Post date: Mar 9, 2017 4:18:49 AM
The mind is a muscle and it needs exercise. Reading develops one’s thoughts, actions, and linguistic creativity. We read books for the purpose of gaining insight on the human condition; personal experience is not enough for a human to procure all the useful knowledge of life, so we must feed off the experience of others.
Reading, particularly literature, provides us with a sense of relatability to the character(s), but also gives a better sense of the world around us. Reading is intellectually stimulating; it increases our brain power: we learn new words (more broad-based vocabulary). Like education, reading is perennial and not ephemeral; we should not just read a book for the sole purpose of getting a grade or a good mark on a test, but for the purpose of getting knowledge and increasing our intellectual acuity.
I don’t think you can force someone to read because they might not yet have the motivation to read. I have always felt like reading was an escape---an escape from the “patterns of this world” and the “sea of troubles.” Books should be one’s constant companions because we have the opportunity of communicating with the dead, the living, the sorrowful, and the joyful. We have the ability to change, to make a difference and learn. “A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact” (Garvey, Marcus).
One day when ambling through Poultney, Vermont, with my friends, I saw a book sale ahead, and we stopped by. Initially, I was reluctant to go forth and look at the books, but I followed my friends, and we went over and gazed over the different titles that set on the table. There were all types of books: literature, history books, science books, and a lot of fiction books. The first book I saw was James Patterson’s Alex Cross Run. I decided to go after a book by an author I had seen my mother reading for quite a long time; I picked it up and started perusing through the texts of some of the literary scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some of these books included: Menschen, Denen Ich Begegnete (Wilhelm Herzog), Up Country, and The Buffalo Soldier. At the end of my book-hunting adventure, I would finally go over to the cashier and purchase all my new books.
That first book I picked up by James Patterson sparked that interest in reading for me; it was an incredible experience. I have read almost all of his Alex Cross detective stories since then. After that kairos-like moment at the book sale, I have read voraciously and increased in knowledge and understanding. I went from reading only one to two books a year to reading about two to three books a week. I noticed that I had “expanded my lexicon” and I was finally able to express myself on a deeper level.
Now, whenever I engage in serious discourse with my family or friends, I am able to speak with more eloquence and precise elocution; I owe it all to books. In an interview with Malcolm X in the 1950s, a reporter once asked Malcolm what his alma mater was, and he replied “books.” My story is just one that may inspire you to read more. I guess the point I’m trying to make is to find “that book” that makes you passionate about learning, about reading.
-Langston Morrison