One of the basic reasons why reading is important is that it helps you grow mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. Every book provides you an opportunity to learn and explore new ideas. Reading books increases your knowledge and makes you smarter.
But the importance of reading is not limited to just these benefits. You will be amazed to know how beneficial reading books can be for you. And that is exactly what you will get to know here in this article.
Here are 17 reasons why reading is important for everyone!
1. It helps you discover yourself
Every good book opens up new dimensions of thoughts for the reader. When you read a book, you somehow try to connect the events, emotions, experiences, and characters in the books with yourself.
This not only keeps you engrossed in the book but also makes you realize how you would feel and react to those situations that have not yet occurred in your life. It helps you broaden your dimensions of likes and dislikes.
So, with every page that you read, you may have a chance to discover a new part of yourself!
2. Imparts valuable lessons from years of experiences
Books are not written in a day. For an author, it takes a lot of hard work, understanding, experiences, knowledge, and in many cases a lot of pain to come up with a single book. But we as a reader get to read them in just weeks or days thereby living years of experiences in considerably less time.
3. It improves your Focus and Concentration
The Internet has revolutionized our world. But there’s a huge drawback too. For many of us, a large part of our day is spent surfing, chatting, watching videos, reading unnecessary memes and articles online. No wonder people are growing more impatient and losing focus.
However, reading books is one of those constructive habits that help us improve our concentration power. It helps us to train our brain to focus our attention and live in the present.
4. Reading improves your emotional health
Books are full of emotions. Sometimes they will make you cry with every turning page and sometimes they will leave a warm smile on your face.
Books can make you happy, sad, jealous, loved, betrayed, and so on! Books are thus an amalgamation of different mixed emotions that ultimately help us grow emotionally!
5. Importance of Reading in memory enhancement
There are a lot of things that we need to remember while reading a book. You need to keep in mind the name of the characters and their features, the name of the places, plots, and sub-plots, the sequence of events, important conversations, etc.
As your brain learns to remember the information from the storyline, it also becomes better at remembering other important things of your life.
So, by reading books, you are also indirectly training your brain for a better memory!
6. It’s a great source of motivation
Life is tricky. Sometimes there are moments in our life when we feel down and discouraged. We may lose our hope and interest in life and feel like giving up.
Well, in times like this, sometimes, all we need is a little motivation, a little push in the right direction.
Reading a good inspirational book during such a period can change our way of thinking and give us hope and motivation.
Books are no doubt a huge source of motivation. We can derive great inspiration from them and transform our lives positively.
7. It expands your knowledge and makes you smarter
Books are a very rich source of information. With every book you read, you get to learn new things.
The more you read, the more you know about different people and their experiences. You also get to know about different places, different cultures, and facts that you would not have known otherwise.
Reading books somehow or the other increases your knowledge and enhances your capability of making better decisions and choices in life.
8. Broadens your Imagination and enhances your creativity
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. This is the famous opening line from the book 1984 by George Orwell.
How do you interpret this line?
Standard Striking Clock strikes a maximum of twelve times. Similarly, we rarely have a day both bright and cold simultaneously. However, George Orwell tries to paint the gloomy yet hopeful condition of life by some imaginative references. (The interpretation can vary from person to person though.)
This is the beauty of books. It makes you imagine things beyond possibility – things that would not have come to our minds normally. Books give you a lot to think about.
Apart from this, different creative characters, plots, and approaches trigger your creativity as well. You become both creative and imaginative!
There are also many books on creativity that can particularly shape and boost your creative thinking.
9. It makes you more empathic
Another reason why reading is important is that it makes you empathic. Being empathic means being able to understand and share the feelings of others.
Books connect you with their characters and plots. You become a part of the book and feel what the characters are supposed to feel. You understand their pain and sufferings.
Books also somehow make you feel connected with the authors. You are constantly in some sort of conversation with the book.
When you are reading books, you are in a way listening to what the book has to say to you. This makes you a good listener as well.
10. Reduces stress and helps you sleep better
Reading is one of the best ways to relax your mind. According to a research by the University of Sussex, reading for even six minutes can reduce your stress levels by as high as 68 percent!
Psychologists believe that this is probably because when we are lost in a book, our mind is focused on reading and that little distraction from the real world and our problems into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and heart.
So the ultimate way of relaxing your mind is by losing yourself in a book! Read more and you will realize that your stress level becomes significantly low with time.
Reading has a pretty positive impact on another important aspect of our life – a good night’s sleep! Reading books calms your mind and helps you sleep better. You can check out my article on the benefits of reading before bed to know more.
However, avoid reading thrillers, horror, and mystery or suspense genre books before going to bed. You might end up staying awake instead.
Read some calming, inspirational books that would give you positive vibes without making you impatient.
11. Importance of Reading in enhancing your critical and analytical thinking
While reading, a lot of information is being processed in our brain simultaneously. It opens up many different perspectives for your brain to comprehend.
If you are reading a mystery or suspense book, your brain constantly tries to guess certain outcomes and events. It also has to relate one event to the other to make sense in the story.
All this, in turn, sharpens our minds and enhances our critical and analytical thinking skills.
12. It gives you joy and pleasure
One of the basic reasons why we read is simply that we enjoy reading. Reading brings joy and happiness to our life. We don’t have to depend on someone else to be happy.
It’s true that sometimes reading can be a little challenging or even boring, but such conditions are very rare if you know your taste and choose your books accordingly.
13. It makes you humble
Reading books not only increases your knowledge but also makes you realize how much you do not know about the world. With each book teaching you something new, you can’t help but think how limited your knowledge is.
Sometimes, you read a book because you know that it will add some new information to your mind which was so far unknown to you. However, it certainly does not mean that you are not smart. It simply shows that you have accepted the truth that what you know is not everything.
There are so many things you can learn and this would not be possible unless you are humble enough to accept this truth!
14. Improves your vocabulary, language command, and communication skills
If you are a reader, you probably know the importance of reading in enhancing your vocabulary. Reading books is one of the best ways to improve your vocabulary.
Moreover, the conversations in the books also help you to strengthen your command of the language. Your sentence formation becomes quick, better, and qualitative. You rarely get stuck for lack of words.
Once you have a richer vocabulary and controlled command over the language, your communication skills automatically become better.
15. Importance of reading in improving your brain functions
Books have tremendous power. It can shape our lives for good. It can also significantly improve our brain functions!
Research from Emory University in Atlanta Georgia suggests that reading a powerful work of fiction can make neural changes in your brain thereby improving your brain functions! The changes occur in the ‘resting-state’ of the brain and can last for days.
16. Being lonely will not bother you much
If you are a book lover, you are never really alone! You can always have a friend in the form of a book. And there’s a reason why book lovers consider books to be their best friends.
Books don’t complain, neither do they have any demands. They will stay with you no matter what. You can carry them wherever you want and read them whenever you want, provided you make time for reading.
If you are interested to know more about why book lovers consider books as our best friends, check out this article on 12 reasons why books are our best friends!
17. It makes you a better person
One of the most significant importance of reading is that it helps you grow as a person. As mentioned above, reading makes you empathic and humble.
You learn about the hardships in life from the experiences of others. You will learn to understand people and be kind and gentle. You will have better emotional health.
Your increased knowledge can also be useful for other people who may look up to you for advice and suggestions. With all this, you are bound to become a better human being!
Of course, these are just a few reasons to show the importance of reading in everyone’s life. There can be many other specific reasons why reading is important.
For a person in the corporate world, reading may have different benefits than that of a person in sports. But the bottom line is that reading is certainly very important, no matter in what field you are.
And if you aren’t reading yet, you should not wait any longer. The best time to start reading is today!
Happy Reading!
I had to read this for ELA, i am bored in class right now and we are learing the IMPORTANCE for books. Bla Bla Bla. Dont care tbh. Just watch TV with the subtiltes on. Its not that hard. Become more into this time of the world. period.
Awesome information.
This is a useful and excellent share. Will definitely share it with people I know.
This post was a great resource in building buzz for my city’s first book festival.
Based on other sources, the opening line to 1984 should be: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. [in April; not on April.] BTW, I actually like your quirky ‘on April’ better :).
Thank you Sandra. I have made the correction 🙂
I really liked this information it made me more motivated to read!
Great article, thank you!
One quibble regarding your discussion of Orwell’s opening line: having a day both bright and cold – even in April – is a common experience where I live. (Western Canada) It may well have been outside Orwell’s personal experience as I understand England’s springs not to be bright as a general rule, but having a frozen and yet sunny April day is not unusual for us. So it’s not an impossible thing – at least not everywhere. Take care and happy reading!
Amazing article. Love 2 read it. Thanks. Waiting to read on other important topic like this .
Thank you for sharing such amazing information.But the sentence which caught my eye is that”a book is not written in a day.We readers have better chance to read it in few days.Thank you author.
this article was amazing
i feel like reading a book now
Thank you so much dear for telling us importnace of reading. I have to start a reading please suggest me to any motivational book.
I feel like reading will reduce my loneliness and the pleasure 😂 hoping to start reading books.
This was a very nice reading.
I couldn’t agree more to it , reading helps a person in many different ways .
Here’s my views on why reading books is important
https://thereadersplanet.blogspot.com/2020/07/why-reading-is-important.html
Thanks so much for this
I really do wanna tell people about the joy that reading gives to us.
I’m gonna add these few reasons to mine and develop a note which will help them.
Thanke you for sharing great information.
I thought this article was a perfect article about how reading evolved.
Thank you for providing such a great article . It will help us to understand why reading books is important .
Thank you for sharing this blog.
Great post!!
It was a great post for a research project
Thank you for sharing this Subodh Sharma. Its really helpful and give a clear answer to me indeed.
I’m not a book lovers by nature… but somehow during MOC period, I found by reading a few books its make me learn more things and keep my mind in peacefully. And now the reading is one of my “must to do” in everyday .
Cheer,
You are welcome, Twin! I’m glad that books have become such an important part of your life now!! 🙂
You’re so right and I agree with all your arguements
So encouraging
much appreciated.
The information you have given is very helpful.I am glad to have read it at a time i was making reference for my essay writing.It has really bosted my morale of making it happen through books.Thanks
this made me my child to motivate. Thank a lot
You are welcome! 🙂
So we’ll work to encourage others for reading
Thanks so much because of your good information. I got a lot of new things about reading that, for sure, will make me read more books. However, I do not know which books I should start as a beginner.
Thanks for this article brother.
It helped me in my project work.
I just quoted your name as “Subodh Sharma (2018)” as my source of reference.
You are welcome, Francis. I’m glad that it was helpful!
Thanks for the knowledge of knowing the importance of reading in day to day life . Thanku very much
I got alot of the information for my school assignment of here. Thanks alot.
Thanks for a very helpful information. I want to develop a reading habit, however; I have never really been a fan of reading because I would run out of patience before I even get to finish a book. I am thinking it might be because am choosing wrong materials/books. So how do i go about finiding what’s relevant? Something that i will read and not run out of patience.
Hello Rams!
I think this one is actually a struggle for most of the beginners. I too had the same problem while I first started.
And its okay! The habit of reading will develop eventually, but you will have to give it some time.
What I would suggest you is to start with short interesting books. By ‘interesting’ here i mean what you might think would be of your interest. Explore few genres before you actually get into it. I for instance, started with thrillers and detective based stories and that really helped me build the habit of reading.
You can read my article on ‘genres of books’ to know more about different genres that you might want to try. Here’s the link: https://gladreaders.com/types-or-genres-of-books/
Try reading the Harry potters series…..It won’t disappoint you..once u finish reading the first book you would be addicted to read more…good luck..✌?✌?✌?
Am a student and currently pursuing Bachelor of science in nursing. I do make time to read only books concerning my field.. Wanna ask you ,is it compulsory to make time for interesting novels outside your field and what’s its relevance if it doesn’t relate to my field.???
Not necessarily compulsory. But yeah, If you have read this article then you would know how important reading books can be. It adds to your overall personality development and not just your academics or field of study!
I hope that helps!
cooolll Information very helpful
woooooow it was helpful l love this piece of work and yes l saved this page
Thanks so much for this
I really do wanna tell people about the joy that reading gives to us.
I’m gonna add these few reasons to mine and develop a note which will help them.
I’m glad you found this helpful, Jel!
Very nice
This information was really very helpful. I was wanting to develop a reading habit for so long, but never really got going. May be because I was not aware of how important reading can really be for us. Thank You for this man, I will start right away! 🙂
Glad that it was helpful. And thank you too Divakar! 🙂
Thank for this few words of motivation