As a fellow highschooler trying to balance academia, extracurriculars, a social life and sleep, completely understand the lack of "for fun" (not related to school) reading that many teens and adults posses. Hey, our lives are busy, books can wait, right? Wrong. Studies have shown that the average amount of books read by adults per annum has been steadily increasing in the past decade; and this isn't good. Reading books of your interest on your own time, even those trashy paperback novels found at drugstores and gas stations, can have immensely beneficial effects on your brain. How so, you may ask? Well, as many of you know, but often times forget (including myself) your brain is a muscle. And, like any muscle, the more you exercise it the stronger it will get. Reading = Brain Exercise. Short and simple.
Not only does reading make your brain stronger, it can also help it, and YOU, become more skillful. Reading is an active mental process, so it engages your brain much more than watching TV or reading the short snippets of information that online articles and blogs posses. Also, depending on what you are reading, you can become an expert in more fields of information, thus increasing your human capital (yes, i went there), and thus allowing you to potentially make more money in the future. Now who wouldn't want that?
After realizing how little I've been reading outside-of-school material these past few years, I've decided to make the effort to try to squeeze some time to read stuff I actually like. Now, what I'm reading is definitely not as classy as Shakespeare or as dense and thought provoking as Toni Morrison, but those types of books just don't interest me. Lucky for me, books are books no matter what, and I'll be getting the benefit of reading them whether they have great literary acclaim or not.
So, now I ask you: How many non-school books would you say you read per year? After reading the article/this blog post, do you think you will make the effort to read more? For those avid non-school book readers out there, how do you find the time? Do you think inventions such as the Kindle will help re-kindle (pun intended) reading for fun? Leave your comments!
4 comments:
I think the advancements with the internet has definitely contributed to the increase in adults reading considering their limited time with work and housework. I guess these don't really count as books but any bit of reading is good. ;)
Unfortunately, it seems that as TV has increased in popularity, books have steadily declined. While movies may sometimes seem like a substitute for books, I highly recommend reading the book before watching the movie. You can form your own images and impressions of characters, and develop your own interpretations of things. Movies do a lot of this thinking for us: the characters and setting are concrete, and there's not a lot of spare room for you to "fill in the blank" with your own thoughts (books can only provide so much description - the rest you fill in yourself).
For example, definitely read Harry Potter before seeing the movies. When I first watched HP1, I thought Daniel Radcliffe looked nothing like the Harry in my head. Of course, now he's the only image I have!
Again, technology is taking over!!! Not but seriously. Look at this new invention: the i-pad. Books are becoming virtual and because of that, people are not really reading as much. Reading is something I consider fun and a reward. True, like Julia said, TV has taken over but that doesn't make it okay for people to swap in a classic harry potter book for the movie. That's not cool. Reading is a sense of enjoyment. It allows you to escape from reality (homework, school, family issues, and college applications...glad that's over :-))
READ. Silent sustained reading people! Remember?
I agree that reading is very helpful, but a brain is not a muscle (it's fat, neurons and other cell bodies). It, does, benefit from mental exercises though. However, of the 25% of the adults that did not read a book over the last, did they all not read anything, like a newspaper or online article? I believe that it is okay not necessarily read a book, but people should still read. I doubt that those people didn't read anything educational in the past year. Even online articles are acceptable if they have some educational value.
-Henry Zhang
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