like someone real, and someone I knew intimately, and I found that I loved feeling like that. To spend so much time with a character, to get to watch them grow up, and to consistently be sitting with their inner thoughts creates so much room for a deeper connection. Theo\u2019s journey is one that takes us to the depth of human emotions and the core of what it means to exist. Despite being a deeply depressed individual, who mentions several times that he would rather not exist at all, Theo is always continuously searching for -and finding- reasons to live.\u00a0 Going on this journey with Theo expanded my idea of what books could mean and be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0After reading <\/span>The Goldfinch<\/span><\/i> the trajectory of my reading completely changed. I started exploring a variety of genres, drawn to books that were similar in some way, be it in theme, prose, or simply because the novels were character-driven. For example, <\/span>The Picture of Dorian Gray <\/span><\/i>deals similarly with art and obsession, <\/span>Masters of Death<\/span><\/i> by Olivie Blake is character-driven, and <\/span>On Earth We\u2019re Briefly Gorgeous <\/span><\/i>is similar in prose and themes of family, grief, and love. \u00a0 I found that there were more opportunities to think deeper while reading these books, and that I had fun doing so. It was this that inspired me to look for a path I could take that would allow me to continue to grow as a reader, and discover more incredible books to love. It was this that led me to an English major.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the five years since I read that book (and I have re-read it since), it has remained my favorite book,<\/span> and the best thing I have ever read. This is of course because of Donna Tartt\u2019s masterful writing, beautifully complex characters, and timeless themes. However, there is perhaps a touch of sentimentality in this view, as my life has been forever changed for the better because I read <\/span>The Goldfinch.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If someone were to ask why I chose to become an English Literature major, at first the question might make Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2311,"featured_media":4018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-why-english"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4017"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/engblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}