Why You Should Read Regularly (2)

Ability to See The World
With an array of appropriate books, you can visit several countries, cities, learn about people and their culture just by sitting at your desk. You can learn why a food is more prominent in a particular country, why the natives dress the way they do and so on. In essence, you are exposed to the history and peculiarities of different people in the world.

More Robust Vocabulary
Since you encounter more words as you read, you are more likely to learn new words often, see how they are used in various contexts and the meanings they connote in these contexts. Reading, therefore, can help improve your vocabulary, especially when you go the extra mile of conscientiously looking up more uses of words you recently encountered. I can attribute some of the words I know to books and materials I have read at one time or the other. Another encounter with a word I saw sometime ago often comes with a picture of the context in which I first saw the word. This experience makes words stick with me as I can relate meanings to contexts. If you want to build a career in a particular field, it is an excellent idea to read more books relating to that field. That way, you get exposed to words, and you will be able to speak to people in the field more confidently since such words make their way into your vocabulary.

Excellent Writing Skills
Apart from building your vocabulary, you can also develop excellent writing skills by reading. You become aware of writing styles of several authors and thereby develop yours. This is especially helpful for prose - stories and other non-fiction. By observing the skill with which storytellers carve and build on their stories, skillfully infusing such elements as suspense, intrigue, flashbacks and the ability to make the story real and compelling, you will likely be influenced by these writers when you develop your own writings, same way artists influence one another in other works of art.

We live in a fast-paced world, where lots of information - both useful and unnecessary - is available in print, on social media and other sources. It will require some effort on our part to sift through these lot and gather useful information that can build our minds, open our eyes to words of wisdom and all the other benefits stated in this post and the previous post. Therefore, you must read with deliberateness - whether to relax and enjoy a good story at bed-time, glean from the wisdom of sages or improve your awareness of technological advances in medicine, engineering and the likes - you must define your goals for reading. That way, you can make the most of every second spent on reading. You must not be found reading haphazardly, with lots of information available to you but with very poor knowledge.

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