Anyone who knows me, knows I do a lot of reading. My maternal grandfather was a constant reader as was my mother. I have two main memories of my grandfather, one was him reading and smoking a pipe and the other was him tinkering in his greenhouse with plants.

I came close to not being a reader.

When I was being taught to read, schools were just starting to change over from kids learning phonics to read to kids learning sight reading. I never got sight reading.

How can you expect a child to look at words and know them because they have previously seen them? How do they grow their vocabulary when they have no tools to use for pronouncing words?

I was one of the worst readers in my class at school. Then I brought home a report card with a big C for reading. My mother wasn’t happy to see a B, seeing a C, well that wasn’t pretty. Even worse, a C in reading. My mother wasn’t having any part of that.

My mother steps in

She sat me down to read to her. When I came upon the first word I didn’t know I paused waiting for her to prompt me. Instead I heard, “Sound it out”.

I had no idea what sounding it out meant. I’d never heard of such a thing. At first my mother thought I was trying to avoid doing the ‘work’ and then she realized, I’d not be taught to sound out words. She set out to teach me how to do so.

I ended up going from the worse reader in the class to one of the top readers.

Mother also would have me look up words in the dictionary which improved my spelling. I’d read the meaning to her and she’d pick a word and ask me to tell her what it meant. If I didn’t know, I had to look that word up. In addition to giving me a wider vocabulary, the exercise taught me to dig into the meaning of words.

My love for reading is born

I developed a love for reading which eventually led to my writing. In grade 4 I chose a 500 page novel to read. My teacher tried to discourage me from reading it telling me I’d never finish it. I did.

It was my first introduction to the often difficult lives other people lived. I read several more books on a similar topic before something else caught my attention and I explored that through reading.

In my teen years I started reading the newspaper on a regular basis. Often several newspapers. I always had at least on book on the go, sometimes two or three.

Then when the web came along in my early 30s I added exploring websites. I have not been a big fan of videos although I will sometimes watch videos when the visuals will aid the learning. Usually, I head for books or articles.

The importance of reading in a wired world

The ability to read and more importantly to think through what you’ve read opens the world up to you. The broader the reading you do, the more you’re able to see and understand the world around you.

Reading also deepens our ability to tap into creativity. Imagine if you never ever read books of folklore or mythology, do you think you’d ever be able to craft stories in that genre?

Yes, you could watch them on the screen but the screen presentations don’t go into the richness of description and detail the original books do. Yes, those stories you see, they come from books.

Using old stories to make new

Walt Disney movies are almost all based on very old stories they adapt to the screen. Going back to those stories would let you write your own adaptation. Just don’t use the Disney style, they are very aggressive about copyright protection.

If you visit a site like Gutenberg.org you can find thousands of books in the public domain. They are there free for you to download, read and let your creativity soar writing your own adaptations of them. You can pick up ideas from books you’re reading and build your own stories.

That’s just talking about fiction. Diving into non-fiction books can open up your store of knowledge and understanding of the world we live in and we got where we are.

I currently have six books I'm reading in addition to the many articles I consume. I take notes on the books as I read them and will add them to my notemaking which also helps me to keep each book separated as some of the topics overlap.

I've been getting into the habit of reading some in each book every day It's a habit I'm enjoying sticking to.

Do you like read? If not, why not?

Shadowspub writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s

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