The Book

Once upon a time, the main source of entertainment was reading. We will not lie, reading books were not read in our free time, but they were read. From comics and short stories, to novels and series, everyone has found something that made them happy. When was the last time you decided to read for fun?

Today we look at reading as an imposed activity, no matter how old we are and whatever we do. Yes, even for us book lovers, reading is hard. Sometimes it’s about simply having books to read that are exhausting, or that we just don’t have time to sit back and dedicate our time to reading.

Unlike other activities, reading requires our full attention. You can’t read a book, talk to someone live, and be on your cell phone at the same time. When you read, you have to read, which means there is no Internet, no superficial conversations or other stimuli. Reading, although it seems like a very simple action, is actually a complex combination of a million things.

Imagination as a key element

As this is not a scientific paper, but an article read (and written) by people who do not spend days in front of books, I will just mention that our imagination is an important part of reading. If when reading a book we cannot imagine these characters as real people, if we do not fully sympathize with them, if we do not consider them almost our friends, it is a bad book.

Of course, any book we don’t ‘connect’ with will be bad for us, although objectively (can it be objective at all) it’s not a bad book. This disconnection usually occurs because and when we read, we read because we have to and always in a hurry, rush, panic. When was the last time you went to bed, took a book, and spent an hour or two reading and understanding? When was the last time you picked up a book?

It is precisely this ‘non-possession’ of the physical copy of the book that is one of the causes of our superficiality. Books are expensive (they may not be, but they are not free), and libraries often do not have enough copies for everyone, or not at all. And then what? We go online and find a pdf or e-book and solve all our problems.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned (I’m getting closer to 47 anyway), but reading on screen is the worst thing in the world. Aside from the fact that my head literally starts to ache after a certain period (which is getting shorter and shorter), I rarely really dedicate myself to reading. I don't know what level of self-control you have to have in order to be able to have the Internet turned off for more than twenty minutes and not look at what's new on Facebook.

It's not that…

Another big minus is that in the end, we didn’t read the book. We don’t experience that moment when we finally cross half the book so everything goes faster. We can’t scroll through the pages and count how many we need until the next chapter. At the end of the reading, let’s not close the book and put it away.

Of course, we do all these things, but not on a physical level, which is visible and tangible to us. And that is ugly and sad. This leads us to not have the experience of reading and not to feel that we have actually read the book.

Therefore, the question arises - why do something from which we do not have a concrete result? Why spend hours reading novels, only to be as ‘empty’ in the end as we were in the beginning? Does that make any sense at all?

Obviously not, especially in today’s hectic world where everyone has a thousand and one obligations and we don’t have time to throw away. We do only what we have to or enjoy, and reading according to this does not fall into either of these two categories. But that was not always the case. Reading used to be our escape from reality, something that benefits everyone here and there.

‘Fake’ reality

Today, our idea of ​​escaping from reality is to turn to social networks, which, no matter how much they talk about reality, provide an opportunity to create that same reality, or at least ‘adapt’ reality to what we would like to be reality, and therefore not real reality. Although it seems that it is.

I guarantee you that if you dive into the world of reading at least a little, you will find something for yourself. Not because you will surely like Russian classics if you enjoy yourself a bit (I think you will…), but because you can write about anything. We all have our interests and there are certainly a million books about them.

And if you’re reading about something that interests you, you won’t be bored or tired. It will not be difficult for you to have to go to the library and borrow a book. It will not be difficult for you to turn the pages or have a page marker. It will not be difficult for you to understand the characters, their story and why they are the way they are.

You may be able to do that when reading a pdf, but trust me, from experience… A pdf will never be a book!