It always surprises me when someone says, "I don't read books." Yes, there are many things in the world that occupy our time - movies, video games, media. But you still need to find time to read. If you don't read books, you are missing out on a lot.
1. Reading improves imagination and creativity
When we read, we give new life written words - they are transformed in our imagination. We reinvent the sights, sounds, smells of a fascinating story. And this work develops the "creative muscles" of our brain - and there are few places where you can find such effective exercises.
2.Improve intelligence
Despite all the achievements modern technology Reading remains the best way to learn and store information. Those who read more become smarter. They filled their head with information that others do not have and will not have without books.
3. Reading can change your life
Some books can change your life in ways you don't expect. Books like The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies or Flowers for Algernon made me see the world differently. These books had a profound effect on me, I changed after reading each of them. This is the power of reading - a journey into yourself, and not just through a fascinating story. Just like after a trip, after such books, you are not the same as before.
4. Readers are sexy
According to research, women find smart guys sexier than those with average intelligence. Intelligence is one of the most sought-after qualities that women look for in men. So, single guys, check out the bookstore!
5. Empathy
It is difficult to imagine yourself in the place of someone else, especially if their world is very different from yours.
Reading is a great way to "get into the other person's head" and get to know their thoughts and feelings. Instead of looking at life from one point, you can look at the world through different eyes!
6. Wisdom
Every time you open a book, you fill your head with knowledge, facts, opinions, plots. Reading is like a continuous delivery of information. Along with this information, the reader also gains experience. Books - stories about someone life lessons about the experience gained. This is an opportunity for you to understand how the world works. By reading books, you become wiser.
7. Self-improvement
The more you read, the wider your vocabulary. No wonder - after all, you regularly meet in different books so many words that you yourself will soon begin to use them in Everyday life. good readers they usually write well. Any successful writer will tell you that to improve your writing skills, you need to read every day. What's more, reading helps improve self-confidence. It can help you in many areas of life such as social relations or promotion.
8. Improving Thinking Skills
Reading enhances analytical thinking. People who read identify patterns faster than people who don't. Reading makes your mind sharper and strengthens the synapses of the brain, because it is also a memory training. In other words, your brain gets stronger and faster because you read.
9. Improve attention and concentration
Most of us are accustomed to "multitasking", have learned to divide our attention between the TV, the Internet, the phone and a lot of other things. But in this way we lose the ability to focus in right moment on one important matter. Reading a book improves the ability to concentrate. After all, the book itself requires full concentration, because if you get distracted, you lose the thread of the story.
10. Readers are more likely to succeed
You can probably find successful people who don't read books. But it's difficult. Remember famous scientists, businessmen, writers, politicians. If they all have some general interest- that is reading.
11. Idea generation
Ideas are a powerful engine. They are based on scientific technical achievements. They solve world problems, cure diseases. Ideas can change our lives. When you read, you get a lot of new thoughts. These thoughts swirl in your head - and help create your own amazing idea.
12. Reading helps you prioritize
Reading opens up new possibilities for you. Read about new adventures, a different way of life - about different things that were not even mentioned before. Perhaps you will think about it, and realize that you want to change your life and set other goals for yourself. And what is important in your life is not at all what you previously put in the first place.
13. Live multiple lives
People who don't read can only live their own own life. Readers, on the other hand, have access to many, many lives - real or fictional characters. We can feel what they felt, experience what they experienced.
Own life experience makes us stronger and wiser. But if you live only one life, then you deprive yourself of the experience of other people and the lessons from their lives.
14. Improve mental health
Just like the muscles in the body, the brain needs a "charge" to stay healthy and strong. Research has shown that such mental activity like reading can slow (or even prevent) Alzheimer's and dementia. And people who have read a lot in their lives, where later they experience age-related memory impairment and mental capacity compared to those who did not like to read.
15. Around the world without leaving home
Travel is the most The best way get to know other peoples and cultures. And the second best way is reading. It can open up a whole new world- there, right outside your doorstep. Many books have been written about different countries, you can read about any corner the globe and get to know life different peoples with the help of books.
16. Improve physical health
We usually read in silence, alone. When you are carried away by a good book, you are in a state close to meditation. Reading is relaxing and soothing. As a result, stress reduction, normalization of blood pressure. People who read are less likely to suffer from mood disorders.
17. More topics to talk about
The more you learn about new topics, stories, and opinions, the easier it becomes for you to strike up a conversation. After all, you have in your hands an inexhaustible source of new materials for discussion!
18. Explore yourself
Have you heard the expression "lost in a book"? Reading - active process, and you yourself are actively involved in it, as if participating in the action. You can learn a lot about yourself through reading. For example, you can ask yourself what would you do if you were the hero of the book. And the answer may surprise you.
19. Broaden your horizons
If you do not read, then your world is small. You know only a small fraction of what is happening around you. Reading will reveal to you how big the world really is. There are many subjects in which I did not understand anything. It wasn't until I started reading about them that I realized how little I knew before!
Thousands of books are printed every month. Add to that blog posts and magazine articles. You can always find among this variety something to your taste. Moreover, now there is nothing easier than to become a reader. Libraries are everywhere - and they are free! Now there are digital copies of books, which means that even going to the library is not necessary.
So, with all the benefits of reading listed above, there is no reason not to read.
About the benefits of reading
"The more you read, the more you know,
the more you know, the smarter you become,
the smarter you get, the more confident your voice,
when you express your thoughts or make a choice.”
"Library at school" No. 19/09 p. 19
Ten facts about the benefits of reading
1. Reading makes you look sharper
You will better understand and see the world around you and people, and most importantly, yourself. good book be sure to read it again - you will surely see something new there.
2. Reading keeps you physically healthy
Putting letters into words, words into images, realizing what the author wanted to express with them, and finding their own explanation for them is gymnastics for the brain. No risk of injury!
3. Reading is good for the environment
If you are reading a book, it means that the tree from which it is made was not cut down in vain. There is no need to spend electricity or buy batteries to read books, and they are lighter than a laptop. You read, which means you can’t drive and walk the streets, which leads to a reduction in traffic jams and queues.
4. Reading will teach you how to communicate
Your interesting remarks miraculously will transform even boring conversations about yesterday's sporting events or a television show. And your growing talent for storytelling will allow you to easily take credit for the adventures of fictional characters. Especially great impression it produces on people who hardly read.
5. Reading helps you enjoy your free time.
You will never get tired of reading books, because there are so many of them, even a few lifetimes are not enough to read them all. You have to try many different genres before you find books that you really enjoy. Don't give up until you find "your" book, because it can change your life.
6. Reading brings peace
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parents, teachers and other adults will be so happy to see the child reading that they will not pull it once again.
7. Reading is good for your wallet.
First, books are cheaper than computer games. Secondly, your friends will not be tormented by the choice of a gift if they find out that you like to read. (There is one “but”: make wish lists, otherwise you will have to be content with only bestsellers.) And thirdly, for those who did not receive a book as a gift, there are always libraries - books are worth nothing there.
8. Reading helps you concentrate.
You can read both to the music and during classes: read and not pay attention to the fuss around. A trained reader can easily watch four programs in parallel, switching channels all the time. If you wish, you can read in transport.
9. Reading is good for your figure.
Don't be afraid to dial overweight. A reading person does not need high-calorie food to cope with the hardships of a boring life. With a book, you can travel as far as you want and make your wildest dreams come true. It’s harder to seduce you with popcorn: after all, the “movie” is already going on in your head.
10. Reading is good for parents
By watching a child enjoy a book, adults are drawn into reading too, even if they are too busy to read. Adults will be grateful to the child for their newfound happiness.
Five golden rules for those who want to teach a child to read
1. What you learned as a child will stay with you forever.
There are no children too small to read fairy tales and poems to them. Early exposure to books is the best way to instill in your child a love of reading for life.
2. Children and adults live in the same world
Children want to grow up as quickly as possible, so they are interested in the life of adults. So let's cherish and cherish children, but at the same time you should not hide them under a glass cap.
3. We learn from people we admire
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Children admire their parents and teachers. If adults talk about books with love and passion, children will definitely follow their example.
4. There is no such thing as an average child.
One child is interested in atlases, and the other loves poetry. One is a realist and the other is a dreamer. Your motto should be the words: “To every child - the right book at the right time".
5. The art of seduction
When you want to win someone over, you must be prepared for the fact that you have to make a lot of effort. Therefore, before you captivate your child with reading, you will need to introduce him to fascinating stories and beautiful pictures, skillfully printed on good paper. But don't be alarmed: it's not that difficult to seduce a child into reading, because almost all children, just like most adults, simply adore different stories.
"Library at school" No. 19/09 p. 33-34
The more you read, the more you know. It is a sin to refute this idea, especially since we ourselves actively promoted it. This is the best way to help. But, in addition to speed, meaningfulness must be present, otherwise such readers are worthless.
You can read six times as much if you're a fast reader
When you read from space speed, then you can get significantly more information than the average person. A recent study shows that the average adult can read about 300 words per minute. And advanced readers can overcome about 1500. This, for a second, is five times more. There are a couple of crazy people who swallow letters and punctuation marks even faster, but this requires a magical brain.
To put this into perspective, suppose that middle book is about 100,000 words. The average adult reader will spend approximately 5.5 hours reading it. Accelerated will cope in 50 minutes. Impressive? Still would! You must have heard about magical people who manage to read 7 books in a week. So, most of them are fast readers.
The average reader will be able to master only one and a half books a week, and then in great pain, spending an hour or more a day. And if you mentally regain the laurels of the most reading nation in the world, then it turns out that a simple person read 66 books in a year, and an accelerated one - 365. Of course, in reality the numbers will be less, but ideally everything should look like this.
However, it is not enough just to skim through the pages. Reading a book and not understanding it is like undressing a woman, kissing her, thanking her, and then driving home. In the human world, this is now called "sexual harassment." But what's interesting is that in the world of bookworms, this is called "literary harassment." Reading is not enough, you also need to understand what you read. We will work on this.
1. The table of contents should be the first thing you read.
Speed reading does not take into account the speed of reading each particular word. It is also recommended not to focus on the table of contents, as it takes time. Rave! Table of contents - road map reader. Reading without a table of contents is like driving to another city on sheer enthusiasm: you will definitely get lost, break down and be left without gasoline. 
You can, of course, not focus on these selected in bold words, but there is an opinion that you will go astray and will not be able to answer a number of structural questions. And so I looked at the table of contents, and it is immediately clear what the idea is. It is foolish to boast of reading and remember only that Stepan beat his harlot wife.
If you need to find or find out specific information from the book, no one will help better than the table of contents. Memorize it, and then you will not have to delve into tomes for a long time. The desired fragment will be strongly associated with two to five bold letters at the beginning. In addition, this will allow you not to waste time on extra information. However, the books are best read in their entirety.
In some cases, the table of contents does not contain details, or is very vague and metaphorical. For example "Big Fuck". In the chapter in which we are talking not about the record harvests of the vegetation mentioned in the title. The author simply forces the reader to read more with the title. But in most cases, a glimpse of the first two chapters is enough to tell you how the author structures his work if the table of contents does not provide clues.
2. Always ask a question
After you determine the subject of the chapter, you need to remember the lessons of literature and that hated moment when the teacher, straightening her hair, asked: “What did the author want to say in this chapter?” great way gather your thoughts together, make the brain work, and at the same time not waste time reading in vain. You will read the next chapter more intelligently. This is probably why the first chapters describe birds, flowers and the general background.
Moreover, if you are reading purpose, for example, took the Marquis de Sade to gain knowledge about BDSM, then it will be easier for you to process relevant information and filter out extraneous material.
3. First of all, the author's text, and links later
Books usually contain links to other scientific work proving the author's point of view. This information is very harmful to speed reading, creates a hodgepodge in the head, distracts from reading. No need to stop reading every time a link appears and climb to study the comments. They just confirm the author's opinion. But when you read the passage and understand what the author said, then you can get acquainted with the information under the asterisk. And then you have to climb to the end of the book, read detailed information about the types of punishment in Ottoman Empire, although the book is about fish and other marine life. How not to get lost here.
And by the way, one more piece of advice. Think of what you read as food. That is, you do not need to eat sheets - your brain will be filled with all sorts of delicious options. During large feasts, for example at a wake or wedding, you do not eat everything, but choose specific moments. For example, don't mix dessert with borscht. So it is here: do not interfere with the author's text with links. Although, we admit, if nothing is clear, if the text does not stick, and the word does not give rest, then it is better to look.
4. Never read aloud
Reading aloud is great for developing fluency in juniors who are reading their second or third book in their lives. It's too late for you old moose. After all, you need to read fluently and memorize information, not memorize.
The fact is that when we read aloud, our brain has a harder time. At the same time, Broca's center, which is responsible for comprehending information coming through speech, and Wernicke's area, which is responsible for speech reproduction, work. Thus, by reading to yourself, you save brain power, allowing it not to vocalize what you read.
During speed reading, it is quite difficult to hear your words, even pronounce them. It's time and it slows down considerably. Therefore, very often while reading aloud, we do not understand what happened. He started the speech center, and did not memorize what he read, what the hell do you want from him, boy? He is indignant, like an elderly resident of the ghetto, do not demand too much from him. So that you do not have to re-read the paragraph twice, be silent.
And remember that silence is better. In any situation. Clever man opens his mouth only for work, words of love, or when he asks the stupid to shut up.
Especially reading aloud becomes impractical when you use the third method. You work on points, determining the perspective of the words spoken by the author, but the brain is hard. Not only do you need to understand a difficult text, you also need to look after the language.
Do you need to hurry?
,
Savors every moment and observes
As the child sleeps, the old man prays,
How it's raining And how the snowflakes melt...
— Omar Khayyam —
And yet you need to understand that there is a whole abyss between slow reading and speed reading. Slow reading allows you to evaluate words in a completely different way, create marvelous pictures in your imagination with bright colors and rich colors. And speed reading is like running through the Louvre and telling you that you saw the Mona Lisa. And did you understand her charm - that's the question.
Yes, speed reading gives the big picture, a complete canvas, even some small details. But it leaves no time to enjoy the author's style. There is the same difference as between the phrases: “Your mother” in a rude form and “Young man, I am your father.” The meaning is the same, but the presentation is different. So think about what is more important for you: to contemplate or read as much as possible.
