In our formal education, we are taught how to read, and as we progress throughout our literary education we learn bigger and more elaborate words and their meanings, but we never learn why we should read. As most of us understand, books contain basically of all human knowledge. Some books are the thoughts and philosophies of some of the greatest minds that have ever lived, and others are the result of a person’s entire life’s work.
Imagine if I said that tomorrow night I will be spending the afternoon with George Orwell and Charles Dickens, most people would be buying plane tickets from all over the world just to hear what they would have to say. I happen to have both of them sitting in my room just waiting for me to open up their minds.
If every time we got home at night and were to about to watch TV, but read a book instead, our adventures and our knowledge would be vaster than we could imagine. Many books are turned into movies years after they are published, but most of those movies have been changed so much to be entertaining that they no longer hold the same effect of actually reading the book.
There are many perks of having a book in paper form that outweighs having the book on an e-reader. First, your book will never run out of battery and you won’t have to carry around a charger around with you everywhere you go. Secondly, and most importantly, the person who sold you your book can’t steal it from you. In 2009, Amazon secretly removed 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell from people’s Kindles without notice. The people that had their books stolen were reimbursed and Amazon said the reason for this was the company selling the books did not have the rights to them. This ironically proves the point that 1984 was trying to warn us about. Finally, never will an e-reader be able to contain the glorious smell of an old book. There is something euphoric about dusting off an old book and smelling the scent of it as you flip through the pages.
Reading increases your critical thinking and the way you think about the world. You are being mentored by some of the best and brightest minds that have ever lived. It is my hope that everyone will feel wonder from 2001: A Space Odyssey, fear from Frankenstein, and curiosity from Sherlock Holmes. Hopefully, you will start to find reading as addictive as I do, and start to form your own miniature library at home like I do.
