Not enough people are taking advantage of the magic of reading. There is something unique about reading that cannot be found anywhere else.
You can watch a movie or listen to music or look at a painting and be transported through their own respective ways, but it’s not the same. The written language holds a special power that cannot ever be replicated. Therefore, everyone should read at least one book a year, as it provides an experience unlike any other.
Beginning with fiction seems apt, as most people tend to think of a fiction novel when they think of a book. Fiction transports you into a world or perspective that is not your own, creating an entirely new world inside your own mind. When reading, you can fly with dragons or become a disgruntled 9-to-5 worker. You can be and do anything within the realm of language, which is, in short, everything.
Imagination is an extremely powerful tool, and when paired with written language the brain can do astonishing things. You can escape how you feel or amplify pre-existing feelings, all from the comfort of wherever you are reading.
Literature allows language to take hold of the reader and accomplish anything the reader allows. Everyone will have their own separate and unique experiences reading a novel. Anyone who reads the same book will have different images in their heads while reading. Certain lines may impact someone deeper than others. Certain scenes will stick with different readers.
Language goes further than anything else in this world. Language is pervasive and slippery and malleable. An author may write a story, but once it’s written, that story becomes its own being. It is then molded by whoever reads it. A story is never just a story, but a portal for each separate reader to disappear into.
Fiction is born from the reader. A story does not exist until it is read. The world and characters and experiences are not reality until the reader picks up the book and delves into its pages. Reading a novel brings life to language.
Reading also builds on essential life skills. You are improving your vocabulary and learning better critical thinking. You are expanding your worldview and perspective on life. You are maybe even learning about how to better live your life. The possibilities of literature are endless because anything can exist in the written language.
Nonfiction novels are just as important. Providing information, carefully researched and compiled, on a topic you may never have heard of before. Nonfiction provides insight that a documentary cannot replicate. You can fit more information into a 400 page book than a 2 hour long documentary, as you can write more than you can talk. Nonfiction novels allow for intensive and expansive coverage on topics because of the novel’s ability to condense information.
Writing can provide nuance and understanding that speaking cannot. When someone writes something, there are hours upon hours of deliberation into the exact word choice and sentence structure. Writing is purposeful, sincere, obsessive and passionate. It is a window into the world.
This magical experience of reading is being forgotten in the modern age of the screen. According to a poll made by YouGov, 54% of U.S. citizens read one book last year. That is dangerously close to half the population not reading a single book in an entire calendar year.
This isn’t to shame non-readers, as reading can be stressful for many people who had bad experiences in high school with being assigned horribly boring and monotonous tomes about people completely irrelevant. However, reading can be whatever you want it to be.
There has been a huge explosion of reading in recent years with novels in the “Romantasy” genre. Things like BookTok have been encouraging people to read whatever brings them joy. Reading doesn’t just mean Charles Dickens, it can mean reading comic books or a steamy romance set in a fantasy land.
Movies and TV are still extremely important to the world of art and media. They accomplish their own goals using their own unique strategies. However, literature is one of, if not the only, form of media being actively banned in schools.
To be banned from education means something about that thing is so impactful and important that it must be hidden from the public. It must be taken away from those who can consume it as it may provide ideas and perspectives that are against whoever is banning the book.
Novels have the power to alter the mind. The power to take over a person’s brain and manipulate how they think and feel. A book wants you to lose yourself in its words. To lose your sense and self and adopt whatever the text wants.
Yet despite all this magic, people shy away from reading. Reading has become this horrible beast to be tackled, when really it’s a gorgeous creature to play with.
Next time you see or hear of a book that seems interesting, try picking it up. You may be surprised with how much fun you will have, and how rewarding it will feel.
