Why reading books matter

A brief essay as a response to this comment thread here, thanks to weirdo82.blog.

Books can make things happen, prevent things from happening, and shape the thoughts of large groups of people. They allow you to see through the eyes of real and fictional characters who have experienced great success and failure. Through books, you can learn, unlearn, and simply relax. They let us crack open doors and look at what’s behind long before these doors were built. The view remains in the shared memory of the readers, it can be analyzed, expanded, disproved, reimagined, or shot as a movie.

Reading books helps you talk with other bookworms, builds your Goodreads ranking, and is an infinite source of topics for blog posts. It also ensures you can read. It’s a challenge with no judgment, just you and the pages. They won’t ping you or complain if you don’t read them and won’t criticize if you don’t read them well.

Reading a page has the impact a fish has when swimming in water. It’s like the impact a bird has when she swings her wings. However, the combined force of all the books written and read led to our present-day civilization, good or bad. Will it disappear if we stop reading? Who knows. Maybe.