Reading is the most essential ingredient of a successful life. All successful people besides being talented, resourceful, and working smart they are readers. They read all kinds of books to build on their imagination, courage and foresight.

Why is Reading Important in Today’s Society?

Through reading, you can learn about new important developments. It gives us an understanding of different angles of life.

• Reading helps individuals build a large spectrum of information that leads to knowledge.
• Reading helps you understand the impact of the social, economic, environmental changes on life.
• Self-help books help you learn about new strategies when dealing with life changes.
• Helps you learn about different peoples way of living, their ideas, beliefs and gives you their perspective of living, making you become openminded.

Most of all, reading helps us become appreciative and tolerant of other peoples beliefs and value systems and we are all a part of the human race, shouldn’t we, therefore, be accepting of different ways of living?

Why is Reading Important For Adults?

One of the most important attributes of successful people is that they all read. Reading builds the cognitive ability of individuals, builds vocabulary, thinking skills, and concentration. Each of these skills is essential for individual growth, success and meaningful life.

Adults who read with meaning begin to question, thus, making them analytical in their approach. Thinking minds help adults to make decisions based on reason. Life is lived in grey areas, reading helps you become knowledgeable helping you make decisions that require a balance of the head and the heart. Reading creates that balance.

Reading both fiction and nonfiction helps keep the balance. Reading fiction helps open up different life situations and develops the emotional intelligence and social balance helping people live longer. Reading nonfiction builds on the intelligence and the cornucopia of content knowledge.

Why is Reading Important for Children?

Children who read are confident learners. They learn language, vocabulary and the syntax of the language without much effort. Reading with meaning and developing comprehension skills are important. Comprehension skill does not only mean only to understand the story and know what happened in the end. It involves different aspects of thinking.

• Question and Answers
• Character analysis
• Analyzing settings
• Comparing and Contrasting
• Visualization
• Synthesizing a large size of contents
• Identifying the themes
• Reviewing authors perspective
• Author’s point of view

Reading critically helps children become better communicators.

Why Should Teenagers Read?

Teenagers brains and minds during their teen years are in search of love, support, encouragement, acceptance, attention and direction. Teenagers need directive support, not overbearing parents who make demands on them.

• Reading helps teenagers develop the courage to choose and make decisions that would be beneficial to them.
• Reading unlike videos can be impactful as the richness of the text, in the form of character and events that happen in the story, build on identity and personality development.
• Internal and external conflicts that arise within the context of the story have resolutions that provide courage, passion and empathy for teenagers to identify with.

Fictional stories of sports, romance, adventure, science fiction, mystery, historical & realistic fiction provide courage and support to make decisions and direction for their dreams, passions and adventure. Reading provides a safe space for them to explore their own beliefs, ideas and ideals.

How Can YOU Build a Culture of Readers?

Firstly, there are no shortcuts in life. All good things need effort. Delicious meals need effort, a designer outfit needs effort and to buy beautiful things in life need money and effort.

Similarly, to build a home of readers we need the support of parents (adults), teachers, and friends. Here is an article from an academic journal that shows there is a correlation between success and reading. According to Scholastic Education, the volume of reading is also essential. It builds stamina, interest and builds resilience.

Reading is a life skill that opens the doors to growth and progress with confidence.

What do you mean by ‘Culture of Reading’?

A culture of readers means that the family places reading as an essential ingredient in life. From a child’s perspective, he sees his/her parents read, the grandparents reading – it can be in any language. The child notices the importance of reading is established in the school.

Every member of the family spends some time of the day – reading. This is how the culture of reading is established.

How do you build ‘Culture of Readers?

Here are some of the ways you can build a culture of readers:

1. Giving readers an opportunity to read based on their choice. It can be reading a magazine, fiction, nonfiction, folklore, poetry or even a newspaper.
2. Readers could be given a choice reading on a device or using physical books. (Social media posts don’t apply to this)
3. Set reading goals. Each member of the family makes their own goal. Goal ideas maybe –
   • To read one book from different genres in six months.
   • Read with someone
   • Join a book club
   • Older siblings can read to little ones or even a pet
   • Read with children/parents
   • Have newspaper articles discussion: identify a topic in news and have the discussion for a week and then change the topic. The first week it could be about local politics, the next week it could be about fashion, the third week it could be about sports; so on and so forth
4. Most importantly, let the child or adult have a choice of selecting the genre or the reading topic or choice of book or author.

Successful Readers

Successful readers are insightful, they have better experience in understanding problems. According to Oxfam  India has approximately 74% Literacy rate. It means that 74% can read, write and comprehend information so that they can effectively communicate, and this includes road signs. In this study, only the basic level of literacy is measured.

However, thinking critically, analytically and communicating effectively and using language comes only with deep reading. Reading is important in every aspect of physical, emotional and social growth.

Successful readers are the trigger of modernization, communication and commerce. Good readers comprehend the social and political environment and can respond appropriately. The deeper the literacy and understanding, the greater the awareness to improve social and economic conditions. It is correlated to social upliftment. The more literate the person, a better understanding of health, hygiene and self-worth.

Reading is like a window and a mirror

Window because it shows you different perspectives, different ideas and insights of many different cultures, work and topics

Mirror because it reflects your experiences, feelings, ideas, values and thoughts.

Let’s read you and me and open our world of optimism and a support growth mindset.