I’ve always loved books. As a kid, I’d frequently visit the library and get whatever books looked interesting to me; sometimes I’d already read them and other times they were new to me. This is why I’ve never understood people who say they don’t like to read and they only read when they have to for school or work. I’ve probably read more books outside of school than I did while I was in school, and I think it’s served me well.
Most of the books I’ve read have been fiction. Although I love watching good movies and TV shows (or at least I did before I quit watching TV about five years ago), there are few things I enjoy more than getting lost in a good work of fiction. Being transported to another world, forgetting about my troubles, and living life through the characters is a great way to pass the time. Sometimes the stories contain valuable life lessons and other times they’re just intended to be entertaining; either way, I love a good story.
I have a lot of coworkers, friends, and family members who also love reading good works of fiction, but not as many also enjoy reading nonfiction. Admittedly, it wasn’t until the last few years that nonfiction became my primary reading interest; most of the books I read for fun until I graduated from high school were fiction. While I still enjoy quality fiction every now and then, most of the books I’ve read since I graduated from high school (which was a little over six years ago at the time of this writing) have been nonfiction. More specifically, they’ve mostly been books that offer an explanation for some phenomenon in life. I’ve read to some degree about psychology, history, economics, politics, spirituality, and physics. Psychology and spirituality are the subjects that have fascinated me the most and, in my opinion, gone the farthest in offering credible explanations for things about the world. I’ve also found them to be the most useful in my daily life, which I think is what I mostly look for in books at this point.
Learning more about the world through reading has blown my mind and humbled me as it’s shown me how much I don’t know. It’s also helped me better navigate life, given me lots of interesting talking points to use in conversations, improved my interactions with others, and provided me with tons of material for this blog. No matter how many books I read, I’ll never read them all; no matter how much I learn, I’ll never know it all. Rather than being depressed by those facts, I’m instead excited by them. It challenges me to decide which books to read (as Carl Sagan talks about in this great clip) and ensures that I’ll always be surprised by finding a new piece of knowledge. There are many different ways to learn and many different sources of entertainment, but books will always be my favorite source of both.