This is my first time writing in this community. I really like the topics that can be read here and I was excited to participate. This community was recommended to me by my mom and that is another incentive to share with all of you silver friends.

In Memoir Monday, we are celebrating week 40, this is an initiative proposed by @ericvancewalton, and it brings a topic that I personally liked a lot, because I am an avid reader and I still remember with emotion the first book that made me fascinated to get lost among hundreds of pages, traveling, meeting and living incredible experiences.

My mom, as an assiduous reader, wanted to introduce me to the wonderful world of reading and for that she used many children's story books. Of those books that come with illustrations and that one as a child loves to be enraptured for hours looking at every detail of the drawings. This is how I took my first steps as a reader. I saw the images and recreated in my mind different stories. Until I learned to read and discovered that, indeed, those images accompanied incredible stories and without being able to help it, I wanted to discover more, and more. I wanted to soak up each case, get to know each character and imagine myself living those experiences.

Robinson Crusoe:

Among the many books my mother used to buy me, I got my hands on a copy of the novel written by Daniel Defoe, “Robinson Crusoe”. I think it took me about five days to read it and I loved it.

It is the story of a sailor whose ship was shipwrecked. Already there the first impact of the story. The thought of such a distressing situation left me speechless and eager to find out how the man managed to survive.

He was trapped on an island, where he had to go through different hardships in order to survive. I admired Robinson's will to live. Although he often doubted that he would survive, he never gave up.

As luck would have it, he was able to discover the wreckage of the ship, so he was able to gather supplies, find tools and other items, which undoubtedly made the difference in his survival. I thought: “There, now with that, he will always do well”, but even so, the obstacles were presenting themselves and he was solving them.

I remember that I was even thankful for some crackers that were saved from the barrels floating in the sea after the shipwreck, as many had been damaged by getting wet. I was very happy for his encounter with the parrot “Tuesday” and was much more excited when he saved “Friday” the prisoner that a tribe of cannibals wanted to kill. He gave them names of the week by the day he found them. To the parrot a Tuesday, and to the prisoner a Friday.

The writer kept me caught up in his story and with that feeling of wanting to know more. Today, still when I read, I want to know, more and more, about the stories writers tell me. It fascinates me to penetrate each story and live the experiences, as if it were my own.

In the end, Robinson manages to return to England, where his home was. After 28 years living on the island. He takes Friday with him. He does all this because, together with Friday, he stopped a rebellion on an English ship that they spotted from the island. The captain, in gratitude, took them to England. This ending was a bit bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I was glad that he was finally back to civilization and reunited with his people. However, I was left with a sense of nostalgia and emptiness, for I regretted that he was leaving behind the island he had somehow made his home.

I thank the coincidences of life, that out of so many books to choose from, this beautiful work fell into my hands and worked its magic on me. Today, 35 years later and with hundreds of books read, I still feel in love with reading, and I know that reading Robinson Crusoe had a lot to do with it.

All photographs and dividers belong to me.