As a child, I fucking loved reading. I preferred it over interacting with other humans. At sleepovers, I stuffed my backpack with the books I was reading so I wouldn’t have to spend too much time engaging with my peers. While my love of books probably made me an antisocial little cunt, it’s something I still carry with me today.
Books are vessels of freedom. When that fella Guttenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, the church could no longer hoard information, and the resulting literacy and free thought changed the world.
These days, we spend a lot of fucking time reading on our phones. Fuck that. Here are a few reasons why you should read a goddamn book.
No Comments
We admit, reading the comment section is massively entertaining — brain rottingly entertaining, in fact. And just like we think we aren’t influenced by marketing but we totally are, we are also influenced by comments, no matter how idioitic we may find them. In a study published in Science Direct, researchers found that reading comments influences your attitude toward the article and it’s topic.
I don’t know if you know this, but books don’t have a comment section. A book is just you and the ideas and perspectives it presents. You can’t scroll down the page to see what every emboldened asshole with a phone has to say. And you might just have time to actually form a goddamn thought about what you’ve just read.
Books Do One Thing
You can read on your device; you can also buy shit, watch videos, track your steps, scroll through social media, take photos, listen to podcasts, curate a playlist — do literally anything useful and useless. That’s all fucking great, but when you pick up your phone, your brain is not necessarily ramping up to do one thing when it can do 1,000 things on the same device.
Books, on the other hand, do one thing. Yes, I know, you could throw it, burn it, use it as a coaster, pick up dog shit with it — the possibilities are endless. But, strictly speaking, books are designed to do one thing: be read. Books are something we can fully engage in and focus on without splitting our attention, which is shown to make us more intelligent and less stressed.
Reduces Stress
A study at the University of Sussex found that reading a book for just six minutes can reduce stress by 68 percent — 68 fucking percent! At Vulgat Advice, we refer to that as “a fuckload.”
Improves Your Fucking Brain
Reading books engages multiple senses — touch, sight, smell — lighting up different regions of your big old brain and increasing retention and comprehension. It’s like doing pull-ups for your brain, as reading is associated with slower cognitive decline and increased memory retention.
Fosters Empathy
Empathy is a powerful fucking trait that promotes critical thought by allowing you access to perspectives outside of your own. It also helps you form meaningful connections with people and the world around you. Reading fiction in which you are transported into a story has been shown to increase empathy. That’s pretty fucking cool — you don’t want to be a sociopath, do you?
Sleep
Sleep is so hot right now as awareness grows around just how critical it is for our health to get a good shut-eye every night. A 2019 study showed that people who read a book in bed for 15-30 minutes report better quality sleep.
Expanded Vocabulary
Are you worried that you sound like a fucking moron? Reading books expands and enriches your vocabulary, regardless of the age you start.
