10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every

Day
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-benefits-reading-why-you-should-read-everyday.html
Leisure Lifestyle by Lana Winter-Hébert
When was the last time you read a book, or a substantial magazine article? Do your daily reading habits
center around tweets, Facebook updates, or the directions on your instant oatmeal packet? If you’re one of
countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out: reading has a
significant number of benefits, and just a few benefits of reading are listed below.
1. Mental Stimulation
Studies have shown that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent)
Alzheimer’s and Dementia, since keeping your brain active and engaged prevents it from losing power. Just
like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy, so the phrase
“use it or lose it” is particularly apt when it comes to your mind. Doing puzzles and playing games such as
chess have also been found to be helpful with cognitive stimulation.
2. Stress Reduction
No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced
in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport
you to other realms, while an engaging article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting
tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.
3. Knowledge
Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come
in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever
face.
Additionally, here’s a bit of food for thought: should you ever find yourself in dire circumstances, remember
that although you might lose everything else—your job, your possessions, your money, even your health—
knowledge can never be taken from you.
4. Vocabulary Expansion
This goes with the above topic: the more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they’ll
inevitably make their way into your everyday vocabulary. Being articulate and well-spoken is of great help
in any profession, and knowing that you can speak to higher-ups with self-confidence can be an enormous
boost to your self-esteem. It could even aid in your career, as those who are well-read, well-spoken, and
knowledgeable on a variety of topics tend to get promotions more quickly (and more often) than those with
smaller vocabularies and lack of awareness of literature, scientific breakthroughs, and global events.
Reading books is also vital for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used
in context, which will ameliorate their own speaking and writing fluency.
5. Memory Improvement
When you read a book, you have to remember an assortment of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions,
history, and nuances, as well as the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through every story.
That’s a fair bit to remember, but brains are marvellous things and can remember these things with relative
ease. Amazingly enough, every new memory you create forges new synapses (brain pathways)and
strengthens existing ones, which assists in short-term memory recall as well as stabilizing moods. How cool
is that?
6. Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills
Have you ever read an amazing mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the book? If
so, you were able to put critical and analytical thinking to work by taking note of all the details provided and
sorting them out to determine “whodunnit”.
That same ability to analyze details also comes in handy when it comes to critiquing the plot; determining
whether it was a well-written piece, if the characters were properly developed, if the storyline ran smoothly,
etc. Should you ever have an opportunity to discuss the book with others, you’ll be able to state your
opinions clearly, as you’ve taken the time to really consider all the aspects involved.
7. Improved Focus and Concentration
In our internet-crazed world, attention is drawn in a million different directions at once as we multi-task
through every day. In a single 5-minute span, the average person will divide their time between working on
a task, checking email, chatting with a couple of people (via gchat, skype, etc.), keeping an eye on twitter,
monitoring their smartphone, and interacting with co-workers. This type of ADD-like behaviour causes
stress levels to rise, and lowers our productivity.
When you read a book, all of your attention is focused on the story—the rest of the world just falls away,
and you can immerse yourself in every fine detail you’re absorbing. Try reading for 15-20 minutes before
work (i.e. on your morning commute, if you take public transit), and you’ll be surprised at how much more
focused you are once you get to the office.
8. Better Writing Skills
This goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of your vocabulary: exposure to published, well-written work
has a noted effect on one’s own writing, as observing the cadence, fluidity, and writing styles of other
authors will invariably influence your own work. In the same way that musicians influence one another, and
painters use techniques established by previous masters, so do writers learn how to craft prose by reading the
works of others.
9. Tranquility
In addition to the relaxation that accompanies reading a good book, it’s possible that the subject you read
about can bring about immense inner peace and tranquility. Reading spiritual texts can lower blood pressure
and bring about an immense sense of calm, while reading self-help books has been shown to help people
suffering from certain mood disorders and mild mental illnesses.
10. Free Entertainment
Though many of us like to buy books so we can annotate them and dog-ear pages for future reference, they
can be quite pricey. For low-budget entertainment, you can visit your local library and bask in the glory of
the countless tomes available there for free. Libraries have books on every subject imaginable, and since
they rotate their stock and constantly get new books, you’ll never run out of reading materials.
If you happen to live in an area that doesn’t have a local library, or if you’re mobility-impaired and can’t get
to one easily, most libraries have their books available in PDF or ePub format so you can read them on your
e-reader, iPad, or your computer screen. There are also many sources online where you can download free e-
books, so go hunting for something new to read!
There’s a reading genre for every literate person on the planet, and whether your tastes lie in classical
literature, poetry, fashion magazines, biographies, religious texts, young adult books, self-help guides, street
lit, or romance novels, there’s something out there to capture your curiosity and imagination. Step away
from your computer for a little while, crack open a book, and replenish your soul for a little while.

Why You Should Read

Why You Really Need To Be A Person Who Reads
http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/austin/why-you-should-read.html
Jeremy Beal
'If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t f*ck 'em.' - John Waters
A famous quote attributed to John Waters warns would-be lovers, “If you go home with somebody and they
don’t have books, don’t f*ck 'em.”
Based on the wisdom of Waters, reading books can help get you laid. That’s not the best reason to read
them, hard as that might be for teenage boys to believe. Sure, it’s one reason, and if you need that extra
incentive, by all means use it if it’ll get you to stick your nose in a book. But you’d be better off brushing up
on your Shakespeare for a plethora of other reasons that extend well beyond the inside of your pants.
In a perfect world, you would read voraciously — in your free time, for pleasure, while waiting for the train,
while standing in line at the grocery store. You should read because it is one of the very few leisure pursuits
that can actually make you a better person. You don’t have to have read the “great books” that make up the
Western canon, but it sure wouldn’t hurt. And given how often pop culture references the important books
of the past 150 years, you’ll probably be much less confused if you do.
Reading makes you smarter
Becoming well-read requires that you read, and reading makes you smarter. Plenty of my pals wouldn’t read
a book if you paid them. They’re enjoyable, clever men to chum around with, but none of them are the kind
of sharp that makes you think they could pull off a bank robbery. My anecdotal evidence tells me that you
can bump into a group of people and figure out within a few minutes which of them picks up a paperback
before bed. The smartest guy I know carries a copy of The Great Gatsby with him and leafs through it
before every important meeting. He says it gets him in the rhythm of genius, and I believe him.
Reading forces you to sit and focus. It also improves your vocabulary, and doing it regularly even improves
your analytical abilities. That means the guy with his nose in a novel on the train thinks quicker on his feet
than the guy wearing earbuds and tapping out the newest Lil Wayne song on the window glass. The studies
have been done, but you should be able to file them under “no duh.” Yes, reading is good for you.
Reading lets you in on the joke
Almost everything anyone is ever talking about stems from a book, or an idea that was rooted in one. Every
episode of The Simpsons and Sopranos, every news story, and even every football game on Monday night is
brought back to and contextualized by the characters, plots and motivations that have been written down
over the past 3,000 years. Our culture isn’t much more than a series of winks and nudges referring to what
our storytellers have read, written and tweaked. The reward comes from having read through the same lines
that someone else has and recognizing in their words a path that you’ve already tread. It becomes your own
because your take on the story is guaranteed to be individual, making your experience all the richer and all
the more personal to you.
It’s entertaining
This one might be a tough sell to the guys who haven’t picked up a novel since high school. You’ve heard
those dipsh*ts in the back of the movie theater flapping their gums about how “the book was way better.”
They may sound pretentious, but they also may have a point. Nine times out of 10, the book is better than
the movie, because the person who read it was able to relate to it or understand it in a way that was personal
to them.
On top of that, books never have to worry about special effects budgets or if a sex scene is going to earn an
NC-17 rating or about compromising anything to anyone. Books are a direct link between the artist’s
creative talent and the audience, and there’s a book that touches on every subject you could ever be
interested in, but that’s not even the kicker.
The best thing about a book is that it tells you half the story and forces you to come up with all the scenery
and information yourself, in a way that TV and video games can’t. Your mind in forced to fill in the blanks
automatically, and the product is better than what anybody could ever spoon-feed you from a screen.
It’s just like being there
That brings me to my most important point: Reading about something is as close as you can get to actually
being there without actually being there. A contrarian might suggest he’d rather have adventures than read
about them, and that sticking your nose in a book is no substitute for getting your hands dirty. It’s a fair
point, but some of us are saddled with responsibilities that keep us from sailing the Indian Ocean with a
disgraced young lord looking for redemption, or walking the Parisian underworld between the wars, looking
for women and enough money to pay for them, or fighting a totalitarian government by bedding that dark-
haired gal from accounting (on second thought, that one shouldn’t be so hard).
The point is, when you’ve read a novel, you’ve lived through the story. You might not have murdered your
pawnbroker, but you’ve tagged along through the whole messy business. By the time the books start piling
up around you, you’ve been a bank robber, a soldier, a member of the nouveaux riches and a beat cop.
You’ve lived through all kinds of situations and visited all kinds of places, at least on some level, because
your brain has gone through the motions of experience and built up some muscle memory. You’ve picked up
street smarts from your book smarts, and you’ve done it for the price of a few coffees.
To put it bluntly, be well-read because it’s to your strong advantage to be so. Put in the work, and let your
mind do the running. Reading is almost an act of sedition in our passive digital-screen culture. It’s an
engaging enterprise, and it’s the way our ancestors meant to pass on their collected experience. Reading
takes the time and focus a screen will never ask of you, rewarding you with intellectual riches if you take the
time to curl up and focus. If life is a game of inches, and you’ve got a few hundred important books under
your belt, you’ve got a leg up on anyone who hasn’t.
10. Read
Reading is a powerful way to provide your mind with an escape, and one study found that reading can
reduce your mental stress by an astounding 68% because, “your mind is invited into a literary world that is
free from the stressors that plague your daily life.”
11. Invest time in a creative hobby
When you invest time and attention in a creative hobby, as with reading, you provide your mind with a
much-needed escape from your day-to-day stressors. You jump into a zone that has no pressures, deadlines,
or rules, and provide your mind with a chance to recharge. Whether you’re into writing, painting, or
woodworking, investing time in a creative hobby is a fantastic way to supercharge your brain.

Why People Should Read

for Pleasure
In the past years the use of the television and the
internet has increased; this situation has caused many
people to change their likes and the way that they enjoy
their free time. Because of television and the internet,
many people spend less time reading, so the purpose for
this essay is to present reasons why people should read
just for pleasure. The reasons that I give you are quite
simple: to improve your knowledge, to expand your
general culture, to have more fun, to make your
imagination fly, to find new ways to express your ideas,
and finally to expand your vocabulary.
The first reason that I give you to enjoy reading is that
when you read, you can expand your knowledge and
also your culture. There are a lot of good books in
which you can find history, novels, tragedies, comedies
and a variety of other themes. You can see that people
who read more often frequently have a bigger
knowledge of life and also a bigger perspective of their
environment. I think that fact gives them an advantage
over all others who do not read frequently.
The second reason to read more often is that through
books you can have fun and even travel in your imagination. Children have not yet lost the ability of getting
into their dreams, and because of this, in their first years the parents read a lot of tales in which they use their
imagination. Adults should try to keep this ability, so we do not forget the importance of the use of the
imagination. The imagination also represents a tool that could help you to develop your professional career
in a creative way.
Finally, the third and the most important feature that reading offers you is that it does not matter the age that
you have, you always could expand your vocabulary and the ways to express your ideas to the others in a
simple and correct form. By the time you can improve the kind of books that you read, there are a lot of
categories, so you will never stop learning from the pleasure of reading. People who know how to choose a
book generally have the capability of choosing a formal book in which they can find formal grammatical
structures and obviously a formal vocabulary. All these things allow them to gain greater fluency in their
communication.
In conclusion, I recommend that you enjoy reading more often. There are excellent reasons for doing it; you
just have to want to expand your knowledge and your culture, to improve your imagination and also your
vocabulary. I know that we should evolve with the technology; that is, it is good to know how to navigate in
the internet, but we must also not forget the books. Try to choose good books at the beginning, and then I
ensure you that you never will stop reading.
Copyright © Eslbee.com, 2001-2013. All rights reserved.

What Are The Benefits Of Reading?

The reasons why to read books are not limited to 10, but we have compiled and amalgamated the top
reasons based on scientific research and common sense, to give you the definitive list.
In terms of fiction or no-fiction, there are endless stories that can both broaden your mind or help you get
through a sticking point in your life. Those who read have been known to have more finely-tuned brains
than those who prefer more passive activities, so anyone hoping to improve their minds both psychologically
and cognitively might want to think about taking up the habit of regular reading.

Here are 10 reasons why you should read 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 to 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 read

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. Why to read

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 even 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 to 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. If you are looking for a
list of great books to read, check out 10 Easy To Read Books That Make You Smarter. Why to read

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 to 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 to 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 to 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.

GET STARTED!
Why to read
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