🥇 Library Champion Newsletter | 📖 Why reading books should be your priority, according to science.
Library Champion,
According to statistics coming out of the Pew Research Center, more than a quarter–26 percent–of American adults admit to not having read even part of a book within the past year. Science has shown that reading will help you in a variety of ways.
Reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative
According to research conducted at the University of Toronto, study participants who read short-story fiction experienced far less need for “cognitive closure” compared with counterparts who read nonfiction essays. Essentially, they tested as more open-minded, compared with the readers of essays. “Although nonfiction reading allows students to learn the subject matter, it may not always help them in thinking about it,” the authors write. “A physician may have an encyclopedic knowledge of his or her subject, but this may not prevent the physician from seizing and freezing on a diagnosis, when additional symptoms point to a different malady.”
People who read books live longer
That’s according to Yale researchers who studied 3,635 people older than 50 and found that those who read books for 30 minutes daily lived an average of 23 months longer than nonreaders or magazine readers. Apparently, the practice of reading books creates cognitive engagement that improves lots of things, including vocabulary, thinking skills, and concentration. It also can affect empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, the sum of which helps people stay on the planet longer.
Reading 50 books a year is something you can actually accomplish
While about a book a week might sound daunting, it’s probably doable by even the busiest of people. Writer Stephanie Huston says her thinking that she didn’t have enough time turned out to be a lame excuse. Now that she has made a goal to read 50 books in a year, she says that she has traded wasted time on her phone for flipping pages in bed, on trains, during meal breaks, and while waiting in line. Two months into her challenge, she reports having more peace and satisfaction and improved sleep, while learning more than she thought possible.
Successful people are readers
It’s because high achievers are keen on self-improvement. Go up to someone you admire or respect and ask them what they are reading. They likely will share with you a great book that helped stretch their imagination or limits. I recommend, to name just a few, the LBJ series by Robert Caro, Hellhound on his Trail by Hampton Sides, and The Poet by Michael Connelly.
On a personal level, I have found reading to have an immediate impact on my ability to fall asleep at night. Recently I would lay awake for at least an hour before falling asleep. I found out it really was screen time that was keeping my brain turned on when it should be shutting down for the day. I started reading for the last hour before I went to bed and I was immediately able to fall asleep right away.
Here is one book I am reading and a book that I just bought for the library’s collection.
I am continuing my way through A Promised Land. I am at the part where Obama is juggling the financial crisis fallout on a domestic and global level while also navigating the US war effort in the Middle East. I honestly don’t know how he was able to handle so much.
A book we bought today that you should borrow:
Killing the mob : the fight against organized crime in America by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
(Adult nonfiction, true crime)
The latest in the Killing series by Bill O’Reilly.
Perhaps something softer?
The Jam and Jelly Nook (An Amish Marketplace Novel) by Amy Clipston
(Adult fiction, Christian, Amish/Mennonite, romance)
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Thank you for being a library champion. You make a difference each day!
–Vince Giordano
Librarian and Director of the Juniata County Library.
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