Why Read? What Are The Benefits Of Reading? Here are 10 Reasons Why You Should Read More Books:
1. To Develop
Your Verbal Abilities Although it doesn’t always make you a better communicator, those who read tend to have a more varied range of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases exponentially with the more volumes you consume, giving you a higher level of vocabulary to use in everyday life. Why read 2. Improves Your Focus and Concentration Unlike blog posts and news articles, sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text, which over time will strengthen your attention span. Why to 3. Readers Enjoy The Arts and Improve The World A study done by the NEA explains that people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who do not to visit museums and attend concerts, and almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work. Readers are active participants in the world around them, and that engagement is critical to individual and social well-being. 4. It Improves Your Imagination You are only limited by what you can imagine, and the worlds described in books, as well as other peoples views and opinions, will help you expand your understanding of what is possible. By reading a written description of an event or a place, your mind is responsible for creating that image in your head, instead of having the image placed in front of you when you watch television. Why read 5. Reading Makes You Smarter Books offer an outstanding wealth of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a course. Reading gives you a chance to consume huge amount of research in a relatively short amount of time. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich’s “What Reading Does for the Mind” also noted that heavy readers tend to display greater knowledge of how things work and who or what people were. Books at home have been strongly linked to academic acheivement. If you are looking for a list of great books to read, check out 10 Easy To Read Books That Make You Smarter. Why People Read Less AndLess
(Article by Scott Hughes)
Polls keep showing that more and more people in today's world read less and less. Some recent polls estimated that about 25% of United States families did not read a book in the last year. I have even seen some studies put the number as high as 80%. Many factors contribute to the lowering reading rates. I will list some of the most major ones. Television - Though television may seem simple in comparison to more elaborate technology, it did not even become commercially available until the 1930s. Nowadays, you can find televisions all over the place. Almost every household in the developed world has one or more. Families eat dinner in front of them instead of at a table. Time put towards television has replaced time put towards sports, family games, study, and of course reading. The addictive television appeals to our laziness, sloth, and short-sightedness. Instead of stimulating our mind with books, we choose to rot our minds in front of a television. Ironically, in the long-term, the reader often feels more fulfilled and happy than the TV addict. Faster-Paced Lifestyle - Our culture now centers around a constantly faster-paced lifestyle. People work longer hours and then rush through their stressful lives, with credit cards, fast-food, and speeding cars. When we do take a break for fun, we look for the impulsive thrills of drugs, alcohol or TV, rather than calmer, longer-running pleasures like reading. Misplaced Values - We do not value education and intellectuality much anymore. Instead, we value entertainment and athletics. Perhaps it is because technology and development have eliminated a great deal of our need for intelligence. Perhaps we feel secure that our needs have been met and feel that we no longer need to work as a society towards major goals. As a result, we just want to lay back and gossip about Paris Hilton and cheer for our favorite sports team. Whatever the reasons, most people in our society have given up on reading for the most part. If you don't already, I encourage you to consider reading more. Also, consider slowing your life down, giving up television, and reassessing your values. Consider giving up unhealthy and short-term pleasures like television for long-term pleasures like reading. In 5 years, will you wish you watched more television, or will you wish you read more? Whatever you do, good luck and have fun! About the Author: Scott Hughes owns and operates OnlineBookClub.org which is a website about books and reading. You can discuss books, reading, and related topics at the Book and Reading Forums. It's completely free to join and participate. |
6. It Makes You Interesting And Attractive
This goes hand in hand with reading to become smarter. Having a library of information that you have picked up from non-fiction reading will come in handy in any academic or scholarly conversation. You will be able to hold your own and add to the conversation instead of having to make your excuses and leave. You will be able to engage a wider variety of people in conversation and in turn improve your knowledge and conversation skills. Why to read 7. It Reduces Stress A study by consultancy firm Mindlab International at the University of Sussex showed that reading reduces stress. Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started. For more information, check out the Telegraph article here. Why read 8. It Improves Your Memory In their book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf explains that “Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language—when you watch a film or listen to a tape—you don’t press pause.” The benefits of this increased activity keeps your memory sharp and your learning capacity nimble. Why read 9. To Discover and Create Yourself In his book How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom says that we should read slowly, with love, openness, and with our inner ear cocked. He explains we should read to increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy–in short, our entire consciousness–and also to heal our pain. “Until you become yourself, what benefit can you be to others.” With the endless amount of perspectives and lives we can read about, books can give us an opportunity to have experiences that we haven’t had the opportunity to, and still allow us to learn the life skills they entail. Books are a fast rack to creating yourself. Why read 10. For Entertainment All the benefits of reading mentioned so far are a bonus result of the most important benefit of reading; Its entertainment value. If it were not for the entertainment value, reading would be a chore but it needn’t be. Reading is not only fun, but it has all the added benefits that we have discussed so far. Much more enthralling than watching a movie or a TV show (although they have their many benefits as well), a good book can keep us amused while developing our life skills. Source of article: whyread.com Literacy Issues: RIF Brings Solutions
Literacy—the ability to read and write—is essential to fully developing a sense of well-being and citizenship. Children who are solid readers perform better in school, have a healthy self-image, and become lifelong learners, adding to their viability in a competitive world.
Experts estimate that nearly 40 percent of U.S. 4th graders do not achieve basic levels of reading proficiency. The number is higher among low-income families, certain minority groups, and English language learners. The tragedy is that these children may never fully participate in American society. Their employment prospects grow dim and the chance for anti-social behavior increases. In short, they will be viewed as “problems.” But there are solutions. RIF’s primary mission is to bring reading motivation to all children, especially those in disadvantaged households. RIF achieves this goal by putting new books into the hands of children along with fun literacy activities. Children select the books according to their interests. They feel empowered and renewed, and they begin to see new possibilities...Read More>> BOOK (Wikipedia) --------------------------------------- A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book, or e-book. Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, and so on). An avid reader of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, bookworm. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books can also be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 unique titles had been published...Read More >> |
Nothing is known of Aesop's early life. However, in the Histories of Herodotus, who wrote during the later half of the fifth century BC, it says that he lived during the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis of the sixth century BC. And that he was connected to the island of Samos. Herodotus also gives evidence that he may have been a slave or a relative of a Samian citizen called Iadmon,
In World's Great Men of Color, Volume I (p. 73–79), J.A. Rogers states that we are indebted to Planudes the Great, a monk of the fourteenth century, for Aesop's life and fables in its present form. Planudes wrote that Aesop was a native of Phrygia, in Asia Minor, and described him as "flat-nosed…with lips, thick and pendulous and a black skin from which he contracted his name (Esop being the same with Ethiop)." >> Read More The Tar-Baby is a fictional character in the second of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1881; it is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes.
In modern usage, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact. >> continue reading |
The Alchemist follows the journey of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, Santiago decides to travel to a Romani fortune-teller in a nearby town to discover its meaning. A gypsy woman tells him that there is a treasure in the Pyramids in Egypt.
Early into his journey, he meets an old king, Melchizedek, who tells him to sell his sheep to travel to Egypt and introduces the idea of a Personal Legend (which is always capitalized in the book). Your Personal Legend "is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is". He adds that "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it". This is the core theme of the book. >>Continue Reading
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