Benefits of Reading a Book

Most of my posts have focused on programming, which makes sense as this website's title is CodersJournal, but I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about the wonders of the written word and try to convince you to pick up a book and read. Reading this blog post is a great start to your reading journey, but I want you to do more than just read online blog posts or watch YouTube. I want you to pick up a book and read it cover to cover. Don’t get me wrong, you can get a lot of good information from watching an educational YouTube channel or reading articles you find online, but there is something different about reading. I hope by the time you finish reading this post, you will be convinced to pick up a good book and try reading it, a book that will inspire you to think of things differently, learn a new subject, or simply improve yourself in some way.

The first benefit that you can get from reading is a boost in focus and attention. This is because it takes time and effort to get the information from reading a book. To engage fully in what you are reading, you need to block out external stimuli and focus on reading the words in front of your eyes. While you go from one sentence to another, building a mental image of what is happening on the page, you are building your ability to focus and ignore distractions. You cannot gain this ability if you instead decide to watch a movie or, worse, a YouTube short. You may learn the same information, but you will not gain the benefit of focus and attention. This is why it is integral that you don’t just read articles or social media posts, but read a book.

Reading a book requires prolonged levels of focus. It requires you to come back to the story a day or two later, assuming this is a book that may take many days to complete, and pick up the story where you left off. It requires you to sit, stand, or lie in a comfortable position for an extended period of time to complete the goal of reading the whole book. This requires a good attention span; therefore, as you read, your attention span will increase. The same way running takes muscular energy to put one foot in front of the other, but by continuing to go out and run, you build your body's muscles. As you continue to read, you build your mind's ability to focus and improve your mental agility.

Reading does more than just improve your ability to focus, it builds new neural connections. Your brain has about 100 billion neurons with over 100 trillion neuron connections, and yes, that is a lot of connections. As you read, you create new neuronal connections and strengthen connections already created. Essentially, you strengthen your brain while you read, the same way you strengthen muscles when you run, because these connections are how your mind creates thought. If you have trouble remembering things or focusing, my recommendation is that you pick up a book and begin reading.

If you are still not convinced to pick up a book and read, maybe because you tried to in your past, or were forced to by a teacher, and did not particularly enjoy the experience, I completely understand. I did not like reading when I was younger. I only gained an appreciation of reading after I graduated from college, although I wish I had begun reading way earlier. I was just like you, I did not enjoy reading and much preferred watching TV. I did occasionally read a book series I found enjoyable, the Harry Potter series or the Eragon series, but after those were done, I did not seek out other books. That was until I found the types of books I prefer to read, and those books are non-fiction books. I truly enjoy reading non-fiction books, and once I figured that out, I began reading book after book. I didn’t always finish every book I began, but I continued to look out for more books to read, focusing on non-fiction books.

As I continued to read, I wondered why, while in school, teachers never encouraged their students to read non-fiction books. Books about science, about biology, chemistry, or physics. The books they encouraged us to read were fiction books, and they did not capture my attention for long, since I knew the stories were just made up. So, if you are like me and struggled to get behind the typical fiction books that are commonly read, try and go to your local library/bookstore and browse through the non-fiction or the math and science section. Pick up a book that might catch your attention a bit and try to read at least the first chapter. If you can get to that point, I promise you, you will become a reader the same way I did. Also do not shy away from textbooks; those are fun to read as well.

I hope by now I have convinced you to at least think about picking up a book to read. If not, then hopefully I have at least got you interested in doing your own research about the benefits of reading, and you can determine for yourself if what I said is true. I will end my post with this: reading has opened a whole new world for me and allowed me to learn about subjects I never knew about, or had the opportunity to learn, while in school. I am currently learning about quantum physics and reading a book about string theory, things that would not have been possible if I had never picked up that book that made me fall in love with reading. As a reminder, my degrees are within the field of biology, the subject the furthest removed from physics, so the fact that I am now interested in the field of physics should be evidence enough that reading opens the mind and allows new neuronal connections to be formed.