Why I Love Reading :)
Today I read for about two hours.
That might seem like a lot, and maybe it is, but I really enjoy it. Books are amazing, and I truly hope you know what it feels like to get completely hooked by a book so much that you literally put your life on hold for a day or two in order to read it. Unfortunately, books seem to be becoming a forgotten invention, giving way to phones, computers, and other technological devices. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not the kind of person who things technology is a really bad thing and we should all have a “device burning” outside our local church. What I’m saying is that people are missing out on books…and creative thinking. Devices have their purpose and place, but so do books and I feel like we’re missing out on what they have to offer.
With that said, reading a novel (a story) is rather different than reading a “candy” book, or reading leadership/self help books. These three categories each have their purpose, though some keep their purpose longer than others.
Category 1: Candy Books
Candy books are those books that don’t require you to think. They don’t involve you using your mind to imagine much at all. These books used to be in the “novel” category, but once your reading level matured, you grew out of these books and honestly, you feel like they’re a little too young for you. Their purpose? To get you interested in reading. To get you to fall IN LOVE with it! They are usually easy to read, and help you move from reading for fun to reading to learn.
Category 2: Novels/Classics
This category of books is my personal favorite. Novels are books with a story, usually, a long story. But the difference between candy books and novels is that novels are brilliantly written, help you use your imagination, and influence your writing style. Reading good stories helps you write good stories, so if you want to be a good storyteller, read good stories. THESE are the kinds of books that make me long for rainy days! (I don’t know…there’s just something about being curled up on the couch with a good book on a rainy day 🙂 Although novels don’t exactly help me in my personal life, they help my creativity. They spark creative thoughts in my head and greatly influence my writing to be better. I subconsciously observe word choices, verb usage, creative style, ways to create suspense, and ways to convey strong emotion. Although these books are ridiculously fun to read, I wouldn’t recommend reading novels as often as I would have you read the next and final category.
Category 3: Leadership/Self Help/Classics
This is the education category, reading to learn. You get to gather advice from people who are successful, whether or not they are still alive or have the time to sit down and talk with you. Start reading! Find a book on relationships, find one on finances! And…JUST START!!! It’ll start to change your thinking, and it will impact your life. Now…Just to warn you, this type of reading is the HARDEST category to read (at least it is for me). These books do not usually hold to a consistent story line, and some people think that’s boring. I used to agree before I got old enough to understand what I was reading 🙂 But find a topic you really want to learn more about (such as history, math, or science), or an area of your life you want to improve (such as your relationships, finances, or leadership), and find a good book about it. One of the reasons I love theLife Company is they have a seemingly never-ending supply of books recommended by top leaders in the country. I would recommend looking there for suggestions on where to start 🙂
Some of you may have noticed I put Classical books in both the novel and the leadership categories. If you did, then good for you. I’ll give you a high five next time I see you if you remind me. Anyway…I did this because I feel like some classical books fall under “leadership,” and some fall under “novels.” If I had to be honest though, a lot of them fall under “novels,” but they are like a special, set-apart, category all on their own. Visit Oliver Demille’s site to get a list of classical must reads 🙂 The classics are amazing!
Okay, so there you have it! You don’t have to accept these “categories” I suggested as the only ones in existence. There may be many more, but these are the ones I thought of as the biggest ones in my life.
Happy reading!
Until next time,
Hope Frances
