My freshman English teacher has a bookshelf in the corner of his room. This small wooden bookshelf is home to many people, places, and ideas. From the sand dunes on the planet of Arrakis (Dune), to a disturbing future society characterized by crime and unending violence (Clockwork Orange), to a little school that felt the impact of a big war (A Separate Peace), the books I read pushed me to imagine worlds outside my own. As 2018 came to an end I was hooked on the idea of slowly working my way through the books on this bookshelf. So I did what anyone else in my situation would do: I made myself a New Year's Resolution. I'm going to read 52 books in 2019. That's one book every week. With my weeks consisting of the normal high school routine and two hours of cross country or track practice to boot, some days it's challenging to set aside time to read. Thus far I've made time, whether that's during lunch at school, car rides on weekends, or at night before bed. As I read, I keep a log of lines that catch my eye. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet". Reading to the tune of my trumpet, I am beginning to make my own Bible. I read because I am a work in progress. The same way these authors have had countless rough drafts, I am constantly reinventing myself using what I've learned about life from these books. Books at their core illustrate the struggles, relationships, and decisions of people just like me. By choosing to find these connections between the characters I read about and myself, I have allowed books to be the instruction manuals that guide my own path in life. I've had to look back at these instruction manuals many times since starting my quote log. In late January when a sudden injury ended my junior year track season before it even began, I was devastated. A whole winter break's worth of conditioning seemed to have gone down the drain, as I was reduced to hobbling on crutches with a bright pink cast on my left leg. It was painful to suddenly be separated from a sport that was so closely intertwined with my identity as a person. That's when one quote in my 13th book, The Alchemist, stood out to me. The main character sells all of his belongings to travel to Egypt in pursuit of an elusive treasure. In Egypt, a con man steals his hard-earned money and he is left to question why he ever left his stable job. But "as he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure" (Coelho 44). My 13th book taught me to be the adventurer in quest of my treasure. I accepted that I couldn't run and instead spent my time in a weight room doing every distance runner's worst nightmare: upper body exercises. Eventually, I did find my elusive treasure: a single pull-up and a single push-up, both of which I had not been able to do before my injury. Moments like those are why I believe that choosing to spend my time reading books despite other demands is the best decision I have made. With every passage that I read, I undergo a small rite of passage that brings me one step closer to my main goal in life, becoming a better version of myself. So by the end of 2019 after all 52 books, you will be able to read my Bible and have a sense of who I am and why.