What do you love about reading?
There’s so much to choose from: its value runs through many strands .
As a source of information, it gives us the chance to find out so many things, in so many topics. Health, sport, society, history, religion, economics, politics: you name it, it’s been written about. And the beauty of the written word is that so easily it’s there to go back again and again, at our will: to savor, to reconsider, to imprint into our minds.
For many, reading for enjoyment forms a cornerstone of their lives. When we read, we focus on something else: sometimes, something quite out our own personal experience. The writer’s skill is often tested and measured by the degree of empathy they engender. Evocation, too, is another critical component.
Focusing on something outside our own lives can be, and I dare say often is, therapeutic. Released from its burden of care and worry, even if only briefly, our minds are given a chance to recover and, later, re-focus on our own problems.
Perhaps our reading has shed light on a new insight into relationships, which are sometimes fraught with difficulties.
Who know what we will unearth, on any topic?
Finally, reading gives us the chance to know intimately the minds of great and educated people. We can marvel at the beauty of language: the importance of word order as a tool of evocation. We can (almost) live the lives of people, past and present, in cultures like ours, or quite dissimilar.
To instil a love of reading into the minds of our children is surely one of the greatest gifts a parent can deliver.
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margaret lynette sharp 