Harry has a pretty love-hate relationship with reading. He really enjoys reading when it's purely for pleasure, or learning about something he is curious about. He really enjoys finding short stories, and whenever he is on his phone, there's a decent chance that he is reading. He loves these lighthearted short stories, for that reason exactly, they're lighthearted, and they, most of the time, don't take a lot of thinking and deep analysis to read. It's 100% for fun. However, he sometimes has a hard time getting into more deep and existentially involved stories. He has some anxiety, and sometimes reading very serious things can trigger some unpleasant thoughts within his brain, so he doesn't really like to read them. Harry also doesn't often actively go out of his way to read a book that is challenging to read for the sake of it being challenging. He reads lots of articles and informational based pieces, so sometimes it ends up being challenging to read anyways, but he rarely reads it for the sake of being a challenge to read alone. The exception to this is when he wants to practice reading Chinese, in which case he will read Chinese books that are kind of difficult for him to read. So in general, all of the questions about his enjoyment of reading has to be first split up into two categories. Is the question talking about him reading a serious or a lighthearted, more fun story? Does he read regularly? If it's talking about a serious book, not really, but if it's about fun short stories, sure! Because ultimately, regardless of how much he has read for school, he still doesn't understand the purpose in reading for anything other than enjoyment and learning about the subject material.
This preference on reading material partially explains his reading material for this past summer. He read The Book Thief, and found it ok, but not great. He started reading Obasan, but with how it seemed to deal with depressing topics, even more so than the Book Thief (which was hard enough for him to get through), he hesitated on reading it any further. He also read a book in Chinese, and because it was a lighthearted "Slice of Life" book, he enjoyed it a lot. He also read (or started reading) probably more than 100 short stories this summer. He doesn't really have any favorite published authors, and has hundreds of books in his house. Harry would probably say that he is a reader that likes to read on his terms, but struggles to read for anything other than what he considers "fun". He also thinks that it's hard for him to describe how he has grown as a reader, because he thinks it's harder to judge his own development because he is experiencing it on a day by day basis slowly, and not in obvious jumps, especially on something as hard to quantify as reading ability.
This preference on reading material partially explains his reading material for this past summer. He read The Book Thief, and found it ok, but not great. He started reading Obasan, but with how it seemed to deal with depressing topics, even more so than the Book Thief (which was hard enough for him to get through), he hesitated on reading it any further. He also read a book in Chinese, and because it was a lighthearted "Slice of Life" book, he enjoyed it a lot. He also read (or started reading) probably more than 100 short stories this summer. He doesn't really have any favorite published authors, and has hundreds of books in his house. Harry would probably say that he is a reader that likes to read on his terms, but struggles to read for anything other than what he considers "fun". He also thinks that it's hard for him to describe how he has grown as a reader, because he thinks it's harder to judge his own development because he is experiencing it on a day by day basis slowly, and not in obvious jumps, especially on something as hard to quantify as reading ability.
Harry doesn't really consider himself a writer. This is because he rarely, if ever, finds the need to write something on his own that isn't within the realm of practical communication using email and text messaging. He almost never does anything like writing short stories in his spare time. This leads to him being bad at writing due to a lack of practice, which leads to him not wanting to practice writing due to being bad at it, which leads to him being even worse at writing. This is a key point for getting better at writing, and a lot of other activities, for him. He believes that to get better at writing, practicing often is a must. He thinks that another key point for getting better at writing is to read a lot. He actually reads quite a bit, so he draws a lot of benefits from reading often. For example, he thinks that by reading a lot of well polished stories, he has a reasonably good idea of how to make sentences flow together and make sense. However, his lack of practical writing practice limits his abilities in terms of vocabulary usage. He might know the definition of an advanced vocabulary word while reading something, but he might not know or have enough practice using it to be 100% comfortable using it in his own writing.He does, however, enjoy writing mathematical proofs. He is fairly comfortable with mathematics, and he finds it really satisfying to explain his logic for solving a particular problem.
He believes that people primarily write for three primary purposes: to communicate, to express feelings, and to have an outlet in which to pour feelings. While he personally doesn't really have the habit of writing for the sake of writing and not for communication, he recognizes that it's very powerful, both to a writer and a potential reader. However, before he reaches that stage of writing for the sake of writing, he will continue to draw the inspiration for his writing from the same source: The need to write toget a good grade in class.
He believes that people primarily write for three primary purposes: to communicate, to express feelings, and to have an outlet in which to pour feelings. While he personally doesn't really have the habit of writing for the sake of writing and not for communication, he recognizes that it's very powerful, both to a writer and a potential reader. However, before he reaches that stage of writing for the sake of writing, he will continue to draw the inspiration for his writing from the same source: The need to write toget a good grade in class.