‘Reading has no downside. It makes you smarter, more attractive and live longer’
I T takes around 40 seconds to read one page of a book. If you read for half an hour every day, you’ll average 30 books a year. That’s 30 systemenhancing software uploads for your brain. You’ll be practically superhuman.
There are millions of books in print. It’s hard to choose from so many, to decide where to go next, or even where to start. That’s the beauty of this list: the hard work is done, all you need to do is start reading and let yourself be transported, entertained, edified, and maybe transformed.
As soon as you pick it up and begin reading it, a book is yours. No one else in the world can have the exact same reaction to it. Writers can’t tell readers how to read, or control readers’ reactions to their books, and marketers and critics and ‘influencers’ have no hand in the things that happen at the point where printed words become images, ideas and emotions in a reader’s mind. That’s a private place, it’s between you and the book, it’s why no book is just one book but takes a different form each time it’s read.
Reading has no downside. It makes you smarter. It makes you more attractive. It makes you live longer. Readers earn more money and advance more quickly in their careers; readers are happier, calmer, better equipped to face life’s vicissitudes. It’s also been scientifically proven that bookshops, libraries and literary festivals are the coolest places in the world to hang out.
Books are enemies of despots, repositories of truth, bastions of conscience, infallible mirrors to the soul of man. Books are purveyors of knowledge and joy. The more that people read, the greater their understanding and empathy, the clearer they see and feel the beautiful, glorious tapestry of connections between us all. Reading kills prejudice dead.
Get stuck in. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Donal Ryan, multiple-award winning author of ‘The Spinning Heart’ (Irish Book of the Decade) is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick