I mean, in a way don’t we read enough as it is anyway? I am on my cell phone the whole day! I get e-mails from work (most of which I try to ignore, despite their painful, assumed implication of importance and necessity of keeping my job), and I get text messages from friends (and though most of the written words are abbreviated, I clearly conceive their meaning, lol). I visit and read blogs whenever I want to know how to do something (like get a high score on Guitar Hero, or get cheats for Candy Crush). I am on Facebook, so I constantly read status updates of my remarkably insightful and whiny friends. So really, do we need to read anymore? And novels? Forget about it. Why do I need to waste my precious time reading about life when I can live it? That living may consist of watching TV and playing video games, but come on, that’s much more fun that reading isn’t it?

In many ways the above argument is not entirely invalid, (and non-readers aren’t necessarily always playing video games and watching TV) we do spend a decent amount of time reading, though that reading may be disjointed and unfocused. Still, reading literature or even a non-fiction is not essential to our survival. In fact less and less people read a complete book every year. (Check out this article at The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/) Nonetheless, people can live successful and fruitful lives without reading a book. So, why read? Continue reading →