LEARN2GETHER

The Importance of Reading

  Nowadays, when many sources of information and types of entertainment have appeared (TV and video films, cinema, the Internet), many people do not think reading is necessary. They believe that people who read are 'nerds', 'geeks', or 'bookworms'. I believe this is not true, reading is very important as it can shape one's personality. Firstly, reading can improve your imagination and emotions. It can carry you to different places, worlds and times. Picking up a book is like picking up a world that is waiting to be explored. Whether fiction or fact, books can take you away with them, engulf you and make you a part of their environment. They can make you cry or laugh, the more pages you read, the harder it is to shut the book. Within the pages lie stories untold, places never visited and new people to meet. Secondly, reading is educational: it alleviates ignorance, improves a person's vocabulary and knowledge without the person even knowing it. Every book holds vast amounts of knowledge; reading forms the core of traditional education. Lastly, reading can shape your character. Following the plot of the book we read, sympathizing with or hating its characters, we follow the author's idea of life. We absorb it, think it over, and often make it part of our own philosophy.

My reading preferences are various. People have been writing novels, short stories, verse and essays for many centuries, and you can find a lot of brilliant writers and excellent books in many genres of literature. For me, it is not the genre of the book that matters, but the talent and emotion the author has put into it. I equally enjoy 'serious' classical prose and poetry and some 'easier' reading like 20th century detectives, fantasies and memoirs. The choice of a book to read depends on my mood and the amount of free time I have. Sometimes I read a book for the ideas and knowledge it contains; sometimes for the plot and entertainment.

When I am not pressed for time, I prefer classical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. To my mind, it was the "golden age' in the history of literature when masterpieces were created- Full of philosophy, deeply psychological and thought-provoking, classical novels, short stories, plays and verse form the treasury of the world literature.

Of course, I have a number of favourite writers and poets. To name only a few, they are Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kuprin, Bulgakov in Russia, and Hemingway, Faulkner, Dreiser and, really, many, many others.