On Why We Should Read More Books
FSSA students are always in the school library.
Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.
Imagine you’re sitting in your room, you’re bored out of your mind; even the electronic device you’re holding isn’t good enough to entertain you. Wouldn’t it help if you had a book to read? Do you even have books, or like reading? Nowadays, many people refrain from reading books because they find them boring; the most they’ll probably read is if they’re forced to for English class at school. What if I told you that reading offers various benefits that can improve your well-being as a whole? You’d most likely consider to grab a book and start reading.
Reading books allows your imagination to travel as far as it desires to. There are no limits to the imagination, and the variety of worlds, views and opinions you can discover in books allow you to expand your understanding of every possibility of existence. Just by reading a particular description of an event or a place, your mind formulates that image in your head and paints a picture; which is the opposite of the image being placed in front of you when you watch television or spend time on electronic devices.
The FSSA library is well stocked with classics and modern reads.
Are you stressed out? If so, why not read a book? According to a study by consultancy firm Mindlab International at the University of Sussex, it’s been proven that reading reduces stress. The experiment showed that the people participating only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. In fact, it was found that it got their stress levels to decrease immensely.
Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA) senior Isabel Donado expresses that she really enjoys reading.
“I think of reading books as like your own bubble. It doesn’t matter what type of book you’re reading. As long as you enjoy it, your get immersed in the text so much you forget about your surroundings and often imagine yourself in the picture the text is painting. I used to find it boring and useless, but now sometimes I look forward to it during my free time. You get sick of so much technology. It’s often an escape from that,”she said.
Isabel believes that reading provides her with valuable benefits, like vocabulary improvement, bettering her writing skills, and personal growth.
We should read to increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy–in short, our entire consciousness–and also to heal our pain. With the endless amount of perspectives and ideas we can read about, books can give us an opportunity to have experiences that we haven’t had the opportunity to, and still allow us to learn the life skills they entail. Books are a fast track to creating yourself.
FSSA senior Joel Montesinos admitted that he doesn’t read books.
“I do read the news, it makes me become more knowledgeable about current events in society,” Joel said. “I think that people don’t read actual books as much as they used to anymore for the specific reason that the news and media are available online, and people rely on technology more nowadays.”
Books don’t need you, you need them. They can provide you with knowledge powerful enough that you can change the world. When you read, you guide yourself to a journey of education, imagination, and innovation. Books can help your mind grow and formulate new ideas that could shift your perspectives to a level you never knew existed.
– by Evgenia Konstantinidou ’18