Reading Still Matters

In the past, when I still enjoyed watching movies, I always attempted to avoid movies that were based on my favourite books. I knew that as soon as I watched the movie, the pictures of the places and people that I had constructed in my imagination would immediately dissolve and be replaced by the movie settings and the Hollywood faces playing the major roles. For the most part, I ended up watching the movies and Liam Neeson became Rob Roy and Peter O'Toole became Lawrence of Arabia. I thought I had a victory when I managed to avoid watching Nicholas Cage and Penelope Cruz in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, but the previews, movie posters and advertising were enough to take over the treasured, but shadowy realms of my imagination. I have since wondered why pictures in movies so easily and ruthlessly replaced those in my imagination, why Daniel Radcliffe actually became Harry Potter for all time.   So, I thought I would look into the phenomena and find out if it was just me or if the...

When I started writing this blog article I had to stop myself right away. My initial title was "Why Reading is Important", but what I really wanted to write this post about is why reading Books is important.  There are lots of other things we read that aren't books, like adds in the subway, social media posts, news articles written at the grade 6 level.  And I am not saying that you shouldn't read these types of media or that there is no value there. There is no escaping that kind of reading, and I hope there is some value here for readers of this post.  That said, reading books is a different kettle of fish than reading a blog post written by some random guy on the internet.  Let me give you three good reasons why reading books is as important now as it has ever been.  The Need to Disconnect As society becomes more connected through non-traditional and electronic means, whether AI driven data streams, digital signboards, social media apps, computers, screens, ...