Why should you read a book? - 4 reasons

7 hours ago
3 min read

I am a friend of books more than anything else. Ever since I touched the magical, fairy tales of Russian storytellers accidently as a toddler, I had the fascination to make myself be absorbed into pages of a book. The remarkable nature of a book being silent makes it resonate with my mind.

Reason 1. Books are dynamic

Books do not ask themselves to be read. I cannot see a moving thing inside its pages unless I turn the pages deliberately. Words remain at exact places as put Forwarded by the author. But paradoxically they are dynamic. There are moving cars, raging hurricanes, and marching armies inside those pages. Movement is everywhere. And books are dynamic. I know this in firsthand even before I start reading a passage, by the end of a chapter something is going to move and move markedly.

Two books on a bed, "The Little Book of Hygge" and "Little Women," next to a turquoise mug of coffee and glasses, creating a cozy vibe. — Books are magical

Why you should read a book Reason 2. Books are replicating

Movement is only one sign of a living. On the other hand, there are many signs, which characterize living. And I have encountered all of them in books. There are dreams, there are emotions, there is propagation and growth. Books even have captured the consciousness of some fellow human beings of the past. Hence, I would say a book written a thousand years ago, is still a specimen of life that existed. They can propagate ideas in your mind which would change the course of future humans.

Reason 3. Living is just another narrative

Living is a first-person narrative. If you have watched your life day after day, you would understand there is nothing more to life. It is just a description of things which appears happening around you. Ruminations of a first-person perspective. In a sense, life is just another unwritten book, and the protagonist is you, with all your ebbs and flows. If a life is a narrative, I suggest books are replica of these lives. As they hold records of everything in approximation, just like it happens in our minds.

Reason 4. Books are intelligent friends.

Because of these qualities I consider, books my great companions. I do not wish to speak with a group of people who has nothing interesting to tell other than, what happened to them yesterday. How boring is to talk about 5 years of future, when there are far more interesting things hidden behind pages of a single book. I would spend afternoon with five books, on a circle table, speaking to me simultaneously about, electromagnetic waves and Fibonacci numbers or metamorphosis. What a fascinating afternoon it would be if I can find five, similar intelligent fellows to surround me in this boring existence. Yet, I do not find them unless among pages of old library books.

I am not sure what to make of this. Maybe I am being thrown into chasms of loneliness, when I lose the interest on human beings. I cannot help myself. Maybe embracing books might be doom of my eternal soul. Let it be. I love the peace it creates when the mind roam across the pages of a chapter written by a solitary mind half century ago, half across the world, a friend that I do not have the privilege to meet.