One of my favorite things to do when I am visiting home is lay in the big, soft chair in the living room and read. It’s such a release for me, to snuggle into that chair and let my mind drift into a book for hours on end.
My brother often finds me in this position, and it boggles his mind. He can’t help but make fun of me. “How can you just … read?” he asks. “Don’t you get bored?” He doesn’t understand how I could possibly be enjoying myself, just sitting there with a book in my hand.
My brother’s mindset amuses me, but it also concerns me. He is not the only one who thinks this way. People today have less and less desire and time for pleasure reading. Many find reading to be boring compared to more modern and flashier offerings, such as television or the Internet. Some think reading is unimportant or useless. Others find it a challenge and simply avoid it.
Reading is an integral part of education and life. I doubt anyone would say that literacy is unimportant. But reading should not be a skill that one develops simply out of necessity.
Robert Wolverton, a classics professor at Mississippi State, once said: “The wisdom of the world is on the bookshelf: read by few, understood by few who read and acted on by few who read and understand.”
Want to expand your knowledge? Start reading. I’m not talking about reading a textbook or even a scholastic type of book. I’m talking about books with stories. Classics. Novels. Plays. Biographies. Children’s books. Poems. Fiction. Non-fiction. The choices are endless, depending on what you like. That’s the great thing about books. You can find ones that suit you because there are books about everything.
You may be wondering how reading non-scholastic books could possibly help improve your intelligence. Think about what you know. Where did you learn most of it? Was it in school? Or was it through life experiences?
Books contain other people’s experiences. True, some are fictitious. However, that does not make them less valid experiences. There is a wealth of knowledge stored in experiences. Books open that to you, the reader. You are exposed to that much more of the world. You are given the opportunity to learn from others.
One study done by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2000 researched fourth-graders’ reading habits. This study showed that “reading for fun had a positive relationship to performance” on the reading test. Eighty-seven percent of the students who said they read for fun at least once a month attained a proficient level. On the other hand, students who rarely read for fun only attained a basic level. The highest scorers were children who read for pleasure every day.
Researchers at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education found that reading also makes people smarter. The study’s definition of “smarter” was “having a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills encompassed within the concept of intelligence.” The researchers said: “Certainly our date demonstrate time and again that print exposure is associated with vocabulary, general knowledge and verbal skills even after controlling for abstract reasoning abilities.”
I can personally attest to the boost reading gives one’s vocabulary. More than half of the words in my vocabulary I learned from something I was reading for pleasure. I would see a word I didn’t recognize, look it up to understand the sentence and then continue reading.
My favorite benefit of pleasure reading is simply that: pleasure. There is nothing like getting lost in a really good book. Television or the Internet can’t compare. Finding a skilled writer who concocts a good story is not always easy, but it is always worth it.
It may be difficult to start. I know not everyone enjoys reading. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Break it up into smaller portions if you have to-a chapter a day.
So go to the library. Sit down at the search database and find something you’re interested in. I recommend you start delving into the classics. Find out what “the wisdom of the world” is all about. You won’t regret it.