Read, read, read. It's not just a duty, for example, when we study or prepare for a professional test (think of a competition and the related texts), which is crucial for our future. It's first and foremost a pleasure, to be discovered and cultivated, an authentic hallmark of a sustainable lifestyle. Once you've embraced reading as a pure pleasure, a way to enrich yourself and your knowledge, you'll never let it go. It will be your lifelong lover. And over time, you'll better understand that, thanks to reading, you've never wasted time, joy, talent, or human connections, but you'll also feel stronger in the face of life's perilous curves. Reading has made you stronger, both in mind and heart.
Index of topics
The benefits of reading
If you make this sustainable choice (I repeat: read, read, read), also let yourself be guided by instinct, by a passion that comes from within you, and do not remain prisoners always and only of the advice of other readers or in any case of an almost obligatory path to become a “strong” reader, that is, provided with continuity in reading.
Let me explain. Anyone who loves fiction, for example, cannot ignore, under any circumstances, the Great Novel of the Nineteenth Century, the masters of Italian, French, German, Russian, American, and Eastern European literature. I'll avoid listing names, otherwise this article risks being too long. But if you don't like a great writer of the nineteenth century, or even the twentieth, and don't feel the power and emotion of their narrative vein, then don't waste time and effort: close the book and move on. Maybe you'll try again a few years later, and then, perhaps, your reaction will be different.
Another fundamental aspect to gaining the pleasure of reading, while respecting all the technological marvels of this world, is the choice to always prefer paper books. Yes, the tactile dimension of the book, which already as physical contact, skin contact, creates a relationship and therefore a very pleasant chemistry for your senses. It's no coincidence that those who truly love books and reading place libraries, even tiny ones, wherever you live, in any room of the house (be careful: don't overdo it, otherwise you risk separation), because it is precisely paper books that produce and spread warmth, companionship, eroticism, and knowledge. And not just by decorating a room.
Importance of reading
Among the many radical changes technology has brought about in our lifestyles, there's also one related to our relationship with book reading. But after a long period of emphasis on digital reading, a rethinking of the importance of paper is emerging, and of how useful and even valuable a return, at least partial, to reading paper books, rather than electronic devices, can be. For example, some scientific studies show that reading a book on paper, rather than digitally, helps us remember better and retain more details. Not only that, but it also fosters abstract thought, and thus creativity and imagination.
The admittedly partial recovery of paper books also helps us better appreciate the increasingly surprising benefits of reading. How many times, since childhood, have we been told the importance of reading? Yet the decline seems unstoppable, despite science constantly reminding us that books make us better. In every sense. Reading statistics in Italy are increasingly grim: only 4 out of 10 citizens have read at least one book for non-academic or professional reasons, and 9 percent of families have no books at all at home. Not to mention bookstores: independent ones are disappearing, and in Rome alone, the rate is 10 bookstores closing each year. And, miraculously, every now and then a replacement opens.
A study comes from the New School for Social Research of New York and is signed by an Italian, Emanuele Castano, who published the results in the journal Science. What did Castano discover by observing groups of readers Divided by age group? Reading books increases empathy and the ability to relate to others. Therefore, it improves us. Research by a joint team of American and Canadian scholars has led to the identification of the core of the well-being that reading produces in a crucial area for our quality of life: the brain. A group of readers underwent a series of MRI scans while reading books. It was discovered that reading stimulates the neural network that generates the wandering thoughts typical of the mind at rest. In simpler terms, we could say that reading is a beneficial brain massage.
Why reading is good for you
Not only that: it is very suitable for treating disorders of theanxiety and mood, and to learn to live with certain chronic conditions. In particular, the empathy effect and increased ability to relate to others have proven highly effective for children, who, through books and reading, emerge from their shells, from the tendency to isolate themselves fostered by compulsive use of computers and cell phones. Castano's studies are further good reasons not to waste the opportunities that come from reading and to remind us how many benefits we can derive from a simple book, which can even change our lives for the better.
Reading improves language and writing
A person who reads with a certain frequency you recognize it immediatelyHis language is broad, not narrow, with a good level of command and correct use of terms. The amount of vocabulary used is also above average, and readers don't always use the same idiomatic expressions. The same goes for his writing: reading increases writing ability, and even in this case it allows you to have a much broader vocabulary available than those who are not used to reading.
Read aloud for children
For those who don't have time to read their little ones their daily ration of books every day, the publishing house Il Castoro offers some wonderful readings aloud on its YouTube channel, an excellent alternative to mum and dad's voice:
However, you will never find anything out there that can replace, in terms of effectiveness and results, reading books aloud to your children. It's a true sharing of reading with them and the pleasure a book provides. It's an exercise to be done with extreme lightness, with some methodological advice that we give here, and without any pressure. Reading, apart from school and university texts or for work, is a free choice. And it should remain so.
Reading, even a romance novel, is an essential tool for a true understanding of reality. Today, we are experiencing a historical phase in which the primacy of reading is declining in favor of the images and signs of the Internet. What happens to those who don't read? The philosopher Umberto Galimberti He answers this question thus: "Sequential intelligence, which is what we use to read, requires mental exercise that viewing images cannot provide. Concentration, silence, and solitude are essential for readers, while one can look while doing other things. But it is the effort of reading that fosters reflection and deeper understanding." I translate: without reading, we are destined to be more stupid and more ignorant.
