It was rainy and cold outside; the wet moisture from the road was fogging up the windshield. I walked through the automatic doors just as the wind swept my hair away from my face, chilling my body. As I walk through the spacious building, my heels make a hard, rhythmic sound against the tile floor. I scan the aisle for the “Gif” call numbers on the shelves. It is all the way towards the back of the library in the fiction section. I finally find the correct shelf, and I immediately scan all the book covers alphabetically following the letters to spell out the author’s name, “Giffin.” I finally find it sitting on the third shelf. I pick it up, place it in my arms and return back to the front of the library where I check out my book at the computerized station. I walk out the automatic doors and cross the three-lane street to my car, satisfied and excited to get home to indulge in the book.
Something Borrowed is a New York Times Bestseller by Emily Giffin. To me personally, it was this book that made me realize the publishing industry could become an actual career goal of mine—this book instilled that being an editor was what I wanted for my life and that I should work to achieve that goal. Something Borrowed is your basic Chick Lit genre novel about a girl who falls in love with her best-friend-since-kindergarten’s fiancée. What’s a girl to do in a situation like that? The concept, literature, and structure of Something Borrowed is brilliant. After reading it for the first time I couldn’t stop myself from reading it a second time, and then a third and then a fourth.
Throughout my life reading was a hobby. I couldn’t wait to be through with school and go to the beach to read book after book, all summer long. Some of my favorites were The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, biographies like Obama: From Promise to Power, and my favorite genre: historical novels on The Kennedys. In college, reading a good novel before bed was what I looked forward to the most. Realizing this passion for reading and books was what made me see that this was the right career path for me. I immediately began researching the publishing industry and what it would take for me to be an editor at a publishing house. I switched my major from PR to the new Mass Communications major and I earned an intern position at the USC Press.
I think that being an editor is where my passion lies, and I would have figured this out sooner or later in life but Something Borrowed and the various other Emily Giffin novels was what truly led me to the desire to be an editor at a publishing house. I continuously work toward this goal everyday and hope that one day I can build my career to be a successful editor at a well-known publishing house.
