Developing one's Reading Habit.

There can now be no excuse for anybody to remain ignorant of the highest forms of human knowledge, art, and science. Learning is cheap. Public libraries are huge storehouses of neglected riches. And all who know books know that they offer joys and riches unsurpassed. Yet, millions let slip the chance to read, or they read only things meant to drug the mind rather than delight it and stimulate it.

In hours of unbearable sorrow, books are a refuge. In hours of loneliness, they provide a multitude of friends, boon companions. You can ignore them completely, unlike your other friends, when they tire you. The poorest man or woman mag travel abroad or live in a castle all his or her own, in a book. A book is a flying divan, and a lot of other things. Why let a cat have nine lives and live only one yourself? Books can offer you as many lives as you want to experience. People should read newspapers, for they are the histories of their own time. The person who neglects them is walling himself/herself in and starving his/her soul. But you cannot understand the paper of today if you haven't read the one of yesterday. Hence, only the reader of books realizes the vast and ancient brotherhood of man, the oneness of the human family, the repetition of the same errors and crimes, good deeds, and noble thoughts.

All the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to you within the covers of books—but you must know how to make use of these treasures and how to make the most from these. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read books.

Reading is the pleasure of the mind, which means that it's a little like a sport; your eagerness, knowledge, and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

The person who reads no books lives on a desert island. He may think he dwells in a cultural metropolis, but he is a hopeless villager, narrowing his own life out of sheer laziness and neglect. The person who reads no books, or few, robs himself of unlimited wealth to be had for the taking.

What sort of books is the best to read? My answer is every sort. The important thing is not to lose touch with life, not to narrow your outlook. Some people look down on fiction and think it trifling. They talk as if facts were the only important things in life and put history, biography, and science higher. But history and biography both contain fiction. In fact someone has said that history is fiction on which there is an agreement.

One man calls the subject of his biographies a saint, another calls him a villain, a third says that all the stories told about him are false and writes new ones. This can go on until you are left in complete doubt as to what a famous man really was and did. Yet, you should read history and biography in order to learn at least what people are believing. If read with an open and inquiring mind, history and biography will be found to be as fascinating and exciting as any other form of literature.

But there is no need to neglect novels for histories. Just as there is a certain amount of fiction in the fact books, so there is a vast amount of truth in good fiction. A novelist who takes his art seriously is a good spokesperson for human sympathy and human understanding. He may write in a light or grimly realistic vein.

Above all, do not become a literary snob. Do not let others push you into thinking that to be solemn is more artistic than to be merry.

Thank you for reading.

Lead photo source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/10311094/amp