It’s Read A Book Day, so find a comfy corner and open the pages.
As Awareness Days go, Read a Book Day is a bit hazy. No one seems to know what it’s origins are. And whether it’s “official” in any way shape or form, we don’t know. But when have we needed official to pick up a book?
It’s so easy these days to switch on the telly, or download a film, or watch something on Youtube. We love all that – even the inane crud – but there’s nothing like a good book.
Books Make You Better
Books switch on the imagination. You can get lost in them in. You can be inspired by them. Learn from them. Change your perspective on the world.
“A Book Is Unique. Sure, every person who picks up a copy of the same book is going to read the same plot, but thanks to the powers of our respective imaginations, while I might picture purple trees, you might picture gray. While I might picture Michael Keaton as the leading man, you might picture Gerard Butler. When you read, you engage with your inner life in a way you can’t with television.” Rebecca Jane Stockes at Barnes and Noble
Books works on your brain in a different way to films or TV dramas. They develop your imagination. And also your Theory of Mind. That’s the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, emotions, desires, knowledge, to others people. In films, that’s all done for you. In books you do that for all the characters. Books make you a better person. Can’t say fairer than that. Read a book today!
Ten Reasons to Turn of the Screen and Read a Book
A day spent reading is never a wasted day
You can get lost in a different world
It will switch on your imagination.
You can learn something new
It’s free (some libraries even have ebooks to download so you don’t even have to leave your sofa!)
All you need is a comfy chair and enough light to see by.
There are thousands and thousands of titles and subjects and stories.
A re-read of a book is a hundred times better than a repeat view of a TV show.
You can do it in bed, on the bus, under a tree, at the kitchen table, on the beach, at your desk, and you can’t say that about everything.