You can read for personal reasons or even to benefit your child. (ID 54567788 © Distinctivedesign | Dreamstime.com)

By Everything Lifestyle Staff

proven benefits

Reading Provides Entertainment and Crucial Development Skills

Mar 5, 2025 | 3:27 PM

Reading has been a favourite pastime for people for hundreds of years and there are many reasons as to why you should pick up a book.

Just like movies and TV shows, books have the ability to transport you to different countries and even other worlds. They are a good way to momentarily escape from reality and take you to unknown places, historical events and even other points in time.

Books have been known to benefit critical thinking skills, as well as increase empathy, understanding and literacy. Reading books can also assist in developing memory as it is a successful tool for mental stimulation.

Books can help you gain valuable knowledge and can be used as a way to reduce stress. Reading is an excellent hobby and can be a source of entertainment.

If you have children, reading to them will help them develop language skills, as well as increase the bond between a parent and child. Doing so can cultivate a lifelong love for reading and children with higher literacy skills perform better in school.

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Reading to children helps them to learn how to manage challenging feelings, as well as teaches them new words and ways of using language.

Books are also very dynamic. They come in long forms such as novels, collections of short stories, picture books, plays, poetry and more. Books also come in a wide variety of genres and difficulty levels for all ages.

Books are a fairly inexpensive form of entertainment as well. Large collections of books can be accessed for free at your local library. Those books can also be accessed online through e-books at no charge at all.

Evenings and weekends are great times to get a little bit of reading in. It’s also easy to carry a book with you to read on a bus, train or plane trip.

Research and studies show reading for at least 30 minutes per day is a healthy amount that brings significant benefits to cognitive function and overall wellbeing.

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com