Top 35 Reasons Why You Should Start Reading Today

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles William Eliot

Believe it or not, 35 reasons are just scratches on the surface on why you need to start reading immediately. The benefits are literally countless and vary greatly from person to person. Have trouble sleeping? Wish you could travel without even leaving your home? Always wanted to be a writer but the obstacles just seem too great? The solution – READ.

There’s no such thing as reading too much…

Top 35 Reasons Why You Should Start Reading Today

1. Books will always be your constant companion through the good and bad times in your life because there is no better way of getting out of this world than through the pages of a good book. They’re the friends who keep on giving.
2. Reading something, comparing it to your own life, and then forming an idea about that idea is an opinion.
3. Cultivates patience. You can watch a two hour movie or play a seven hour video game to kill some time, but there is satisfaction in taking the time in reading a 1000+ page story.
4. Inspires people to take action! A short read can sometimes transform you into the Great Revolutionary of your own life.
5. Reading helps individuals who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. Anytime one of those moods kick in, you can just dive into a good book and forget about the outside world for a while.
6. Reading analytically / trying to find the purpose of a book, can gear you up on a lot of things about your own life and society.
7. Reading contributes to higher levels of empathy.
8. Helps putting a stop to some bad habits. It’s easier to stop smoking and drinking when you are too caught up in a book to care. Books are also great materials to get excellent guidance on how you can overcome them.
9. It helps you escape that monotony and provides you with ideas and examples of how to improve yourself and how you live your life.
10. Books teach us various aspects of humanity. The best fiction books show emotional depth and a richness of the human heart that we can mostly only suspect in other human beings.
11. A great conversation starter, especially if you’ve already read the book the other person is reading. Even if it’s not a book you’ve already read, but one you’ve been interested in – it’s a good way to start a conversation. That’s true interconnection with other humans!
12. You’re more capable of expressing myself, both socially and in the conventional sense.
13. Books teach you language. Not just vocabulary and grammar, but also effective and persuasive ways of expressing yourself. Also, reading books in a foreign language raises your fluency of that language tremendously.
14. Reading helps you to sleep. It might even help those who have difficulty getting out of bed to finish off that great book you’ve started.
15. When you read, you’re thinking. Your brain is active and your imagination is working overtime. Therefore it follows that the highest form of intelligence is indeed a vivid imagination. Explore the world, both within and without!
16. It makes you sharper and your mind more keen. In your everyday life, you get to think more clearly, making problem solving tasks easy, deducing conclusions through quick logical thought.
17. Makes you a better, more thoughtful person and allows you to analyze everything much better. Also makes you more open minded and creates the feeling of running away without actually leaving.
18. You get to peek into how other people’s minds work. It allows you to be more insightful and understanding towards other people’s flaws instead of demonizing them. Basically, you’ll have some idea of where they’re coming from even if you disagree with them.
19. It increases your attention span and your ability to form your own imaginative visualizations. This kind of ability aids greatly in visualizing concepts in technical documents.
20. You’ll start appreciating the small things in life.
21. You get genuinely excited about things.
22. Reading helps with learning in school. It creates interest which is a powerful motivational factor in education.
23. Makes you feel like you’re not alone. What you experience and feel through reading is a shared experience.
24. It exposes you to ideas that are from a different time.
25. Feeds your curiosity and satisfaction
26. Books are invisible matchmakers. Various people have met their spouses after joining book or reading clubs.
27. People who read will find you a little bit sexier if they see you with a book in your hand. “I’d always check out guys on the buy or in the bookstore or in the library or anywhere who had a book in their hands.” – Anonymous
28. It’s one of the cheapest and easiest forms of entertainment.
29. It helps you to get better at games such as Jeopardy and scrabble.
30. You read to go places that do not exist anymore, could never exist, or hopefully will never exist. You can travel anywhere in the world, meet fascinating people, explore new concepts – or just enjoy the characters in the book or the atmosphere as if it were real.
31. You read to appreciate the work of the people who lived before you and maybe to understand the reason behind it.
32. Great way to pass time on the morning commute, provided you’re not driving.
33. It’s a huge benefit to your written skills and your vocabulary, to an extent that you can write well enough to make a living out of it. Reading also helps improve spelling and grammar.
34. The more you read, the faster you read. The faster and more efficient reader you are, the more adventures you can embark upon.
35. When you read, try reading it out loud. It helps when you’re reading something in a meeting, or even just reading a story/article to your friends.