The importance of reading includes several benefits, from building vocabulary and improving understanding while listening, which is vital while starting to read.
The importance of books and their beauty is beyond imagination. In today's modern and technologically advanced world, it is highly recommended to read a book. The mesmerizing impression of language, the indulging content in the story, is so much refreshing to our minds and souls after a long tiring day. Of all the skills that one learns, reading is considered essential, as reading makes one grow into a better human.
It is an exercise to the mind, helping those taking part in the activity to relax and be calm. Beautiful things happen to our brain when we inculcate the habit of reading and change our personality positively. Many competitive exams also have parts of reading comprehension to test the candidate's English language proficiency, such as IELTS.
Table of Contents
- Importance of Reading Books
- Importance of Reading Newspaper
- Types of Reading
- 30+ Must-Read Books of All Times
Importance of Reading Books
Reading books is important. It broadens one's horizon and takes them to different dimensions of the world through their imaginations. It keeps your mind active, focused, and entertained simultaneously; this makes you smarter. Reading is not just for education or to increase knowledge about anything particular but much more than that. It helps you gain many skills and boast about your knowledge gained through reading and other skills, including critical thinking. Since reading books gets the mind to be engaged, to focus and concentrate, thus keeping the active mind aids your mental health, leading to a healthy and longer life.
Importance and Benefits of Reading books
The pen is mightier than the sword. The saying explains it all. From time to time, people have wondered why reading is fundamental to functioning in today's society. Reading has plenty of benefits in creating an active mind.
Given below are the 11 most proven benefits and importance of reading.
- Increases Vocabulary
- Helps Discover Yourself
- Improve Concentration
- Become a Better Communicator
- Improves Memory
- Serves a Source of Motivation
- Expanding Knowledge
- Builds Confidence
- Improves Writing Skills
- Increases Imagination and Creativity
- Books Reduce Stress
Increases Vocabulary
In addition to enhancing one's knowledge, reading exposes them to another level of vocabulary. Through reading, one can come across new words, phrases, sayings, and various other writing styles. It also exposes the readers to different dialects of a language from around the globe. For example, the English written by an American author is different from the British, Australian, Canadian, and Indian authors. Reading is especially necessary for children as they are at a developing stage, and they can learn new words, idioms, and meanings.
Helps Discover Yourself
Good books help to discover oneself. While reading a book, an individual puts themselves in the character's shoes, connects with the characters, empathizes with their state of being, and connects with their emotions. That way, they connect so deeply with the story and start to feel like it happened in real life.
Improve Concentration
Reading is, by far, one of the easiest and the most fun ways to improve concentration. It trains the mind to have a more significant memory of the things that are read. It helps to improve attention span as well as to focus better. Books that contain better structures in writing often encourage us to think in an orderly way. The more one reads books, the more it helps us to act in reality effectively.
Become a Better Communicator
Reading will make one a good communicator and gives the ability to deal with any situation. Reading helps build the reader's vocabulary and even enhances sentence-structuring skills and overall communication skills. While the individual reads, they tend to get more comfortable with the language and its usage, thus communicating smoothly. All good communicators are voracious readers.
Improves Memory
Apart from improving concentration and helping focus, books help one to enhance their memory. For example, let's say we are reading an excellent novel; as they start reading, their brain learns to remember the information from the storyline, the characters' names, etc., thus helping the reader become better at remembering things in real life.
Serves a Source of Motivation
Life has its ups and downs and can get harder than ever sometimes; nevertheless, we need to overcome the hurdles of life, motivation, and the right advice could help. Books act as a great source of motivation for people. There are plenty of books out there that people have written to encourage readers to make the most of their life. With the help of books and great writers, one can derive great inspiration from them and positively transform our lives.
Expanding Knowledge
Books are a vibrant source of information; they carry almost all the information we need. Although reading a book makes the reader accustomed to new things and makes their thoughts broader and brighter, reading the right amount of books can make them smarter. Reading books adds depth to the reader's knowledge base. With increasing knowledge, the readers find themselves making intelligent decisions and choices in life.
Builds Confidence
Reading makes one smarter and brighter, giving the reader the confidence to express themselves better and in a more plausible manner. Thus, reading books helps sharpen many skills and build confidence in the individual. It also increases the reader's ability to socialize with people comfortably.
Improves Writing Skills
Reading exposes us to various writing styles, voices, perspectives, cultures, and traditions. Moreover, the writings of others expose us to writing styles that are different and more approachable than those that could be taught in ours. Thus, reading texts written by various authors influences our writing style, which is very important.
Increases Imagination and Creativity
The beauty of books is that they can give wings to fly when you are still. As Albert Einstein once said, "Logic will take you from A to Z; imagination will take you everywhere" reading makes you imagine things beyond what you can see from your eyes. Books can give you a lot to think about and even allow one to have their ideas, attitudes, perspectives, and imagination being put forth.
Books Reduce Stress
A surprising statement for some students out there, but yes books can help relieve one's stress and boost one to get a good night's sleep. Reading is one of the best ways to relax your mind, be calm and composed. Psychologists suggest that the reason for this is that when a reader is indulged deep in the book, they tend to get lost in the fantasy of reading, losing track of time and surroundings which eliminates distractions around us thus, putting us in a state of ease and calm. So getting lost in a book isn't a bad idea now.
Importance of Reading Newspaper
A newspaper is an excellent gift of advanced technology that eliminates the television strains of the eye and other health problems. It has a great role to play in everyday life. The readers will be aware of several interesting facts and important incidents in the state, country, and the world.
Reading the newspaper develops a great sense of educational value that carries information about education, business, entertainment, sports, industry/trade, and commerce. Reading enhances knowledge, likewise improves their language and vocabulary.
Here are some of the benefits of reading newspapers daily.
- It carries the news of the world and provides information and general knowledge.
- It includes news about economics, sports/games, entertainment, and trade/commerce of the country.
- It motivates readers to take part in every discussion about the world's current events.
- It keeps us up to date with politics
- Since it contains news of the latest discoveries, research, and inventions, it helps students gain knowledge and school projects.
- The sudokus, riddles, quizzes, crosswords, and puzzles increase mental vocabulary.
- Adds to our educational value
- Builts writing and reading skills
Types of Reading
Reading has different styles that can come in handy in different situations. An individual must know when to use different reading techniques. Developing reading skills creates a great impact on learning languages and various exams developed to obtain proficiency in that particular language.
Here are the types of reading that one can employ.
Skimming
Skimming, otherwise referred to as Gist Reading, helps you know about the text at the most basic level, and it is to get a brief idea about the content that's written. People gist read when they want a number from the telephone directory, a magazine, or newspaper. It helps you shortlist the articles that you want to read and skim through the others.
If one trains very well in reading, the human mind can reach up to 700 words per minute of reading speed. So skimming is mostly done to save time. But it is not the best way to learn as one's comprehension can be lowered if skimming is done regularly.
Scanning
Scanning comes in contrast with skimming, and it is done the same as scanning to get a general idea of the written topic. However, it is looking through a text to find a piece of specific information required by the reader. Skimming is usually done to find general information, whereas scanning is done to find more specific information.
Intensive
Intensive reading is more time-consuming compared to scanning and skimming. However, intensive reading is beneficial to language or literature trainees as it helps them understand vocabulary by deducing the meaning of words in context. It also helps them to retain the information read for a long time as it will be stored in their memory longer. Intensive reading is persistent in your long-term memory.
Extensive
An extensive type of reading is usually done for pleasure. It involves reading specific texts for one's pleasure and developing essential reading skills as a whole. It can also be compared to intensive reading, as in reading in detail with specific learning and aims.
30+ Must-Read Books of All Times
Reading is a path to whole other worlds; it makes one feel less lonely and connected to the world. It also helps readers to make better decisions towards their success and challenges.
Here are some of the must-read books of all time fictional books- Genre Specific. Reading these books will inspire, entertain at the same time, and build your vocabulary.
| Classics | Self Help Books | Suspense/Thrillers |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper lee | The monk who sold his Ferrrari by Robin Sharma | The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides |
| The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl | The Guest List by Lucy Foley |
| Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte | Atomic Habits by James Clear | Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn |
| 1984 by George Orwell | Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki | The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins |
| Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte | The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho | Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | The Power of your subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy | The Woman in the Window by A J Finn |
| Animal Farm by George Orwell | Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill | One arranged Murder by Chetan Bhagat |
| Frankenstein by Mary Shelly | The Subtle Art of not Giving a f*ck by Mark Manson | And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie |
| Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison | The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle | Then She was Gone |
| The Book Thief by Markus Zusak | Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life | Verity by Colleen Hoover |
| Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Think like a Monk by Jay Shetty | Girl in Room 105 by Chetan Bhagat |
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