5 Reasons Why Reading A Book Is The Best Way To Spend Your Time
I only ever fell in love with writing because of my love affair with reading. I love the way the spine on a fresh book cackles and cracks on the first break open and the scent of the printers that fills lungs when pages flutter past the place to which you opened.
With the new weight in your bag, a fresh book brings anticipation of a new world to explore and the promise of escape.
Reading, to me, was always a great comfort -- the idea that within those ink-laced pages exists a place I'd never been, people I'd never met and a familiar feeling that someone, somewhere, is too reading this book, simultaneously getting lost in it.
A born-bookworm, I have always felt that it was the many books I read and the countless hours I spent getting lost in them that accredited me with a sense of maturity beyond my peers and intuitiveness beyond my years. There is more value to reading than just finishing the chapter to write the report.
Here are my top five reasons why you should put down everything and crack open a book.
1. If you read well, you will speak well.
I don't know what's worse: someone who refuses to read or someone who can't properly pluralize.
Decent grammar rests at most books’ cores, which is a credit to the countless editors and people involved in giving their stamps of approval prior to publishing.
Reading involves absorbing language, grammar, verbiage and sentence structure — so, something's bound to stick.
Subconsciously, your mind will relate what you've read to what you say and inevitably, it will help you to sound more like a functioning member of society.
2. Reading is learning.
Sitting in class taking notes while mentally battling the urge to nap while the professor continues on what seems like an endless lecture is not a rare occurrence.
Most people around you are on their second or third stages of REM sleep, anyway.
Going outside of the prescribed material and finding something that touches on whatever it is you need to understand can often be the ticket to figuring it all out.
Not every book based in history or economics will bore you to tears. Some might even make the material seem worth the student loan once you find your groove with it.
3. Reading is sexy.
No, really, it is. There's something very intimate and very attractive about sitting down to a coffee and a solid read at your local coffee haunt and finding someone else a few seats away from you settling into doing the same.
Right off the bat, you have something in common. Indulging in a book by yourself tells others that you are comfortable on your own, curious about the world and in the most basic sense, more likely to be intelligent than the girl outside walking into parked cars.
4. Reading facilitates self-reflection and self-discovery.
Okay, so a map may not have helped the girl in the parking lot, but some books do more than just educate or entertain.
Some books open your eyes to undiscovered territory, places and prospects you might not have otherwise entertained. When I'm lost, I find it helpful to read about someone else's journey.
This may not mirror my own experience, but reading up on other people’s problem-solving trials and errors can prove useful when brainstorming your own blueprint.
5. Reading is enjoyable when you find the right material.
Dorky disclaimer: I actually enjoy reading (at this point, I hope that would be clear enough) and I genuinely think that more people could use a little literature in their lives, too.
It may not change your world, but it may expand the borders a bit. There is nothing on earth that our generation isn’t able to research. There is, at the very least, some opinion piece on it in some publication.
Knowledge and better understandings of life are out there; we just have to make the effort and flip the page.
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