Chandrika Sharma
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.”- Carl Sagan
Dear readers, what if you are asked to do something which will improve your memory, enhance your vocabulary, strengthen your interpersonal relationships and upgrade your personality- and that too free of cost…Wouldn’t you like to do it? And yes of course you must have already guessed it from title that we are talking about reading. Digitalization has influenced our life in ways we can’t even imagine. Due to the availability of plethora of content online, screen time has escalated and print media has lost its influence. But, let’s not forget that reading is a multi- sensory experience. The brain’s act of reading does not only uses sight but also the act of touch. Holding a page while reading the book makes it more absorbable. But the books stacked up in the library are biting the dust as there is a decline in book reading culture.
Why Reading matters
Reading is an activity which connects us to the deep insights of the author and takes us into an imaginary world. It is unquestionably a vivid pastime and it also enhances our ability to see the world from a different perspective. Many a time when we fail to describe our feelings and emotions in a proper frame of words, great books written by accomplished authors rescue us from this trouble. By reading books of various genres, we can co-relate and understand a multitude of psychologies and complex emotions of the diverse human race. It stimulates our brain activity as it is a form of therapy which engages us in best possible way and also keeps our stress at bay. Research has shown that within 6 minutes of silent reading, the reader’s heart rate slows down to normal and the tension in their muscles relaxes upto 68%.
What to read
There are a variety of genres of books such as fiction, drama, poetry, folktales and non-fiction (which includes biographies, memoirs and autobiographies). These books can further be categorized as horror, science fiction, action and adventure, detective and mystery, classics, comics and so on. There are a lot of journals, health, sports and fashion magazines available for different sections of readers to binge on. A new reader can always start from an easy-to-understand light read. As far as students are concerned, most of their reading is restricted only to the mainstream textbooks which are read in order to qualify examinations. Apart from it they should also develop a habit to read fictional and factual books in their leisure time as it provides an opportunity to learn something new which further improves their vocabulary and keeps the mind engaged as well. Reading at least two or three pages daily can be a good start to this activity.
Other important benefits
Many of you must be acquainted with the fact that most of the successful people have a habit of reading a book every week. From Bill Gates to Barack Obama, successful leaders are often assiduous readers. Many of them have also written biographies to narrate their life experiences. By reading such books we get a vision of their life and we can learn a lot from the stories of their ordeals and delights. It also helps us to discover our role models from whom we can derive many important life lessons.
The books of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley teach us that how a society loses its critical thinking and freedom to become corrupt and degenerate; timeless quotations by Shakespeare declare that success comes from being creative, playing with language and finding new ways to communicate, it also gives an insight into past culture and society. Wordsworth’s poetry tells us the immense emotions that a common man feels in his rustic life in the lap of nature. On the other hand, if we talk about non-fiction we have a lot to learn from the biographies of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and the list is endless and of course how can we forget our scriptures which are a treasure of our culture and heritage. We have an ocean of literature waiting for us to take at least a sip of it.
So, any book which is filled genuinely with unrefined and rustic emotions of the writer tends to touch the soul of the reader more ardently and effectively and definitely makes a mark in their life. Hence good readers become more sensitive to other people’s feelings. They begin to see life from other people’s perspectives rather than being fixed to their own limited imagination. As a result, they become more empathetic. It also sharpens their critical thinking skills as a reader learns to make connections between small details in the text, analyse the text and solve various problems. Reading new words and understanding their meaning in the context of a story tends to increase our vocabulary which further enhances our pronunciation.
Hence, great readers make great writers; great writers make great communicators which in turn make good persuaders and great persuaders make good societies which is the burning need of the hour. To all the skeptical people out there reading this article let me tell you, that if you have a good book to give you company, you need nothing else by your side. So go, grab a good book and let it change you in a way you can’t even imagine. Happy reading.
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