It's not because your parents tell you it's good. They're right, but the reason they say it at the time is because they simply want you to quit asking for snacks.
"No, you can't have a brownie sundae with crushed candy canes on top. What even made you think of that? You should go read a book or something. It's good for you."
Seriously, if my kids haven't asked for a snack during a particular 15 minute time period, I start to worry. And if I haven't responded in complete disbelief that these children ask child-like questions with impunity, they start to think I'm not an old grumpy bugger after all. But I normally do. This paragraph is like a triple negative. I’m not even sure what it says now that I haven’t continued writing it.
To reading, then. I started writing a thoughtful, what-does-it-all-mean essay on the effect reading has on our psyches, but it disappeared. Twice. I saved it as a draft here in this Blogger control center, and it completely vanished. So I re-wrote it, naively in Blogger again, and it vanished again. It was Blogger's way of saying, "Dude, that was way over your own head. Stop now before you subject your readers to this painful, meandering interpretation of the long-stirring thoughts in your usually sealed off brain."
So instead, I'll try and summarize in a few sentences. The more I read, the more information I absorb. Duh. More specifically, the more I read books set in historical, real-life contexts, the more I understand about myself and my own humanity. I haven’t even read these books with that purpose (I’m off to find myself! blah blah blah), but the result is just that. Confused? I’ll use a quick example with the book I’m reading now, Angela’s Ashes. Frank McCourt, the author, is a kid growing up first in Brooklyn, then back in native Ireland in the 1930s and '40s. He’s Irish-Catholic of course, lives in squalid conditions I’ve never had to endure, sees the depression in America and something altogether more bleak in Ireland; basically, we have nothing in common. Except he is a boy, and he is human. And when I find myself relating to the dreams, needs, questions, and “sinful thoughts” of little Francis in his boyhood, I just feel like my life is a little more normal. I also feel really grateful to have been born and raised in the late 20th century in America, in West Michigan, to my parents, in my little world.
See? That’s just one perspective out of one part of one book! I go through this like 3 or 4 times every time I read something now. Reading is good because the stories are experienced in your own head, using your own creativity, and stirring your own emotions. I love TV and movies, but they’re created with someone else’s imagination, and often produce false senses of emotion through musical crescendos or REALLY INTENSE CLOSE UPS.
Your teachers were right. Reading is good. They just weren’t explaining it right. It’s not because you’ll know the correct answers to a test, or because you’ll be able to recite Shakespearean lines when you’re picking up chicks, or because you truly need to understand transcendentalism. It’s because you’ll understand your place in this world a little bit better.
And you may pick up a few answers (questions?) on Jeopardy!, which is never a bad thing.
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