Living in the world we live in today can be very difficult at times, and many people try to find an escape. Drugs and alcohol have become a well known way to forget things but they are very bad for you. People don't realise that reading can help a lot, if you find the right book it's like you're taken to a whole new world. You can block out anything, sounds, thoughts, smell, and even the temperature, or at least I can. A story can have so many familiar things that make you feel a comfort and really draws you to it. It's amazing how some words on a page can make you feel so many things but feel nothing at all. Sometimes a story can remind you of your childhood but can bring sense to the things you experienced, it can also bring back some memories that you wish would never be brought up again but in some way it helps to be reminded of what it was and what it is now and how much you've grown as a person. Sometimes memories are good sometimes they're bad but a book still has the power of bringing them to mind, it's just crazy.
There are studies that show reading can help reduce stress, aids in sleep readiness, and it also fights depression symptoms. These are all things people often use drugs or alcohol for and it's amazing because just reading a book can do those things and there is nothing bad about reading, there are no disadvantages. Reading can also improve your speaking skills and keep your mind fresh because it stimulates the occipital lobe which helps keep your brain fresh. There is just so much more to reading a book than people know.
There are thousands of words in a book, and each word has so many different meanings, depending on the way you read a sentence it could also mean so many different things. "I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings, each word you emphasize makes a totally different meaning. "I never said she stole my money", meaning that that person didn't say it but maybe someone else did. " never" changes it to not even being said. "said" means they may have implied it but they didn't say it exactly. " she" means they didn't say that person stole their money. " stole" means she didn't steal the money but maybe borrowed it. " my" implies that it wasnt that person's money that was stolen and lastly "money" means she stole something other than the money. So as you can see there's tons of different meanings for each sentence in a book and it's all up to how you read it.
I hated reading for a while because I didn't know what I like. I had been reading fairy tales and fantasy books because that's what my sister liked and we were so much alike that I figured we would like the same books but I was wrong so I just stopped trying to read for a while. Eventually I was looking through books and found a romance that seemed interesting, it was called "choosing you" by Allie Everhart (it was a little more mature for my age but I read it anyway) and I loved it. I ended up getting in trouble for reading it but after a few years passed I read it again and then read the entire 8 book series and I started reading other books like it. So a great way to find what you like is to just try everything. Some people base it off what types of movies they like, for example people who like harry potter and the hobbit and movies like that often like fantasy fiction, magical realism, mystery, etc. Another way to find what you like is things you're interested in, like people who like history will read about it and read old books to see what things were like back then, people who like adrenaline might read horror books which are actually insanely scary, also people who just like mysteries or surprises obviously read mystery.
As I mentioned before, reading stimulates the occipital lobe, this is located in the rear portion of the skull, behind the parietal and temporal lobes. "As volunteers read the manipulable nouns, areas of the brain that deal with manipulation and carrying out physical actions lit up, lending support to the view that words are represented in the brain by connections with real actions." as said in the article "this is what's going on in your brain when you read" (by KAREN NIKOS-UC DAVIS) To break that down, I would say that the brain will connect reading to actions creating a picture in your head to fit what you're reading. An article called"Reading And The Brain" (by Scott Edwards) states, "Among them are the temporal lobe, which is responsible for phonological awareness and for decoding and discriminating sounds; Broca's area in the frontal lobe, which governs speech production and language comprehension; and the angular and supramarginal gyrus, which link different parts of the brain so that letter shapes can be put together to form words." In easier words, many parts of the brain come together for you to be able to connect the words into speech.
Everyone reads at different speeds. Why you ask, because some people have practiced the concept more than others, therefore they can comprehend things easier. Learning to read is easiest between ages 6-7, this is when most kids learn to read however some parents will teach their kid at 4 or 5 but there is a large chance that they won't stay above people their age forever, the others usually catch up by 3rd grade.
Overall reading can be an amazing experience and there are many benefit, not just "reading makes you smarter." In my opinion I think reading is the best solution to many things and it needs to be noticed.
