Reading in the time of digital distractions

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-should-you-invest-early-reading-habits-your-kid-sargam-gupta/

Why should today’s youth embrace books. In the past couple of years, I have hardly come across my students who read books. In the present digital world, everyone prefers to watch videos or reels or scroll down endlessly on social media sites. What does reading offer vs watching a social media site? Well, reading has several benefits. 

Benefits of reading 

When you read a book, it builds your imagination and creativity, increases knowledge and vocabulary, improves writing skills, memory and concentration, stimulates the brain, helps in critical thinking, and contributes to overall personal growth. Successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been avid readers. They attribute their success to reading books which they say are a source of knowledge, ideas and helped them to incorporate them into their businesses.

Personal experiences 

My experience with reading is similar to the saying by George. R. R. Martin “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, a person who never reads, lives only once”. As a child, I remember reading Heidi. I visualized the mountains, grasses, flowers, sheep grazing, Alm-Uncle’s house and others. I felt I have seen the Swiss Alps where the story is set. It still remains one of my favourite books. The Diary of Anne Frank made me experience the lives of Jews and Ruskin Bond books made me feel the forest, rivers, mountains and railway tracks. R K Narayan books make me feel I know the fictional town Malgudi, its Sarayu River, Kabir Street, market, railway station, etc. Swami and his friends remind the happiness I derived in childhood through little things. My heart felt heavy for Anupama during her difficult times in Mahashweta. Birds, Beasts and Bandit: 14 days with Veerappan gave me a different opinion about the smuggler Veerappan and his survival strategies in the forest. Non-fictions like The Secret, Atomic Habits and Unposted Letter helped me shape my thinking, attitude, habits, relationships etc. What I experienced with a particular book might be completely different from what another person feels. My opinion about a book might be different from others. Every person’s viewpoint of a book is shaped by his/her life experiences, feelings, perspective towards life etc. Overall, books help us to travel to places and experience different occasions. Every book has a message, only our understanding of the message differs. 

Embrace digital reading 

The present digital world has provided an array of opportunities for readers. Digital books such as e-books and audio books are helping readers easily access books. Further, there are several sites that offer freely downloadable books either in pdf version or e-book reader formats. Earlier, I would buy books or borrow them from friends. Today also I do the same, but in lesser frequency. Now, mostly I download free books and read it on my kindle (e-book reader). There have been debates on reading from a hard copy vs soft copy. However, I feel we need to embrace the technology for out betterment and read from both hard and soft copy. Carrying an e-book reader during travel or anywhere, will make the book available for you to read at any time. E-book readers are like your digital library, you can download and store books. There are free and paid e-books on amazon also.

How to start reading? 

Now, it is easy to say, “READ BOOKS”🕮. But how are you going to begin? First of all, choose a book that interests you. It could be a fiction or non-fiction. You should only be curious to know the contents of the book. Begin with just one page a day. As reading one page a day becomes a habit, you can then increase it to two pages a day and so on. Once you begin to enjoy reading, it will naturally become a habit. Additionally, you could set a time and place to read every day and carry your book wherever you go. You can also join Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/), which helps you to mark books that you have read, wish to read, join the reading challenge, rate and review books etc. 

Once you begin to enjoy reading, you will appreciate the ‘Power of Reading’ and feel as Franka Zappa said, ‘So many books, so little time’. Happy reading!