Read Personal Development Books Until You Find and Become Yourself →

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Professor Bloom’s book includes responses to why he reads profoundly. He asserts that reading is not just a pastime but a crucial tool for individuals to retain their capacity for independent thinking and form their judgments and opinions about themselves and their views, including the Preface and Prologue of books. He then demonstrates his ideas by using other authors he knows well in the rest of the book.

His answer to the question of why he read is that - it matters. He adds that if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their judgments and opinions, they must continue to read for themselves.

How they read, well or poorly, and what they read cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their interest.

What is the Good of Literature →

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C.S. Lewis said, “The good of literature is that we want to become more than ourselves; we want to see with others’ eyes, to imagine with others’ imaginations, to feel with others’ hearts, as well as our own.”

He also said we become a thousand men and yet remain ourselves. When it happens, you will feel renewed and reinvented.

Common Reasons People Read

It helps gain valuable knowledge and learn about new things.

• It exercises the brain and improves cognitive skills, such as comprehension, memory, and focus.

• It provides entertainment and stimulates the imagination.

• It improves the ability to empathize and communicate with others.

What to Read Next and Why →

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The question of what to read next comes up over and over throughout our lives. Some offer answers but don’t explain why their choices should be of value to us.

A successful fiction and fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman doesn’t hesitate to suggest an answer and offer a why. He said, "Fiction is the gateway drug to reading.” He added that fiction drives us to want to know what happens next. It becomes exciting and satisfies the excitement as we turn the pages.

When we read fiction, it increases our imagination and results in our finding something new of interest. The new things we find may lead us in a direction such as science, history, or art. So we could look for a biography of a person with an area of similar interest to our own.

The path to the next book, or even choosing one to re-read, is often built on past choices. Years ago, I watched the movie “Apocalypse Now.” That led me to reread Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” set in Africa with the same basic plot. The book was considered one of Conrad’s best. 

Some criticized Conrad’s book for having a white man’s perspective on life in Africa. I wanted to find another view.  I wondered if there were good African writers that I could read. At that point in my life, I had never looked for African writers. I looked and found many good ones who were respected for their work. I found several authors of interest.  At the time, Chinua Achebe emerged as a well-known African author for his book “Things Fall Apart.”

It seemed to be the perfect “other point of view” I was looking for. This book is indeed something that should be read by anyone who reads “Heart of Darkness” and wonder if they have seen Africa correctly.

REVIEW OF "THINGS FALL APART, by CHINA ACHEBE

HEART OF DARKNESS BY JOSEPH CONRAD

Why You Should Read Before Think

Reading Changes Our View of Our Path Taken Throughout Our Life →

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I admire those that can quote favorite thoughts from favorite books, famous people, or scriptures. Even more so, I admire those that can remember most of what they have read. I find myself going back and rereading much of what I have already read, and when I do, it often feels like a whole new experience. Each reading brings something new to us.

Why would going back and re-reading bring new thoughts? This same question could be asked as to why you see things differently when you retell your life story. One answer to this question is a crucial point I used in my book: Why Life Stories Change: As you Look at your Own Life Story, You See Yourself Differently. When you re-read something or retell your life story, you see things through a lens that has added experiences to your view.

Abraham Lincoln said: “What I want to know is in books, and my best friend is the one who will get me a book I haven’t read.”

In Lincoln’s quote, he expresses his interest in finding something new to read, but he often uses the books he has already read to make his points. Throughout his life, he frequently quoted scriptures to make his point. Perhaps he felt people would be less likely to question conclusions drawn from scriptures.

Louis L ’Amour was a prolific writer of Western Novels, but his book “Education of a Wandering Man” was his autobiography. Throughout the book, he talks about his life, and we can see that he had a lifelong habit of reading everything he could, and that, indeed, was his education. He tied the events of his life to the things he was then reading, and they combined to form his memoir.

A story from L’Amour’s book told of his life as a young man jumping on a moving train and living in hobo camps, but as part of the story, he recalled books he read while traveling the rails between cities.

Shakespeare’s writings contained over 500 references to the Bible. We could ask ourselves why he chose to do that. Was it an effort to influence his follower’s feelings, and he needed the authority of the quote? Was that the real reason for Lincoln’s similar use of scripture quotes? In both cases, it may have been that both men were readers and that the things quoted were the things that defined the outlook of these men.

Harold Bloom wrote a book titled “How to Read & Why.” He addresses the meaning of this title in his prologue titled “Why Read.” His answer was clear enough. He said it was because “It Matters.” Understanding if it matters to us can be determined by comparing what we read to our lives.

In the scriptures, Luke 10-26, Jesus Christ asked a profound question: "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou? This was addressed to a man seeking direction in his life. “ The man was told to go and love the Lord and his neighbors, but the answer came from reading.

Fiction introduces you to people you would never meet otherwise →

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Fiction brings the reader experiences that they would have never expected to have. We step into a new reality where all our beliefs can be set aside and meet new people who can inspire or terrify us.

Will these fictional characters and experiences influence your self-identity? I think they will. Do they play a role in the narrative of how you see your life story? Again, I think they do. Does fiction have any redeeming value? Will its influence raise or lower our intelligence? There is plenty of evidence that it increases it.

You can talk to them about a broad range of subjects and new ideas, and different perspectives can be found. It sounds a lot like opening a book of fiction.

The first time I read William Faulkner’s fictional story, As I Lay Dying, it took me by surprise. I expected to enter a unique story line and learn about the people in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, during the 1920s. Yet the conversation's language, tone, and sound were a surprise. The way the characters spoke to each other was different than anything I would ever have expected, and I knew I was in a different place. The way the characters interacted and sounded contributed to letting me see life differently.

I read Lia Genova’s book, Still Alice, because I wanted to learn more about what it was like to have Alzheimer’s disease. I hoped never to experience this for myself and saw this story as a way to understand the condition further. The story did much more than I expected, as I learned, but I also felt the impact of the disease. When Alice, a linguistics expert, began to lose her words and thoughts, I felt how hard it was for her.

Einstein suggested, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Neil Gaiman is a writer of fantasy and fiction, and in his book The View from the Cheap Seats, he wrote about attending a meeting for fiction writers in China. In previous years, China didn’t allow fairy tales and fiction in their schools, so he was surprised to learn of this invitation. He asked an official what had changed and was told, off the record, that they had toured all the big companies they did outsourcing work for in the United States and asked those they met what they read. The resounding answer was science fiction. The officials then began to understand the connection of invention with creativity. (I guess it took a random event for them to figure this out.)

Einstein also said that creative imagination is the essential element in the intellectual equipment of the true scientist and that fairy tales are the childhood stimuli to this quality. I guess the Chinese officials didn’t read that before their trip.

There are good and bad guys in fiction, fairy tales, and horror stories. For some, the “Force” in Star Wars might represent the goodness in the universe, but what about that goodness? Will it reaffirm our beliefs while seeing our beliefs as an element of a fictional plot; does it make the fiction more believable? The bigger question is, can we really step out of our world, or are we just going always to view things through the lens of our experience?

Random events in books free me and leave me thinking I have escaped concluding outcomes from my lens of experience.