Six Reasons to Read Good Books
Reading at Leisure Relaxes the Soul
In an age of non-stop action, setting aside leisure time for reading good books relaxes the inner you, your soul. I like the way Neil Gaiman states it: “There’s nothing like sitting down with a good book, and dog earring its pages and writing notes in its margins, when a particular passage or turn of phrase really lands. Books allow us to lose ourselves, and free our minds, if even for fleeting moments.”
Someone might protest that they do not have leisure time. True. We live in a fast paced world, and that is all the more reason to carve out leisure time. I read for a half hour to an hour almost every night. I know of people who work in the area and have their lunch at a local restaurant. They carry a book with them and use that time for reading a good book at leisure. Carry a book with you to the dentist office, the doctor’s office, or the place you have your car serviced. One simply has to have the will to carve out a bit of time to read at leisure.
Reading Gives Opportunity to Pause and Give Thought
Much of what people take in today they take in by way of television, videos, and the like. They view the story instead of reading the story. When you view the story you do not have time to think about the nuances of the content. Reading good books gives opportunity to pause and give thought to what is being taken in. Viewing a movie I may relax and enjoy it, laugh or cry, but I do not have time to think about why this part of a scene is important, or what the impact is on my mind, or whether or why some aspect might be good or bad. Reading good books gives “leisure” to stop and contemplate the content.
Reading Stimulates the Imagination
As I mentioned in my previous blog, Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island stimulated my imagination to act out my own pirate stories in my play and eventually to write pirate stories. Watching others act out a story on a screen has not had the same effect relative to stimulating my imagination. I have no data on the matter, but it seems to me that continually watching others act out stories tends to dull the imagination. We just want to go on to the next movie.
