Why reading books is so important for a person (July 11, 2020)

Benefits of reading books

The importance of reading is due to the fact that it develops thinking, enriches people with knowledge, and helps keep the mind active. From books you can glean a variety of information that cannot be found anywhere else. For many centuries, reading has remained the main form of leisure for many people, and even after the advent of radio, television and the Internet, books continue to be the most important source of information, and reading books is one of the most common ways to spend time. There are a number of reasons for this.

Useful reading for the soul

Modern young people sometimes wonder why read books and what are the benefits of reading. By reading books, everyone can relax and calm down. Reading really has a relaxing effect on a person. When we read interesting books, we can take our minds off the daily hustle and bustle and thus relieve stress that negatively affects the body. Reading a book can be compared to a conversation in a psychotherapist's office. The effect is equally calming and restorative. By choosing reading books as your hobby, you can become healthier and happier.

The main positive effects of reading books

By reading books, people not only have fun and learn new knowledge, but also receive many other benefits for their mental and physical well-being. At the moment, anyone can afford to read science fiction online or any other genre directly from the screen of any gadget. The popularity of applications for reading books online is growing every year.

The most important positive effects obtained from reading books include the following:

Brain training. In addition to the pleasure people get from reading books, it activates the area of the brain that is responsible for concentration and critical analysis, and stimulates cognitive functions. Just as muscles grow larger and stronger with regular exercise, reading develops the areas of the brain that control thinking.
Enrichment of vocabulary. While reading books, a person comes across words whose meaning he vaguely understands or does not understand at all. To find out their meaning, the reader turns to paper or electronic dictionaries. The learned words are gradually integrated into the person’s everyday vocabulary, and soon he begins to use them in life.
Relief from tension and stress. Many people have experienced that reading is a great form of entertainment, but they may not realize that reading can also help reduce stress. This activity and concentration on the written word relieves the mind of worries and daily worries. While reading, a person is mentally transported to another world and relaxes. Since stress can significantly worsen health, reducing stress levels improves not only mental but also physical well-being.
Reading helps fight depression. There are many self-help books that provide advice on how to improve your mental well-being. However, even without following these recommendations, reading itself stimulates the area of the brain responsible for overcoming depressive states. After reading funny stories, a feeling of happiness arises and your mood improves. Of course, this method does not allow you to get rid of all psychological problems, but it reduces the negative effect of prolonged depressive states, similar to the effect of an anesthetic drug on the body.
Strengthening memory and attention. In the process of reading books, a person remembers their content. This stimulates the area of the brain responsible for memory management. To ensure this effect, a person must concentrate on the text of the book, otherwise he will not be able to remember even what is written on the previous page.
Development of writing skills. Almost all famous writers are also avid readers. Reading other people's books helps them embrace different styles and artistic techniques, increasing their skill level.
Improving sleep quality. Reading alone does not help a person fall asleep, but it does improve the quality of your night's rest. By reducing stress through reading, it helps you relax and fall into deep sleep. Setting aside a specific time for reading before going to bed can help ensure a restful night's rest, especially after a busy day's work. To do this, you don’t have to spend a long time reading a book, just read a few pages.
Expanding your horizons. Books help you look at many things from a new point of view. For example, studying the traditions of a certain culture allows you to understand its differences from your own culture. A person may not agree with some of its manifestations, but he will still perceive them in a new way. In the absence of other points of view, people tend to think the same way, which is based on their upbringing. A person reacts and acts as he was taught in childhood. He looks at the world from the point of view of his individual experience and is fully confident that only his point of view is correct. Books help people see many things in a different light, abandoning the right/wrong dichotomy. Reading helps to significantly expand the horizons of your ideas about the world around you.

Useful reading for self-development

If we talk about the benefits of reading, it is important to talk about self-development. After all, thanks to books, every person can become more literate, intelligent and ultimately successful. Depending on what knowledge is needed now, literature can be divided into three types:

Books that give advice on a variety of topics:

"Rules. How to Marry the Man of Your Dreams" by Ellen Fein, Sherry Schneider - a guide for women who dream of meeting their prince.
“I want and I will. Accept yourself, love life and become happy.” Mikhail Labkovsky is a book by a famous psychologist about how to achieve harmony with yourself and the world around you and learn to enjoy life.
“How to Get Rich from Scratch” by Brian Tracy - in this book you can find not only ideas and psychological instructions from the author, but also practical advice on how to become successful and rich.

Books for managers:

“My Life, My Achievements” by Henry Ford is a book that has become a classic and allows you to look at many things with different eyes.
“Ignore Everyone or How to Be Creative” by Hugh McLeod is a book for those who strive to become not only an inexhaustible source of ideas, but also want to strengthen their spirit.
“Success without Strategy” by Mark Rozin is a book that provokes a tough debate with oneself and shows two contradictory paths of development.

Books for thinking:

“Looking for a Man” N.I. Stankevich - the author shows modern society and its values and mercilessly criticizes everything, but not thoughtlessly, but giving the reader the opportunity to find a way out of emerging situations and understand what is acceptable for him and what is not.
“Don't growl at the dog! A book about training people, animals and yourself" by Karen Pryor - a book about how to find a common language with yourself, other people and even animals.
“Mental traps. Stupid things that reasonable people do to ruin their lives.” Doll A. is about how to stop falling into the traps that we set for ourselves by breaking basic rules.

For work and pleasure

However, not all books are destined to evoke empathy and interest in your brain. In her book “Why We Read Fiction: Theories of Mind and the Novel,” Professor Lisa Zunshine writes that the favorite genre is usually the one that suits the reader’s brain, for example, complex detective stories for fans of logic puzzles. But to get to the feelings themselves, one often has to break through the complex cognitive exercises that Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen, for example, included in their texts, Zunshine says, like the phrases “she knew that he thought that she was laughing at herself, and that bothered her.” Such constructions force one to experience several emotions sequentially.

Writer Maria Konnikova also remembers Jane Austen. In the article “What Jane Austen can teach us about how the brain pays attention,” she talks about an experiment by neuroscientist Natalie Phillips on different perceptions of text. The study involved English students unfamiliar with Austen's novel Mansfield Park. At first, they read the text in a relaxed mode - just to enjoy it. Then the experimenter asked them to analyze the text, pay attention to the structure, main themes, and warned them that they would have to write an essay about what they had read. All this time, the students were in an MRI machine, which monitored the functioning of their brains. With more relaxed reading, the centers responsible for pleasure in the brain were activated. When immersed in the text, activity shifted to the area responsible for attention and analysis. In fact, having set different goals, students saw two different texts.

Find yourself in the shoes of a hero

Mirror neurons are found in the temporal cortex and amygdala of the brain. It is thanks to them that people can repeat dance movements after each other, parody someone, or experience joy when looking at a smiling person. “From the point of view of biological feasibility, this is correct. It’s more effective when the pack, the community, has a single emotion: we all run away from danger together, fight a predator, celebrate holidays,” explains the importance of the mechanism, Doctor of Biological Sciences Vyacheslav Dubynin.

A study from Emory University proves that a person can experience empathy not only for a neighbor or passerby, but also for a character in a book. The reading participants underwent a series of MRI scans, which showed increased activity in the central sulcus of the brain. Neurons in this region can convert thoughts into actual sensations - for example, thoughts about future competitions into the feeling of physical exertion. And while reading, they literally put us in the shoes of our favorite hero.

“We don't know how long these neural changes might last. But the fact that the effects of even just reading a random story were detectable in the brain after 5 days suggests that your favorite books may have an effect on you for much longer,” says lead researcher on the project Gregory Burns.

Why you can't read on public transport

Many people think that reading on public transport is an ideal way to while away time on the road with a pleasant and useful activity. However, in fact, the properties of such reading can cause significant harm to health.

Lighting in transport is unstable, even if it is bright enough; shadows from objects flashing outside the window and from the silhouettes of people passing by constantly fall on the pages of the book. The eyes have to constantly re-adapt to changing light, which puts extra strain on the visual organs.
In a moving vehicle, the text in front of your eyes constantly shakes due to continuous vibration. This also strains the eyes - they get tired faster and begin to hurt.

If you read too often in public transport, the harm will be that your vision will gradually begin to decline.

Is it possible to read in the dark

The benefits and harms of reading books depend on the level of lighting. In the dark, you have to bring the book too close to your eyes, which can lead to the development of myopia.

In addition, research confirms that in semi-darkness a person is much less likely to feel the need to blink. The harmful property of reading in the dark is that constantly open eyes dry out quickly. Irritation of the mucous membranes occurs, the eyes become inflamed and painful.

When there is insufficient lighting, the quality of reading suffers; instead of focusing on the plot, a person only thinks about how uncomfortable he is. Therefore, it is better to devote time to books in a comfortable environment, in moderately bright light.

Brain rewiring

French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehan jokes that the children who participate in his research feel like astronauts when they lie down in an MRI machine that resembles a spaceship capsule.
During the tests, Dean asks them to read and count to monitor brain function. The scan shows how even one word read revitalizes the brain. The brain acts logically, says Dean: at first, letters for it are just visual information, objects. But then it relates this visual code to what it already knows about the letters. That is, a person recognizes the letters and only then understands their meaning and how they are pronounced. This is because nature did not expect that man would invent this particular mechanism for transmitting information.

Reading is a revolutionary technique, an artificial interface that literally rebuilt our brain, which initially did not have a special department for recognizing linguistic symbols. The brain had to adapt for this purpose the primary visual cortex, through which the signal passes along the fusiform gyrus, responsible for recognizing faces. In the same convolution there is a repository of knowledge about languages - it is also called the “mailbox”.

Together with colleagues from Brazil and Portugal, Dean published a study, the conclusion of which is that the “letterbox” is active only in those who can read, and is stimulated only by letters known to a person: it will not respond to characters if you do not know Chinese. Reading also affects the functioning of the visual cortex: it begins to recognize objects more accurately, trying to distinguish one letter from another. The perception of sounds is transformed: thanks to reading, the alphabet is built into this process - when hearing a sound, a person imagines a letter.

Expands vocabulary and improves literacy levels

Many modern people underestimate the benefits of reading books. But they are one of the sources of replenishing your vocabulary. By reading various literature, a person learns new words and their meanings. Thanks to your extensive vocabulary, you can explain your thoughts to people in a detailed and clear manner; your speech will be interesting with well-written sentences.

If you compare the speech of a book lover and someone who spends many hours playing computer games, you will hear that their manner of speaking is very different. The one who reads will be able to structure the speech so that it is understandable to you, replace difficult-to-understand words with synonyms and add beautiful phrases to make it more interesting.

But how do books improve literacy levels? While reading, a person encounters the same words many times and remembers their correct spelling. It's the same with punctuation. Therefore, by reading books, a person increases his level of literacy.

Increased life expectancy

Reading books prolongs life. According to recent studies, the life expectancy of people who are fond of reading is on average two to three years longer than those who do not read anything Avni Bavishi, Martin D. Slade, Becca R. Levy. A Chapter a Day: Association of Book Reading with Longevity. . To live longer, you need to set aside about half an hour a day to read literature.

In order to improve the quality and length of your life, it is not at all necessary to do some extremely difficult things. It turns out that you just need to set aside a little time to read.

Helps you look at the situation from the outside

Psychologists believe that the benefit of reading books also lies in the opportunity to look at any situation from the perspective of literature. Often the literature describes situations, but also gives a way to solve them or several different options. Such literature belongs to the psychological genre and allows a person to better understand himself and the people around him.

Such a view from the pages of a book is perceived by a person better than advice given by another person. Because no one imposes a point of view on anyone, and a person does not associate the story of book characters with his friends. Therefore, books help to better understand other people and improve relationships with others.

What is better to read

Which useful books to choose to read is a question to which each person determines the answer independently. But first of all, it is recommended to determine what exactly the goal is.

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If you need a book for general development, you should choose classical literature. Its main property is that classics develop a sense of beauty, stimulate thinking and imagination, and broaden one’s horizons.
Scientific literature will be of interest to those who are passionate about specific problems in the exact or natural sciences, astronomy, physics, biology or medicine.
It is recommended that even those who are not fans of versification become familiar with poetry. Good poetry develops imaginative thinking and teaches us to understand unusual associative series.
Philosophical literature. Without preparation, one can easily get confused in such books, so it is better to start with collections of parables adapted for the average reader, and then move on to the works of famous authors.

Advice! When choosing best-selling books, you should carefully read the annotations and read the reviews.

Sometimes works of dubious artistic value gain short-lived popularity.