They reported being less stressed and less depressed, had higher levels of self-esteem, and a greater ability to cope with challenges. They also scored higher in terms of feeling close to friends and their community, and have a stronger awareness of social issues and cultural diversity compared to non-readers. And while we may spend more time with a book compared to other people who socialize, research shows reading can actually make you more empathic.
The impact is much more significant on readers of literary fiction as opposed to non-fiction, though. Reading fiction can also help you be more open-minded and creative , according to research. Participants who read short-story fiction tested as more open-minded compared to readers of nonfiction essays. We do it because:. Reading physical books seem to have a bigger impact than e-books, though. See, another reason to prefer traditional books over an e-reader ;. How do you prefer to read your book?
In bed, on the couch? But this is a reason books were often banned or burned and in some cultures still are because they post a danger to those who want to control others. If you mistake fantasy for reality and use books to avoid facing your problems reading is certainly bad for you.
Like with everything else, too much usually hurts. Still, reading a lot and the positive aspects of being a bookworm supersede all negative effects by far. It is not a coincidence that the most successful people in this world are avid readers. This might be a surprising question but is there actually a bad side to reading? Reading books has a couple of negative aspects like Decreasing Eyesight Bad Posture Your quality of life decreases Deteriorating Social skills Loss of vocabulary Thinking independently As you can see from the summary not all of these items are completely serious but there is some truth in it.
Bad Posture Here is a quick reminder from my article about the best study posture: So if you are sitting at a table and read a book the same rules apply. Related posts:. Can Smells Help you Learn Better? Above all, they provoked vicarious sexual arousal. Hence 'a variety of prevalent indispositions So what was to be done? Beddoes was convinced that what was needed was good healthy activity — 'Botany and gardening abroad, and the use of a lathe, or the study of experimental chemistry at home'.
Stressing how self-abuse 'often ends in a lunatic asylum', Lord Baden-Powell later advocated scouting for boys. This involved total bed rest and a complete ban on all stimulus. In , suffering from chronic acute depression, she had consulted Mitchell, who enforced the rest cure for a month and then discharged her, commanding her to lead a domestic life, to cut her reading to two hours a day, and to give up writing altogether.
Forced to stay bookless in Cambridge with an aunt, she rebelled:. London means my own home, and books, and pictures, and music, from all of which I have been parted since February now — and I have never spent such a wretched eight months in my life.
And yet that tyrannical, and as I think, shortsighted Savage insists upon another two I long for a large room to myself, with books and nothing else, where I can shut myself up, and see no one, and read myself into peace. This would be possible at Gordon Sq: and nowhere else. I wonder why Savage doesn't see this. The reason is plain. Savage judged reading one of the key causes of female derangement. Books indeed can kill. The saddest story is related by Dr James Currie of Liverpool around It concerns a mental patient whose mind gave way after he indulged in visionary speculations on the perfectibility of man.
To put him right, the kindly Currie explained Malthus' principle of population. His response, however, was to produce 'a scheme for enlarging the surface of the globe, and a project for an act of parliament for this purpose, in a letter addressed to Mr Pitt'.
To show that even this fantastic measure could not provide a way out of the Malthusian trap, Currie actually handed the young man Malthus' Essay. This he read twice, aloud the second time, not omitting a single word, and then, after a few distressing days, he quietly lay down and died. Books are fatal; they are the curse of the human race The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing. Yet I must not end on a negative note. Occasionally at least the printed page has been positively therapeutic.
Many suffering from the toothache, Rabelais recorded,. Sterne offers his variant in Tristram Shandy. When Phutatorius' membrum virile is frazzled by a roast chestnut which plops off his plate down into his breeches, cure is effected by application of a leaf from a new book, still damp and inky from the press.
That might, however, be sacrilege, if the work in question were theological. One of Rabelais' clerics observes that when a holy book was used as wrapping paper, 'I renounce the devil if everything that was wrapped up in them did not immediately become spoiled'. The most sacrilegious use of such spare sheets was as bum fodder — and naturally this had the direst repercussions:.
The secular Lord Chesterfield, however, had no hesitations about treating literature as bumf. Urging time-discipline upon his recalcitrant son, he told a little tale:. I knew a gentleman, who was so good a manager of his time, that he would not even lose that small portion of it, which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.
He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained; and I recommend you to follow his example. It is better than only doing what you cannot help doing at those moments, and it will make any book, which you shall read in that manner, very present in your mind.
Try that perhaps, but, above all, don't get hooked on books. Heed the immortal words of the superintendent in Joe Orton's Loot: 'Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paper work down to a minimum'. Reading is Bad for your Health.
Foolish beyond belief 'are those who strive to win eternal fame by issuing books', declared Erasmus in the Praise of Folly Conducted for the most part in postgraduate seminar rooms and the pages of academic texts the collection Political Shakespeare being perhaps the best-known English example , the debate was finally settled in the public sphere, where the cultural warriors, keen to alter reputations and revise the agenda, were greeted with indifference or derision.
In What Good Are the Arts? His lifetime of reading, as recounted in this book, has given him nothing, other than the occasional ringing phrase, that he could not have found in some form of pamphlet. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
But it is also part of an argument.
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