The importance of reading books

By: Advitiya Vaibhav Rai

In this hustle-and-bustle world, which is inundated with myriads of social media applications, we have almost forgotten the significance of reading books. We say that we have a paucity of time to read books, but the reality is that the hours of mindless scrolling in which we indulge on social media platforms have left no time for reading books. As a result, books remain in the bookshelves veiled in dust.

 As the American novelist Ernest Hemingway famously says, “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” Books still serve an important purpose in our lives. Fictional or non-fictional, books provide the reader an opportunity to conjure up images of what he/she reads and augments his/her critical thinking skills. Reading books provides contentment and delight which eradicates the banality from our lives.

The Book clubs and Book fairs which serve as platforms for social interaction and exchange of ideas highlight how reading books serves a social function and bestows an opportunity for face- to -face interaction. The satisfaction that one gets when he/she reads a book is far greater than the dopamine surge one gets from endless scrolling on social media. Reading books can help us think rationally and can prevent us from falling into the trap of cognitive decline caused by social media. Reading books also increases the attention span, which has been reduced in recent times by the short-form content available on social media, thus preventing us from seeking instant gratification.

Therefore, reading books should be an indelible part of our lives due to the numerous benefits offered by it and as the Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero famously says, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”