an essay on reading a book

Importance Of Reading Essay

Importance of Reading Essay

500+ words essay on reading.

Reading is a key to learning. It’s a skill that everyone should develop in their life. The ability to read enables us to discover new facts and opens the door to a new world of ideas, stories and opportunities. We can gather ample information and use it in the right direction to perform various tasks in our life. The habit of reading also increases our knowledge and makes us more intellectual and sensible. With the help of this essay on the Importance of Reading, we will help you know the benefits of reading and its various advantages in our life. Students must go through this essay in detail, as it will help them to create their own essay based on this topic.

Importance of Reading

Reading is one of the best hobbies that one can have. It’s fun to read different types of books. By reading the books, we get to know the people of different areas around the world, different cultures, traditions and much more. There is so much to explore by reading different books. They are the abundance of knowledge and are best friends of human beings. We get to know about every field and area by reading books related to it. There are various types of books available in the market, such as science and technology books, fictitious books, cultural books, historical events and wars related books etc. Also, there are many magazines and novels which people can read anytime and anywhere while travelling to utilise their time effectively.

Benefits of Reading for Students

Reading plays an important role in academics and has an impactful influence on learning. Researchers have highlighted the value of developing reading skills and the benefits of reading to children at an early age. Children who cannot read well at the end of primary school are less likely to succeed in secondary school and, in adulthood, are likely to earn less than their peers. Therefore, the focus is given to encouraging students to develop reading habits.

Reading is an indispensable skill. It is fundamentally interrelated to the process of education and to students achieving educational success. Reading helps students to learn how to use language to make sense of words. It improves their vocabulary, information-processing skills and comprehension. Discussions generated by reading in the classroom can be used to encourage students to construct meanings and connect ideas and experiences across texts. They can use their knowledge to clear their doubts and understand the topic in a better way. The development of good reading habits and skills improves students’ ability to write.

In today’s world of the modern age and digital era, people can easily access resources online for reading. The online books and availability of ebooks in the form of pdf have made reading much easier. So, everyone should build this habit of reading and devote at least 30 minutes daily. If someone is a beginner, then they can start reading the books based on the area of their interest. By doing so, they will gradually build up a habit of reading and start enjoying it.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Importance of Reading Essay

What is the importance of reading.

1. Improves general knowledge 2. Expands attention span/vocabulary 3. Helps in focusing better 4. Enhances language proficiency

What is the power of reading?

1. Develop inference 2. Improves comprehension skills 3. Cohesive learning 4. Broadens knowledge of various topics

How can reading change a student’s life?

1. Empathy towards others 2. Acquisition of qualities like kindness, courtesy

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How Should One Read a Book?

Read as if one were writing it.

A painting of a woman reading at a table.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Young Girl Reading , c. 1868. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

At this late hour of the world’s history, books are to be found in almost every room of the house—in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. But in some houses they have become such a company that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own—a reading room, a library, a study. Let us imagine that we are now in such a room; that it is a sunny room, with windows opening on a garden, so that we can hear the trees rustling, the gardener talking, the donkey braying, the old women gossiping at the pump—and all the ordinary processes of life pursuing the casual irregular way which they have pursued these many hundreds of years. As casually, as persistently, books have been coming together on the shelves. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, dictionaries, maps, directories; black letter books and brand new books; books in French and Greek and Latin; of all shapes and sizes and values, bought for purposes of research, bought to amuse a railway journey, bought by miscellaneous beings, of one temperament and another, serious and frivolous, men of action and men of letters.

Now, one may well ask oneself, strolling into such a room as this, how am I to read these books? What is the right way to set about it? They are so many and so various. My appetite is so fitful and so capricious. What am I to do to get the utmost possible pleasure out of them? And is it pleasure, or profit, or what is it that I should seek? I will lay before you some of the thoughts that have come to me on such an occasion as this. But you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it. Here in this room, if nowhere else, we breathe the air of freedom. Here simple and learned, man and woman are alike. For though reading seems so simple—a mere matter of knowing the alphabet—it is indeed so difficult that it is doubtful whether anybody knows anything about it. Paris is the capital of France; King John signed the Magna Charta; those are facts; those can be taught; but how are we to teach people so to read “Paradise Lost” as to see that it is a great poem, or “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” so as to see that it is a good novel? How are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves? Without attempting to lay down laws upon a subject that has not been legalized, I will make a few suggestions, which may serve to show you how not to read, or to stimulate you to think out better methods of your own.

And directly we begin to ask how should one read a book we are faced by the fact that books differ; there are poems, novels, biographies on the book shelf there; each differs from the other as a tiger differs from a tortoise, a tortoise from an elephant. Our attitude must always be changing, it is clear. From different books we must ask different qualities. Simple as this sounds, people are always behaving as if all books were of the same species—as if there were only tortoises or nothing but tigers. It makes them furious to find a novelist bringing Queen Victoria to the throne six months before her time; they will praise a poet enthusiastically for teaching them that a violet has four petals and a daisy almost invariably ten. You will save a great deal of time and temper better kept for worthier objects if you will try to make out before you begin to read what qualities you expect of a novelist, what of a poet, what of a biographer. The tortoise is bald and shiny; the tiger has a thick coat of yellow fur. So books too differ: one has its fur, the other has its baldness.

To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power.

Yes; but for all that the problem is not so simple in a library as at the Zoölogical Gardens. Books have a great deal in common; they are always overflowing their boundaries; they are always breeding new species from unexpected matches among themselves. It is difficult to know how to approach them, to which species each belongs. But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each of these books was written by a pen which, consciously or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string.

To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them. For this certainly is true—one cannot write the most ordinary little story, attempt to describe the simplest event—meeting a beggar, shall we say, in the street, without coming up against difficulties that the greatest of novelists have had to face. In order that we may realize, however briefly and crudely, the main divisions into which novelists group themselves, let us imagine how differently Defoe, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy would describe the same incident—this meeting a beggar in the street. Defoe is a master of narrative. His prime effort will be to reduce the beggar’s story to perfect order and simplicity. This happened first, that next, the other thing third. He will put in nothing, however attractive, that will tire the reader unnecessarily, or divert his attention from what he wishes him to know. He will also make us believe, since he is a master, not of romance or of comedy, but of narrative, that everything that happened is true. He will be extremely precise therefore. This happened, as he tells us on the first pages of” Robinson Crusoe,” on the first of September. More subtly and artfully, he will hypnotize us into a state of belief by dropping out casually some little unnecessary fact—for instance, “my father called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout.” His father’s gout is not necessary to the story, but it is necessary to the truth of the story, for it is thus that anybody who is speaking the truth adds some small irrelevant detail without thinking. Further, he will choose a type of sentence which is flowing but not too full, exact but not epigrammatic. His aim will be to present the thing itself without distortion from his own angle of vision. He will meet the subject face to face, four-square, without turning aside for a moment to point out that this was tragic, or that beautiful; and his aim is perfectly achieved.

But let us not for a moment confuse it with Jane Austen’s aim. Had she met a beggar woman, no doubt she would have been interested in the beggar’s story. But she would have seen at once that for her purposes the whole incident must be transformed. Streets and the open air and adventures mean nothing to her, artistically. It is character that interests her. She would at once make the beggar into a comfortable elderly man of the upper middle classes, seated by his fireside at his ease. Then, instead of plunging into the story vigorously and veraciously, she will write a few paragraphs of accurate and artfully seasoned introduction, summing up the circumstances and sketching the character of the gentleman she wishes us to know. “Matrimony as the origin of change was always disagreeable” to Mr. Woodhouse, she says. Almost immediately, she thinks it well to let us see that her words are corroborated by Mr. Woodhouse himself. We hear him talking. “Poor Miss Taylor!—I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her.” And when Mr. Woodhouse has talked enough to reveal himself from the inside, she then thinks it time to let us see him through his daughter’s eyes. “You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her.” Thus she shows us Emma flattering him and humoring him. Finally then, we have Mr. Woodhouse’s character seen from three different points of view at once; as he sees himself; as his daughter sees him; and as he is seen by the marvellous eye of that invisible lady Jane Austen herself. All three meet in one, and thus we can pass round her characters free, apparently, from any guidance but our own.

Now let Thomas Hardy choose the same theme—a beggar met in the street—and at once two great changes will be visible. The street will be transformed into a vast and sombre heath; the man or woman will take on some of the size and indistinctness of a statue. Further, the relations of this human being will not be towards other people, but towards the heath, towards man as law-giver, towards those powers which are in control of man’s destiny. Once more our perspective will be completely changed. All the qualities which were admirable in “Robinson Crusoe,” admirable in “Emma,” will be neglected or absent. The direct literal statement of Defoe is gone. There is none of the clear, exact brilliance of Jane Austen. Indeed, if we come to Hardy from one of these great writers we shall exclaim at first that he is “melodramatic” or “unreal” compared with them. But we should bethink us that there are at least two sides to the human soul; the light side and the dark side. In company, the light side of the mind is exposed; in solitude, the dark. Both are equally real, equally important. But a novelist will always tend to expose one rather than the other; and Hardy, who is a novelist of the dark side, will contrive that no clear, steady light falls upon his people’s faces, that they are not closely observed in drawing rooms, that they come in contact with moors, sheep, the sky and the stars, and in their solitude are directly at the mercy of the gods. If Jane Austen’s characters are real in the drawing room, they would not exist at all upon the top of Stonehenge. Feeble and clumsy in drawing rooms, Hardy’s people are large-limbed and vigorous out of doors. To achieve his purpose Hardy is neither literal and four-square like Defoe, nor deft and pointed like Jane Austen. He is cumbrous, involved, metaphorical. Where Jane Austen describes manners, he describes nature. Where she is matter of fact, he is romantic and poetical. As both are great artists, each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and will not be found confusing us (as so many lesser writers do) by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.

Yet it is very difficult not to wish them less scrupulous. Frequent are the complaints that Jane Austen is too prosaic, Thomas Hardy too melodramatic. And we have to remind ourselves that it is necessary to approach every writer differently in order to get from him all he can give us. We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision. It is by reason of this masterliness of theirs, this uncompromising idiosyncrasy, that great writers often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend us and break us. To go from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith, from Richardson to Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted, thrown this way and then that. Besides, everyone is born with a natural bias of his own in one direction rather than in another. He instinctively accepts Hardy’s vision rather than Jane Austen’s, and, reading with the current and not against it, is carried on easily and swiftly by the impetus of his own bent to the heart of his author’s genius. But then Jane Austen is repulsive to him. He can scarcely stagger through the desert of her novels.

Sometimes this natural antagonism is too great to be overcome, but trial is always worth making. For these difficult and inaccessible books, with all their preliminary harshness, often yield the richest fruits in the end, and so curiously is the brain compounded that while tracts of literature repel at one season, they are appetizing and essential at another.

If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading. The symptoms are familiar. Suddenly the book becomes dull as ditchwater and heavy as lead. We yawn and stretch and cannot attend. The highest flights of Shakespeare and Milton become intolerable. And we say to ourselves—is Keats a fool or am I?—a painful question, a question, moreover, that need not be asked if we realized how great a part the art of not reading plays in the art of reading. To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power. All biographies and memoirs, all the hybrid books which are largely made up of facts, serve to restore to us the power of reading real books—that is to say, works of pure imagination. That they serve also to impart knowledge and to improve the mind is true and important, but if we are considering how to read books for pleasure, not how to provide an adequate pension for one’s widow, this other property of theirs is even more valuable and important. But here again one should know what one is after. One is after rest, and fun, and oddity, and some stimulus to one’s own jaded creative power. One has left one’s bare and angular tower and is strolling along the street looking in at the open windows. After solitude and concentration, the open air, the sight of other people absorbed in innumerable activities, comes upon us with an indescribable fascination.

The windows of the houses are open; the blinds are drawn up. One can see the whole household without their knowing that they are being seen. One can see them sitting round the dinner table, talking, reading, playing games. Sometimes they seem to be quarrelling—but what about? Or they are laughing—but what is the joke? Down in the basement the cook is reading a newspaper aloud, while the housemaid is making a piece of toast; in comes the kitchen maid and they all start talking at the same moment—but what are they saying? Upstairs a girl is dressing to go to a party. But where is she going? There is an old lady sitting at her bedroom window with some kind of wool work in her hand and a fine green parrot in a cage beside her. And what is she thinking? All this life has somehow come together; there is a reason for it; a coherency in it, could one but seize it. The biographer answers the innumerable questions which we ask as we stand outside on the pavement looking in at the open window. Indeed there is nothing more interesting than to pick one’s way about among these vast depositories of facts, to make up the lives of men and women, to create their complex minds and households from the extraordinary abundance and litter and confusion of matter which lies strewn about. A thimble, a skull, a pair of scissors, a sheaf of sonnets, are given us, and we have to create, to combine, to put these incongruous things together. There is, too, a quality in facts, an emotion which comes from knowing that men and women actually did and suffered these things, which only the greatest novelists can surpass. Captain Scott, starving and freezing to death in the snow, affects us as deeply as any made-up story of adventure by Conrad or Defoe; but it affects us differently. The biography differs from the novel. To ask a biographer to give us the same kind of pleasure that we get from a novelist is to misuse and misread him. Directly he says “John Jones was born at five-thirty in the morning of August 13, I 862,” he has committed himself, focussed his lens upon fact, and if he then begins to romance, the perspective becomes blurred, we grow suspicious, and our faith in his integrity as a writer is destroyed. In the same way fact destroys fiction. If Thackeray, for example, had quoted an actual newspaper account of the Battle of Waterloo in “Vanity Fair,” the whole fabric of his story would have been destroyed, as a stone destroys a bubble.

But it is undoubted that these hybrid books, these warehouses and depositories of facts, play a great part in resting the brain and restoring its zest of imagination. The work of building up a life for oneself from skulls, thimbles, scissors, and sonnets stimulates our interest in creation and rouses our wish to see the work beautifully and powerfully done by a Flaubert or a Tolstoi. Moreover, however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction, and gradually we become impatient of their weakness and diffuseness, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make for themselves, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction.

It is necessary to have in hand an immense reserve of imaginative energy in order to attack the steeps of poetry. Here are none of those gradual introductions, those resemblances to the familiar world of daily life with which the novelist entices us into his world of imagination. All is violent, opposite, unrelated. But various causes, such as bad books, the worry of carrying on life efficiently, the intermittent but powerful shocks dealt us by beauty, and the incalculable impulses of our own minds and bodies frequently put us into that state of mind in which poetry is a necessity. The sight of a crocus in a garden will suddenly bring to mind all the spring days that have ever been. One then desires the general, not the particular; the whole, not the detail; to turn uppermost the dark side of the mind; to be in contact with silence, solitude, and all men and women and not this particular Richard, or that particular Anne. Metaphors are then more expressive than plain statements.

Thus in order to read poetry rightly, one must be in a rash, an extreme, a generous state of mind in which many of the supports and comforts of literature are done without. Its power of make-believe, its representative power, is dispensed with in favor of its extremities and extravagances. The representation is often at a very far remove from the thing represented, so that we have to use all our energies of mind to grasp the relation between, for example, the song of a nightingale and the image and ideas which that song stirs in the mind. Thus reading poetry often seems a state of rhapsody in which rhyme and metre and sound stir the mind as wine and dance stir the body, and we read on, understanding with the senses, not with the intellect, in a state of intoxication. Yet all this intoxication and intensity of delight depend upon the exactitude and truth of the image, on its being the counterpart of the reality within. Remote and extravagant as some of Shakespeare’s images seem, far-fetched and ethereal as some of Keats’s, at the moment of reading they seem the cap and culmination of the thought; its final expression. But it is useless to labor the matter in cold blood. Anyone who has read a poem with pleasure will remember the sudden conviction, the sudden recollection (for it seems sometimes as if we were about to say, or had in some previous existence already said, what Shakespeare is actually now saying), which accompany the reading of poetry, and give it its exaltation and intensity. But such reading is attended, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the utmost stretch and vigilance of the faculties, of the reason no less than of the imagination. We are always verifying the poet’s statements, making a flying comparison, to the best of our powers, between the beauty he makes outside and the beauty we are aware of within. For the humblest among us is endowed with the power of comparison. The simplest (provided he loves reading) has that already within him to which he makes what is given him—by poet or novelist—correspond.

With that saying, of course, the cat is out of the bag. For this admission that we can compare, discriminate, brings us to this further point. Reading is not merely sympathizing and understanding; it is also criticizing and judging. Hitherto our endeavor has been to read books as a writer writes them. We have been trying to understand, to appreciate, to interpret, to sympathize. But now, when the book is finished, the reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this is no mere figure of speech. The mind seems (“seems,” for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interruptions. New impressions are always completing or cancelling the old. One’s judgment is suspended, for one does not know what is coming next. Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when, at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions. If we are asked our opinion, we cannot give it. Parts of the book seem to have sunk away, others to be starting out in undue prominence. Then perhaps it is better to take up some different pursuit—to walk, to talk, to dig, to listen to music. The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.

But how, we may ask, are we to decide any of these questions—is it good, or is it bad?—how good is it, how bad is it? Not much help can be looked for from outside. Critics abound; criticisms pullulate; but minds differ too much to admit of close correspondence in matters of detail, and nothing is more disastrous than to crush one’s own foot into another person’s shoe. When we want to decide a particular case, we can best help ourselves, not by reading criticism, but by realizing our own impression as acutely as possible and referring this to the judgments which we have gradually formulated in the past. There they hang in the wardrobe of our mind—the shapes of the books we have read, as we hung them up and put them away when we had done with them. If we have just read “Clarissa Harlowe,” for example, let us see how it shows up against the shape of “Anna Karenina.” At once the outlines of the two books are cut out against each other as a house with its chimneys bristling and its gables sloping is cut out against a harvest moon. At once Richardson’s qualities—his verbosity, his obliqueness—are contrasted with Tolstoi’s brevity and directness. And what is the reason of this difference in their approach? And how does our emotion at different crises of the two books compare? And what must we attribute to the eighteenth century, and what to Russia and the translator? But the questions which suggest themselves are innumerable. They ramify infinitely, and many of them are apparently irrelevant. Yet it is by asking them and pursuing the answers as far as we can go that we arrive at our standard of values, and decide in the end that the book we have just read is of this kind or of that, has merit in that degree or in this. And it is now, when we have kept closely to our own impression, formulated independently our own judgment, that we can most profitably help ourselves to the judgments of the great critics—Dryden, Johnson, and the rest. It is when we can best defend our own opinions that we get most from theirs.

So, then—to sum up the different points we have reached in this essay—have we found any answer to our question, how should we read a book? Clearly, no answer that will do for everyone; but perhaps a few suggestions. In the first place, a good reader will give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind. He will be adventurous, broad in his choice, true to his own instincts, yet ready to consider those of other people. This is an outline which can be filled, in at taste and at leisure, but to read something after this fashion is to be a reader whom writers respect. It is by the means of such readers that masterpieces are helped into the world.

If the moralists ask us how we can justify our love of reading, we can make use of some such excuse as this. But if we are honest, we know that no such excuse is needed. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure—mysterious, unknown, useless as it is—is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading.

Rachel Cusk

Renaissance women, fady joudah, you might also like, september twilight, the tolstoyans, thirty clocks strike the hour, new perspectives, enduring writing..

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📖Essay on Importance of Reading: Samples in 100, 150, and 250 Words

Updated on
Apr 26, 2024

Language learning requires four skills i.e. Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. It is an important part that eventually builds up the communication skills of a person. Reading will help in attaining knowledge of variable fields. It enhances the intellect of a person. Reading helps students to enhance their language fluency. Students must adopt the habit of reading good books. Reading books can also improve the writing skills. If you are a school student and searching for a good sample essay on the importance of reading then, you landed at the right place. Here in this blog, we have covered some sample essays on the importance of reading!

Table of Contents

1 Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words
2 Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words
3 Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words
4 Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words

The English language is considered the global language because it is the most widely spoken language worldwide. Reading is one of the important parts of acquiring complete knowledge of any language. Reading helps in maintaining a good vocabulary that is helpful for every field, whether in school, interviews , competitive exams , or jobs.

Students must inculcate the habit of reading from a young age. Making a habit of reading good books will eventually convert into an addiction over time and you will surely explore a whole new world of information.

Being exposed to different topics through reading can help you look at the wider perspective of life. You will eventually discover a creative side of yours while developing the habit of reading.

Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words

Reading is considered an important aspect that contributes to the development of the overall personality of any person. If a person wants to do good at a professional level then he/she must practice reading.

There are various advantages of reading. It is not only a source of entertainment but also opens up the creative ability of any person. Reading helps in self-improvement, enhances communication skills, and reduces stress. It is one of the sources of pleasure and also enhances the analytical skills.

Here are some of the best books to study that may help you enhance your reading skills:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling .
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee .
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri .
Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby

A person with good reading skills would be able to communicate with more confidence and shine brighter at the professional level. Reading is a mental exercise, as it can provide you with the best experience because while reading fiction, or non-fiction you use your imagination without any restrictions thereby exploring a whole new world on your own. So, Just Enjoy Reading!

Also Read: Communication Skills to Succeed at Work

Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words

Reading is a language skill necessary to present yourself in front of others because without being a good reader, it’s difficult to be a good communicator. Reading books should be practised regularly. Books are considered a human’s best friend.

It is right to say that knowledge can’t be stolen. Reading enhances the knowledge of a person. There are numerous benefits of reading.

I love reading books and one of my all-time favorite authors is William Shakespeare. His work “As You Like It” is my favourite book. By reading that book I came across many new words. It enabled me to add many words to my vocabulary that I can use in my life.

Apart from this, there are many other benefits of reading books such as reading can help you write in a certain way that can impress the reader. It also enhances communication skills and serves as a source of entertainment .

Schools conduct various competitions which directly or indirectly involve reading. Some such competitions include debate, essay writing competitions, elocution, new reading in assembly, etc. All such activities require active reading because without reading a person might not be able to speak on a specific topic.

All such activities are conducted to polish the language skills of students from the very beginning so that they can do good at a professional level.

In conclusion, in a world of technological advancement, you are more likely to get easy access to online reading material available on the internet. So, you must not miss this opportunity and devote some time to reading different kinds of books.

Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Find a sample of a short essay on importance of reading below:

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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How Reading Makes Us More Human

A debate has erupted over whether reading fiction makes human beings more moral. But what if its real value consists in something even more fundamental?

A battle over books has erupted recently on the pages of The New York Times and Time. The opening salvo was Gregory Currie's essay , "Does Great Literature Make Us Better?" which asserts that the widely held belief that reading makes us more moral has little support. In response , Annie Murphy Paul weighed in with "Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer." Her argument is that "deep reading," the kind of reading great literature requires, is a distinctive cognitive activity that contributes to our ability to empathize with others; it therefore can, in fact, makes us "smarter and nicer," among other things. Yet these essays aren't so much coming to different conclusions as considering different questions.

To advance her thesis, Paul cites studies by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto. Taken together, their findings suggest that those "who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective." It's the kind of thing writer Joyce Carol Oates is talking about when she says, "Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."

Oatley and Mar's conclusions are supported, Paul argues, by recent studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science. This research shows that "deep reading -- slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity -- is a distinctive experience," a kind of reading that differs in kind and quality from "the mere decoding of words" that constitutes a good deal of what passes for reading today, particularly for too many of our students in too many of our schools (as I have previously written about here ).

Paul concludes her essay with a reference to the literary critic Frank Kermode, who famously distinguishes between "carnal reading" -- characterized by the hurried, utilitarian information processing that constitutes the bulk of our daily reading diet -- and "spiritual reading," reading done with focused attention for pleasure, reflection, analysis, and growth. It is in this distinction that we find the real difference between the warring factions in what might be a chicken-or-egg scenario: Does great literature make people better, or are good people drawn to reading great literature?

Currie is asking whether reading great literature makes readers more moral -- a topic taken up by Aristotle in Poetics (which makes an ethical apology for literature) . Currie cites as counter-evidence the well-read, highly cultured Nazis. The problem with this (aside from falling into the trap of Godwin's Law ) is that the Nazis were, in fact, acting in strict conformity to the dictates of a moral code, albeit the perverse code of the Third Reich. But Paul examines the connection of great literature not to our moral selves, but to our spiritual selves.

What good literature can do and does do -- far greater than any importation of morality -- is touch the human soul.

Reading is one of the few distinctively human activities that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. As many scholars have noted, and Paul too mentions in her piece, reading, unlike spoken language, does not come naturally to human beings. It must be taught. Because it goes beyond mere biology, there is something profoundly spiritual -- however one understands that word -- about the human ability, and impulse, to read. In fact, even the various senses in which we use the word captures this: to "read" means not only to decipher a given and learned set of symbols in a mechanistic way, but it also suggests that very human act of finding meaning, of "interpreting" in the sense of "reading" a person or situation. To read in this sense might be considered one of the most spiritual of all human activities.

It is "spiritual reading" -- not merely decoding -- that unleashes the power that good literature has to reach into our souls and, in so doing, draw and connect us to others. This is why the way we read can be even more important than what we read. In fact, reading good literature won't make a reader a better person any more than sitting in a church, synagogue or mosque will. But reading good books well just might.

It did for me. As I relayed in my literary and spiritual memoir , the books I have read over a lifetime have shaped my worldview, my beliefs, and my life as much as anything else. From Great Expectations I learned the power the stories we tell ourselves have to do either harm and good, to ourselves and to others; from Death of a Salesman I learned the dangers of a corrupt version of the American Dream; from Madame Bovary, I learned to embrace the real world rather than escaping into flights of fancy; from Gulliver's Travels I learned the profound limitations of my own finite perspective; and from Jane Eyre I learned how to be myself. These weren't mere intellectual or moral lessons, although they certainly may have begun as such. Rather, the stories from these books and so many others became part of my life story and then, gradually, part of my very soul.

As Eugene H. Peterson explains in Eat this Book , "Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul -- eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight." Peterson describes this ancient art of lectio divina, or spiritual reading, as "reading that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through our blood, and becomes ... love and wisdom." More than the books themselves, it is the skills and the desire to read in this way which comprise the essential gift we must give our students and ourselves. But this won't happen by way of nature or by accident.

Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain , has studied "deep reading" in the context of the science of the brain. She describes the fragility of the brain's ability to read with the kind of sustained attention that allows literature to wield its shaping power over us:

The act of going beyond the text to analyze, infer and think new thoughts is the product of years of formation. It takes time, both in milliseconds and years, and effort to learn to read with deep, expanding comprehension and to execute all these processes as an adult expert reader. ... Because we literally and physiologically can read in multiple ways, how we read--and what we absorb from our reading -- will be influenced by both the content of our reading and the medium we use.

The power of "spiritual reading" is its ability to transcend the immediacy of the material, the moment, or even the moral choice at hand. This isn't the sort of phenomenon that lends itself to the quantifiable data Currie seeks, although Paul demonstrates is possible, to measure. Even so, such reading doesn't make us better so much as it makes us human .

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Some sample reading goals:

To find a paper topic or write a paper;

To have a comment for discussion;

To supplement ideas from lecture;

To understand a particular concept;

To memorize material for an exam;

To research for an assignment;

To enjoy the process (i.e., reading for pleasure!).

Seeing Textbook Reading in a New Light Students often come into college with negative associations surrounding textbook reading. It can be dry, dense, and draining; and in high school, sometimes we're left to our textbooks as a last resort for learning material.

A supportive resource : In college, textbooks can be a fantastic supportive resource. Some of your faculty may have authored their own for the specific course you're in!

Textbooks can provide:

A fresh voice through which to absorb material. Especially when it comes to challenging concepts, this can be a great asset in your quest for that "a-ha" moment.

The chance to “preview” lecture material, priming your mind for the big ideas you'll be exposed to in class.

The chance to review material, making sense of the finer points after class.

A resource that is accessible any time, whether it's while you are studying for an exam, writing a paper, or completing a homework assignment.

Textbook reading is similar to and different from other kinds of reading . Some things to keep in mind as you experiment with its use:

Is it best to read the textbook before class or after?

Active reading is everything, apply the sq3r method., don’t forget to recite and review..

If you find yourself struggling through the readings for a course, you can ask the course instructor for guidance. Some ways to ask for help are: "How would you recommend I go about approaching the reading for this course?" or "Is there a way for me to check whether I am getting what I should be out of the readings?"

Marking Text

Marking text – making marginal notes – helps with reading comprehension by keeping you focused and facilitating connections across readings. It also helps you find important information when reviewing for an exam or preparing to write an essay. The next time you’re reading, write notes in the margins as you go or, if you prefer, make notes on a separate sheet of paper.

Your marginal notes will vary depending on the type of reading. Some possible areas of focus:

What themes do you see in the reading that relate to class discussions?

What themes do you see in the reading that you have seen in other readings?

What questions does the reading raise in your mind?

What does the reading make you want to research more?

Where do you see contradictions within the reading or in relation to other readings for the course?

Can you connect themes or events to your own experiences?

Your notes don’t have to be long. You can just write two or three words to jog your memory. For example, if you notice that a book has a theme relating to friendship, you can just write, “pp. 52-53 Theme: Friendship.” If you need to remind yourself of the details later in the semester, you can re-read that part of the text more closely.

Accordion style

If you are looking for help with developing best practices and using strategies for some of the tips discussed above, come to an ARC workshop on reading!

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Assessing Your Understanding
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Common Class Norms
Effective Learning Practices
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How to Prepare for Class
Interacting with Instructors
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Memory and Attention
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2a. Critical Reading

An introduction to reading in college.

While the best way to develop your skills as a writer is to actually practice by writing, practicing critical reading skills is crucial to becoming a better college writer. Careful and skilled readers develop a stronger understanding of topics, learn to better anticipate the needs of the audience, and pick up sophisticated writing “maneuvers” and strategies from professional writing. A good reading practice requires reading text and context, which you’ll learn more about in the next section. Writing a successful academic essay also begins with critical reading as you explore ideas and consider how to make use of sources to provide support for your writing.

Questions to ask as you read

If you consider yourself a particularly strong reader or want to improve your reading comprehension skills, writing out notes about a text—even if it’s in shorthand—helps you to commit the answers to memory more easily. Even if you don’t write out all these notes, answering these basic questions about any text or reading you encounter in college will help you get the most out of the time you put into your reading. It will also give you more confidence to understand and question the text while you read.

Is there context provided about the author and/or essay? If so, what stands out as important?

Context in this instance means things like dates of publication, where the piece was originally published, and any biographical information about the author. All of that information will be important for developing a critical reading of the piece, so track what’s available as you read.

If you had to guess, who is the author’s intended audience ? Describe them in as much detail as possible.

Sometimes the author will state who the audience is, but sometimes you have to figure it out by context clues, such as those you tracked above. For instance, the audience for a writer on Buzzfeed is very different from the audience for a writer for the Wall Street Journal —and both writers know that, which means they’re more effective at reaching their readers. Learning how to identify your audience is a crucial writing skill for all genres of writing.

In your own words, what is the question the author is trying to answer in this piece? What seems to have caused them to write in the first place?

In nonfiction writing of the kind we read in Writing 121, writers set out to answer a question. Their thesis/main argument is usually the answer to the question, so sometimes you can “reverse engineer” the question from that. Often, the question is asked in the title of the piece.

In your own words, what’s the author’s main idea or argument ? If you had to distill it down to one or two sentences, what does the author want you, the reader, to agree with?

If you’ve ever had to write a paper for a class, you’re probably familiar with a thesis or main argument. Published writers also have a thesis (or else they don’t get published!), but sometimes it can be tricky to find in a more sophisticated piece of writing. Trying to put the main argument into your own words can help.

How many examples and types of evidence did the author provide to support the main argument? Which examples/evidence stood out to you as persuasive?

It’s never enough to just make a claim and expect people to believe it—we have to support that claim with evidence. The types of evidence and examples that will be persuasive to readers depends on the audience, though, which is why it’s important to have some idea of your readers and their expectations.

Did the author raise any points of skepticism (also known as counterarguments)? Can you identify exactly what page or paragraph where the author does this?

As we’ll see later when the writing process, respectfully engaging with points of skepticism and counterarguments builds trust with the reader because it shows that the writer has thought about the issue from multiple perspectives before arriving at the main argument. Raising a counterargument is not enough, though. Pay careful attention to how the writer responds to that counterargument—is it an effective and persuasive response? If not, perhaps the counterargument has more merit for you than the author’s main argument.

In your own words, how does the essay conclude ? What does the author “want” from us, the readers?

A conclusion usually offers a brief summary of the main argument and some kind of “what’s next?” appeal from the writer to the audience. The “what’s next?” appeal can take many forms, but it’s usually a question for readers to ponder, actions the author thinks people should take, or areas related to the main topic that need more investigation or research. When you read the conclusion, ask yourself, “What does the author want from me now that I’ve read their essay?”

Reading Like Writers: Critical Reading

Reading as a creative act.

“The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”

Consider the discourse community when you read and write in your college classes
Analyze any reading for text and context
Read like a writer so you can write for your readers

illustration of a worm and an apple on top of a stack of two books.

By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to apply the concept of discourse community to honing your college-level critical reading skills.

Good writers are good readers, so let’s start there. When you can confidently identify the audience, context, and purpose of a text —position it within its discourse community—you’ll be a stronger, savvier reader.

Strong, savvy readers are more effective writers because they consider their own audience, context, and purpose when they write and communicate, which makes their writing clearer and to the point.

So the goal of this lesson is to help you read like a writer!

The Savvy Reader

Good writers are good readers! And good readers. . .

get to know the author
get to know the author’s community + audience
accurately summarize the author’s argument
look up terms you don’t know
“listen” respectfully to the author’s point of view
have a sense of the larger conversation
think about other issues related to the conversation
put it in current context
analyze and assess the author’s reasoning, evidence, and assumptions

Why read critically? While the best way to develop your skills as a writer is to actually practice by writing, practicing critical reading skills is crucial to becoming a better writer. Careful and skilled readers develop a stronger understanding of topics, learn to better anticipate the needs of the audience, and pick up writing “maneuvers” and strategies from professional writing.

Reading Like Writers

How do you read like a writer? When you read like a writer, you are practicing deeper reading comprehension. In order to understand a text, you are reading not just what’s in it but what’s around it, too: text and context.

Practice: Reading Like Writers

In-class discussion : Advertisements are helpful for practicing reading like writers because advertisers make deliberate choices with text and images based on audience (target consumer), context (where they are reaching them), and purpose (buy this product).

But I’m not trying to sell a product! How can I use my newfound understanding of audience, context, and purpose to improve my writing?

It’s true! You aren’t selling a product. You aren’t (I hope) trying to manipulate your audience. You aren’t relying on discriminatory assumptions or stereotypes to appeal to your audience. But when you write, let’s say, an essay, you are asking readers to “buy into” your point of view. The goal doesn’t have to be for them to agree with you; it can be for your readers to respectfully consider, understand, or sympathize with your point of view or analysis of an issue. The point is you’re thinking of your reader when you write, and that will make your writing process smoother and your writing clearer.

Writing for Your Readers

When you write for your readers, you. . .

Learn from your reading and communication experience: What makes texts work? How are ideas conveyed clearly?
Analyze the writing situation: What are the goals and purpose for a writing project? Who is your audience?
Explore and play as you draft: What are different ways to respond? Can you use a better word or phrase?
Consider your audience: What might a reader expect to see? What does your reader need to understand your point of view? What questions might a reader have?

poster on a wall that reads "ask more questions"

Writing as a process of inquiry

Just as you want your readers to take you seriously, you want to approach texts with an open and curious mind. Whatever the topic, it was important enough for this person to want to write on it. While we don’t have to agree with the point someone is making, we can respect their opinion and appreciate reading a different perspective.

Approach reading and writing in college in a learning zone. Be open, be curious, ask questions, seek answers. Share, stretch, experiment.

Guides and Worksheets

Use this guide for any of your college reading!
Learn a basic study skill–annotating or taking notes on your readings

Critical Reading Guide: Text + Context

Title of the text: Author:

Reading the text: Comprehension

Main idea . In one sentence, summarize the main point or argument of the text.

Claim . Identify one claim in the text.

Key points . Paraphrase a key point, example, or passage that interested you.

Evidence . In your own words, describe 1-2 compelling examples or pieces of evidence that support the point/argument of the text.

Conclusion . What is the ultimate takeaway the text gives us on the topic/issue?

Personal experience . What is your experience of the topic? Have you had problems related to it?

Vocabulary . What is a word or phrase in the text you didn’t know? Look it up. What does it mean?

Inquiry . What is one thing you need more information about? Or, what is one question you have about the content of the text?

Reading for context: Rhetorical analysis

The author . Do an internet search on the author. What did you find out?

Ethos . Do you trust the author on the topic/issue? Why or why not?

Container . When and where was the text first published? Who will read/see it?

Audience . How does the author address or appeal to their readers? What tone does the author use in the text?

Bias . What knowledge, values, or beliefs does the author assume the reader shares?

Types of evidence . What types of evidence does the author use? Types of evidence include facts, examples, statistics, statements by authorities (references to or quotes from other sources), interviews, observations, logical reasoning, and personal experience

Structure . How does the author organize the text?

Purpose . What question does the author seek to answer in the text? In other words, why do you think they wrote this piece?

Mark-up Assignment: The Savvy Reader Practice

The object is to fill the empty space of the margins with your thoughts and questions to the text. By reading sympathetically (reading to understand what the writer is saying) and critically (reading to analyze and critique what the writer is saying), you are reading mindfully and creatively. You are finding those passages that you are drawn to, asking questions that you have, and beginning to develop your reaction, response, and ideas about a topic or issue. It’s a useful tool in the “getting started” phase of the writing process. Learning how to read effectively will be an invaluable skill in your college career and beyond because it means engaging in a task actively rather than passively.

Choose 1-2 paragraphs from READING X to fully annotate. This passage should be one that interests you, i.e. seems important, confusing, and/or prompted agreement, disagreement, or questions for you.

Circle any word you think is crucial for the passage, including ones you cannot easily define.
Underline phrases or images you think crucial for the meaning of the passage/essay.
Put a bracket around ideas or assertions you find puzzling or questionable.
Then write notes around the margins of the passage defining these terms, identifying the important ideas, or raising questions with the bracketed phrases. For each item you have circled, underlined, or bracketed, there should be a margin note. For this assignment, your margin notes should be substantive: they should meaty statements and full questions.

Photocopy or clear, legible photograph of paragraphs with your annotations or type up the paragraphs and annotate.

Writing as Inquiry Copyright © 2021 by Kara Clevinger and Stephen Rust is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Can Reading Make You Happier?

By Ceridwen Dovey

An abstract illustration of a young woman reading a book with flowers all around her.

Several years ago, I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life, which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence. I have to admit that at first I didn’t really like the idea of being given a reading “prescription.” I’ve generally preferred to mimic Virginia Woolf’s passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries, delighting not only in the books themselves but in the randomly meaningful nature of how I came upon them (on the bus after a breakup, in a backpackers’ hostel in Damascus, or in the dark library stacks at graduate school, while browsing instead of studying). I’ve long been wary of the peculiar evangelism of certain readers: You must read this, they say, thrusting a book into your hands with a beatific gleam in their eyes, with no allowance for the fact that books mean different things to people—or different things to the same person—at various points in our lives. I loved John Updike’s stories about the Maples in my twenties, for example, and hate them in my thirties, and I’m not even exactly sure why.

But the session was a gift, and I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the initial questionnaire about my reading habits that the bibliotherapist, Ella Berthoud, sent me. Nobody had ever asked me these questions before, even though reading fiction is and always has been essential to my life. I love to gorge on books over long breaks—I’ll pack more books than clothes, I told Berthoud. I confided my dirty little secret, which is that I don’t like buying or owning books, and always prefer to get them from the library (which, as I am a writer, does not bring me very good book-sales karma). In response to the question “What is preoccupying you at the moment?,” I was surprised by what I wanted to confess: I am worried about having no spiritual resources to shore myself up against the inevitable future grief of losing somebody I love, I wrote. I’m not religious, and I don’t particularly want to be, but I’d like to read more about other people’s reflections on coming to some sort of early, weird form of faith in a “higher being” as an emotional survival tactic. Simply answering the questions made me feel better, lighter.

We had some satisfying back-and-forths over e-mail, with Berthoud digging deeper, asking about my family’s history and my fear of grief, and when she sent the final reading prescription it was filled with gems, none of which I’d previously read. Among the recommendations was “The Guide,” by R. K. Narayan. Berthoud wrote that it was “a lovely story about a man who starts his working life as a tourist guide at a train station in Malgudi, India, but then goes through many other occupations before finding his unexpected destiny as a spiritual guide.” She had picked it because she hoped it might leave me feeling “strangely enlightened.” Another was “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,” by José Saramago: “Saramago doesn’t reveal his own spiritual stance here but portrays a vivid and compelling version of the story we know so well.” “Henderson the Rain King,” by Saul Bellow, and “Siddhartha,” by Hermann Hesse, were among other prescribed works of fiction, and she included some nonfiction, too, such as “The Case for God,” by Karen Armstrong, and “Sum,” by the neuroscientist David Eagleman, a “short and wonderful book about possible afterlives.”

Our staff and contributors share their cultural enthusiasms.

I worked my way through the books on the list over the next couple of years, at my own pace—interspersed with my own “discoveries”—and while I am fortunate enough to have my ability to withstand terrible grief untested, thus far, some of the insights I gleaned from these books helped me through something entirely different, when, over several months, I endured acute physical pain. The insights themselves are still nebulous, as learning gained through reading fiction often is—but therein lies its power. In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks. Reading fiction makes me lose all sense of self, but at the same time makes me feel most uniquely myself. As Woolf, the most fervent of readers, wrote, a book “splits us into two parts as we read,” for “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego,” while promising “perpetual union” with another mind.

Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly , “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”

Today, bibliotherapy takes many different forms, from literature courses run for prison inmates to reading circles for elderly people suffering from dementia. Sometimes it can simply mean one-on-one or group sessions for “lapsed” readers who want to find their way back to an enjoyment of books. Berthoud and her longtime friend and fellow bibliotherapist Susan Elderkin mostly practice “affective” bibliotherapy, advocating the restorative power of reading fiction. The two met at Cambridge University as undergraduates, more than twenty years ago, and bonded immediately over the shared contents of their bookshelves, in particular Italo Calvino’s novel “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,” which is itself about the nature of reading. As their friendship developed, they began prescribing novels to cure each other’s ailments, such as a broken heart or career uncertainty. “When Suse was having a crisis about her profession—she wanted to be a writer, but was wondering if she could cope with the inevitable rejection—I gave her Don Marquis’s ‘Archy and Mehitabel’ poems,” Berthoud told me. “If Archy the cockroach could be so dedicated to his art as to jump on the typewriter keys in order to write his free-verse poems every night in the New York offices of the Evening Sun, then surely she should be prepared to suffer for her art, too.” Years later, Elderkin gave Berthoud,who wanted to figure out how to balance being a painter and a mother, Patrick Gale’s novel “Notes from an Exhibition,” about a successful but troubled female artist.

They kept recommending novels to each other, and to friends and family, for many years, and, in 2007, when the philosopher Alain de Botton, a fellow Cambridge classmate, was thinking about starting the School of Life, they pitched to him the idea of running a bibliotherapy clinic. “As far as we knew, nobody was doing it in that form at the time,” Berthoud said. “Bibliotherapy, if it existed at all, tended to be based within a more medical context, with an emphasis on self-help books. But we were dedicated to fiction as the ultimate cure because it gives readers a transformational experience.”

Berthoud and Elderkin trace the method of bibliotherapy all the way back to the Ancient Greeks, “who inscribed above the entrance to a library in Thebes that this was a ‘healing place for the soul.’ ” The practice came into its own at the end of the nineteenth century, when Sigmund Freud began using literature during psychoanalysis sessions. After the First World War, traumatized soldiers returning home from the front were often prescribed a course of reading. “Librarians in the States were given training on how to give books to WWI vets, and there’s a nice story about Jane Austen’s novels being used for bibliotherapeutic purposes at the same time in the U.K.,” Elderkin says. Later in the century, bibliotherapy was used in varying ways in hospitals and libraries, and has more recently been taken up by psychologists, social and aged-care workers, and doctors as a viable mode of therapy.

There is now a network of bibliotherapists selected and trained by Berthoud and Elderkin, and affiliated with the School of Life, working around the world, from New York to Melbourne. The most common ailments people tend to bring to them are the life-juncture transitions, Berthoud says: being stuck in a rut in your career, feeling depressed in your relationship, or suffering bereavement. The bibliotherapists see a lot of retirees, too, who know that they have twenty years of reading ahead of them but perhaps have only previously read crime thrillers, and want to find something new to sustain them. Many seek help adjusting to becoming a parent. “I had a client in New York, a man who was having his first child, and was worried about being responsible for another tiny being,” Berthoud says. “I recommended ‘Room Temperature,’ by Nicholson Baker, which is about a man feeding his baby a bottle and having these meditative thoughts about being a father. And of course 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' because Atticus Finch is the ideal father in literature.”

Berthoud and Elderkin are also the authors of “The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies,” which is written in the style of a medical dictionary and matches ailments (“failure, feeling like a”) with suggested reading cures (“The History of Mr. Polly,” by H. G. Wells). First released in the U.K. in 2013, it is now being published in eighteen countries, and, in an interesting twist, the contract allows for a local editor and reading specialist to adapt up to twenty-five per cent of the ailments and reading recommendations to fit each particular country’s readership and include more native writers. The new, adapted ailments are culturally revealing. In the Dutch edition, one of the adapted ailments is “having too high an opinion of your own child”; in the Indian edition, “public urination” and “cricket, obsession with” are included; the Italians introduced “impotence,” “fear of motorways,” and “desire to embalm”; and the Germans added “hating the world” and “hating parties.” Berthoud and Elderkin are now working on a children’s-literature version, “A Spoonful of Stories,” due out in 2016.

For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading books can be good for your mental health and your relationships with others, but exactly why and how is now becoming clearer, thanks to new research on reading’s effects on the brain. Since the discovery, in the mid-nineties, of “mirror neurons”—neurons that fire in our brains both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see an action performed by someone else—the neuroscience of empathy has become clearer. A 2011 study published in the Annual Review of Psychology , based on analysis of fMRI brain scans of participants, showed that, when people read about an experience, they display stimulation within the same neurological regions as when they go through that experience themselves. We draw on the same brain networks when we’re reading stories and when we’re trying to guess at another person’s feelings.

Other studies published in 2006 and 2009 showed something similar—that people who read a lot of fiction tend to be better at empathizing with others (even after the researchers had accounted for the potential bias that people with greater empathetic tendencies may prefer to read novels). And, in 2013, an influential study published in Science found that reading literary fiction (rather than popular fiction or literary nonfiction) improved participants’ results on tests that measured social perception and empathy, which are crucial to “theory of mind”: the ability to guess with accuracy what another human being might be thinking or feeling, a skill humans only start to develop around the age of four.

Keith Oatley, a novelist and emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, has for many years run a research group interested in the psychology of fiction. “We have started to show how identification with fictional characters occurs, how literary art can improve social abilities, how it can move us emotionally, and can prompt changes of selfhood,” he wrote in his 2011 book, “Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction.” “Fiction is a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world…based in experience, and involving being able to think of possible futures.” This idea echoes a long-held belief among both writers and readers that books are the best kinds of friends; they give us a chance to rehearse for interactions with others in the world, without doing any lasting damage. In his 1905 essay “On Reading,” Marcel Proust puts it nicely: “With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends—books—it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: ‘What did they think of us?’—‘Did we make a mistake and say something tactless?’—‘Did they like us?’—nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else.”

George Eliot, who is rumored to have overcome her grief at losing her life partner through a program of guided reading with a young man who went on to become her husband, believed that “art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.” But not everybody agrees with this characterization of fiction reading as having the ability to make us behave better in real life. In her 2007 book, “Empathy and the Novel,” Suzanne Keen takes issue with this “empathy-altruism hypothesis,” and is skeptical about whether empathetic connections made while reading fiction really translate into altruistic, prosocial behavior in the world. She also points out how hard it is to really prove such a hypothesis. “Books can’t make change by themselves—and not everyone feels certain that they ought to,” Keen writes. “As any bookworm knows, readers can also seem antisocial and indolent. Novel reading is not a team sport.” Instead, she urges, we should enjoy what fiction does give us, which is a release from the moral obligation to feel something for invented characters—as you would for a real, live human being in pain or suffering—which paradoxically means readers sometimes “respond with greater empathy to an unreal situation and characters because of the protective fictionality.” And she wholeheartedly supports the personal health benefits of an immersive experience like reading, which “allows a refreshing escape from ordinary, everyday pressures.”

So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. “Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines,” the author Jeanette Winterson has written. “What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”

One of Berthoud’s clients described to me how the group and individual sessions she has had with Berthoud have helped her cope with the fallout from a series of calamities, including losing her husband, the end of a five-year engagement, and a heart attack. “I felt my life was without purpose,” she says. “I felt a failure as a woman.” Among the books Berthoud initially prescribed was John Irving’s novel “The Hotel New Hampshire.” “He was a favorite writer of my husband, [whom] I had felt unable to attempt for sentimental reasons.” She was “astounded and very moved” to see it on the list, and though she had avoided reading her husband’s books up until then, she found reading it to be “a very rewarding emotional experience, both in the literature itself and ridding myself of demons.” She also greatly appreciated Berthoud guiding her to Tom Robbins’s novel “Jitterbug Perfume,” which was “a real learning curve for me about prejudice and experimentation.”

One of the ailments listed in “The Novel Cure” is “overwhelmed by the number of books in the world,” and it’s one I suffer from frequently. Elderkin says this is one of the most common woes of modern readers, and that it remains a major motivation for her and Berthoud’s work as bibliotherapists. “We feel that though more books are being published than ever before, people are in fact selecting from a smaller and smaller pool. Look at the reading lists of most book clubs, and you’ll see all the same books, the ones that have been shouted about in the press. If you actually calculate how many books you read in a year—and how many that means you’re likely to read before you die—you’ll start to realize that you need to be highly selective in order to make the most of your reading time.” And the best way to do that? See a bibliotherapist, as soon as you can, and take them up on their invitation, to borrow some lines from Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus”: "Come, and take choice of all my library/And so beguile thy sorrow…"

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By Rebecca Mead

By The New Yorker

By Alexandra Schwartz

By Nathan Heller

Essays About Books: Top 5 Examples and Writing Prompts

Books open portals to new worlds and display new knowledge inspired from the old to the new. Here are some published essays about books and prompts you can use.

Books are a way for the past to teach the present and preserve the present for the future. Books come in all shapes and sizes. In addition, technology has improved the way books can be accessed with eBooks and audiobooks that are more accessible and hassle-free to use.

No matter what genre, a book aids its readers in gaining valuable knowledge, improving vocabulary, and many more. Following are 5 essays with books as their subject:

1. Why Are Books So Important in Our Life by Ankita Yadav

2. essay on books for students by kanak mishra, 3. listening to books by maggie gram, 4. short essay on books and reading by sastry, 5. long essay on books by ram, 1. do we still need libraries, 2. the names an author gives to their characters, 3. do you read or write, 4. your favorite book, 5. books and inspirations, 6. the book cover, 7. paper books vs. digital copies, 8. why read the book you hate, 9. the book is better than the movie.

“Books are the best companions in our life. They never leave us alone and are like our best friends.”

For Yadav, a book is someone’s best friend, guide, all-time teacher, and keeper of various information. The essay talks about how reading a physical book is better than watching movies or using modern technologies for entertainment and learning purposes. The author also believes that autobiography books of great people inspire students and motivate them to work hard to achieve their goals in life.

“Though the technology has so much changed that we can take information about anything through internet… importance of books has not decreased…”

The writer describes books as the best option for self-learners. They don’t only note an issue, topic, or story but also put effort and emotions into their writing. Next, she discusses the types of books and their subcategories. Finally, she gives tips about finding a good book to read.

“The possibility of reading while also doing something else produces one of the stranger phenomenological characteristics of audio book reading: you can have a whole set of unrelated and real (if only partially attended) experiences while simultaneously experiencing a book.”

Gram’s primary focus in this essay is audiobooks, discussing their history and how audiobooks started. She also mentions how audiobooks help blind people who find it challenging to read braille books. The author also compares physical books and audiobooks to help the reader choose better for a long drive, house cleaning, or simply doing anything other than reading.

“Books are standing counsellors and preachers, always at hand and always neutral.”

Sastry considers novels the best option when one is tired and looking for healthy recreational activity. Still, the author didn’t forget the fact that reading history, science, religion, and other more “serious” books can also bring gratification to their readers. Books offer unlimited benefits if well used, but not when abused, and as the writer said, “no book can be good if studied negligently.”

“Books are important because they provide a few things that are key to an open and intelligent society.”

The essay is best to be read by students from classes 7 to 10, as it gives the simplest explanation of why it is vital to read a book during their spare time or extended holidays. Ram says people get inspired and receive life lessons by reading books. Reading classic and newer books with lots of words of wisdom and new ideas are better than wasting time and learning nothing.

Are you looking for writing applications to help you improve your essay? See the seven best essay writing apps to use.

Top 10 Writing Prompts on Essays About Books

Writing essays about books can be easy as many subtopics exist. However, it can also be challenging to pick a specific subcategory. To help you narrow it down, here are ten easy writing prompts that you can use.

Essays About Books: Do We Still Need Libraries?

Libraries help many people – from bibliophiles to job seekers and students. They offer free access to books, newspapers, and computers. But with modern devices making it easier to get information, are libraries still needed? Use this prompt to discuss the importance of libraries and the consequences if all of them close down.

Some authors like to give their characters very unusual names, such as “America Singer” from the book The Selection by Keira Cass. Do you think characters having strange names take away the reader’s attention to the plot? Does it make the book more interesting or odd? Suppose you are writing a story; how do you name the characters and why?

They say writers need readers and vice versa, but which role do you find more challenging? Is writing harder than finding the best book, story, and poetry to read?

Use this prompt to describe their roles and explain how readers and writers hold each other up.

There is always a unique book that one will never forget. What is your favorite book of all time, and why? Write an essay about why you consider that book your favorite. You can also persuade others to try to read it.

If you have more than one preference, describe them and tell the readers why you can’t choose between your favorite books. Check out these essays about literature .

Authors inspiring their readers to try something new by reading their book are not always intentional but usually happens. Have you ever experienced wanting to move to a new place or change career paths after reading something?

Use this prompt to share your experience and opinion on readers who make significant life changes because books and characters influence them in a story.

Have you ever gone to a book shop to find a book recommended to you but didn’t buy or read it because of the cover? They said never judge a book by its cover. In this prompt, you can.

Share what you think the book is all about based on its cover. Then, make a follow-up writing if you were right or wrong after reading the book’s contents.

Studies confirmed more benefits to reading physical books than digital books, such as retaining information longer if read from a printed copy. Are you more of a traditional or modern reader? Use this prompt to explain your answer and briefly discuss the pros and cons of each type of book in your opinion.

Are you ever tasked to read a book you don’t like? Share your experience and tell the reader if you finished the book, learned anything from it, and what it feels like to force yourself to read a book you hate. You can also add if you come to like it in the end.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is undisputedly one of the most popular books turned into movies. However, avid readers consider books better than movies because they can echo the main protagonist’s thoughts.

Do you have a favorite book adapted into a film? Did you like it? Write about what makes the movie version better or underwhelming. You can also include why movies are more limited than books.

Do you still feel like there is something wrong with your essay? Here is a guide about grammar and punctuation to help you.

If you still need help, our guide to grammar and syntax explains more.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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How to Read a Book, According to Virginia Woolf

By ellen gutoskey | jan 25, 2021.

In addition to writing celebrated novels like Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse , Virginia Woolf was also a prolific writer of essays on everything from her own life to her feelings about other writers. Among these many musings is an essay called “How Should One Read a Book?”

Woolf begins by explaining why it’s titled “How Should One Read a Book?” and not “How One Should Read a Book.” In short, there’s no single answer to the question. “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions,” she says [ PDF ].

That said, she does have some ideas. For one, Woolf thinks you should try to set aside your expectations for a book before you open it, and don’t let knee-jerk judgments interrupt your reading experience. Instead, you should “try to become” the author. “If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first,” she writes, “you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read.”

To help you accomplish this, Woolf suggests writing something yourself: “to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.” After you’ve struggled to capture a simple scene or event in words, you can “turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist,” Woolf writes. “Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery.”

As Maria Popova explains on her blog Brain Pickings, Woolf isn’t against judging what you’ve read—she acknowledges that forming opinions about a book is a vital part of the process. But she recommends taking a break after you finish the last page to let the ideas solidify in your subconscious mind before reflecting on them. “Walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep,” Woolf writes. After that, the book as a whole will make more sense, and you’ll be able to compare it to others.

Woolf also reveals conflicted feelings about letting all readers openly judge what they’ve read, rather than leaving such work to expert critics. But she admits that it’s impossible for readers to curb their reactions. “There is always a demon in us who whispers, ‘I hate, I love,’ and we cannot silence him,” she explains. What we can do is read so much and so widely that our critical “demon” develops good taste.

In the end, Woolf neutralizes everything she’s expressed thus far by introducing the possibility that the chief purpose of reading a book is just to enjoy it. “Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them?” she asks.

To anyone familiar with Woolf and her work, it’s probably not surprising that she’d offer such inconclusive advice on reading. After all, she herself never thought much of rigid rules—in writing or anything else.

[h/t Brain Pickings ]

Reading a book to review it

Choose your book carefully.

Being interested in a book will help you write a strong review, so take some time to choose a book whose topic and scholarly approach genuinely interest you.

If you’re assigned a book, you’ll need to find a way to become interested in it.

Read actively and critically

Don’t read just to discover the author’s main point or to mine some facts.

Engage with the text, marking important points and underlining passages as you go along (in books you own, of course!).

Focus first on summary and analysis

Before you read

Write down quickly and informally some of the facts and ideas you already know about the book’s topic
Survey the book –including the preface and table of contents–and make some predictions
What does the title promise the book will cover or argue?
What does the preface promise about the book?
What does the table of contents tell you about how the book is organized?
Who’s the audience for this book?

As you read

With individual chapters:

Think carefully about the chapter’s title and skim paragraphs to get an overall sense of the chapter.
Then, as you read, test your predictions against the points made in the chapter.
After you’ve finished a chapter, take brief notes. Start by summarizing , in your own words, the major points of the chapter. Then you might want to take brief notes about particular passages you might discuss in your review.

Begin to evaluate

As you take notes about the book, try dividing your page into two columns. In the left, summarize main points from a chapter. In the right, record your reactions to and your tentative evaluations of that chapter.

Here are several ways you can evaluate a book:

If you know other books on this same subject, you can compare the arguments and quality of the book you’re reviewing with the others, emphasizing what’s new and what’s especially valuable in the book you’re reviewing.
How well does the book fulfill the promises the author makes in the preface and introduction?
How effective is the book’s methodology?
How effectively does the book make its arguments?
How persuasive is the evidence?
For its audience, what are the book’s strengths?
How clearly is the book written?

Academic and Professional Writing

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Reading Poetry

A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis

Using Literary Quotations

Play Reviews

Writing a Rhetorical Précis to Analyze Nonfiction Texts

Incorporating Interview Data

Grant Proposals

Planning and Writing a Grant Proposal: The Basics

Additional Resources for Grants and Proposal Writing

Job Materials and Application Essays

Writing Personal Statements for Ph.D. Programs

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Reading Books — My Personal Passion: Favorite Books & Authors

Why I Like Reading Books: a Narrative

Categories: Reading Books

About this sample

Words: 1014 |

Published: Mar 14, 2019

Words: 1014 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Why i like reading (essay), my favorite type of books, works cited.

Coleridge, S. T. (1817). Biographia Literaria: Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Restless Books.
Lawrence, D. H. (2000). Lady Chatterley's Lover. Wordsworth Editions.
Maas, S. J. (2012). Throne of Glass. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.
Shakespeare, W. (2008). The Merchant's Tale. In The Canterbury Tales (2nd ed., pp. 121-134). Penguin Classics.
Stowe, H. B. (1852). Uncle Tom's Cabin. J. P. Jewett and Company.
Tolkein, J. R. R. (2012). The Lord of the Rings. HarperCollins.
Tonnard, M., & Van Kesteren, E. (2007). Reading Ed Ruscha: Novels. Ludion.
Wells, H. G. (1932). Brave New World. Chatto & Windus.
Wood, J. (2014). The Theatre of Absurd. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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beginner's guide to literary analysis

Understanding literature & how to write literary analysis.

Literary analysis is the foundation of every college and high school English class. Once you can comprehend written work and respond to it, the next step is to learn how to think critically and complexly about a work of literature in order to analyze its elements and establish ideas about its meaning.

If that sounds daunting, it shouldn’t. Literary analysis is really just a way of thinking creatively about what you read. The practice takes you beyond the storyline and into the motives behind it.

While an author might have had a specific intention when they wrote their book, there’s still no right or wrong way to analyze a literary text—just your way. You can use literary theories, which act as “lenses” through which you can view a text. Or you can use your own creativity and critical thinking to identify a literary device or pattern in a text and weave that insight into your own argument about the text’s underlying meaning.

Now, if that sounds fun, it should , because it is. Here, we’ll lay the groundwork for performing literary analysis, including when writing analytical essays, to help you read books like a critic.

What Is Literary Analysis?

As the name suggests, literary analysis is an analysis of a work, whether that’s a novel, play, short story, or poem. Any analysis requires breaking the content into its component parts and then examining how those parts operate independently and as a whole. In literary analysis, those parts can be different devices and elements—such as plot, setting, themes, symbols, etcetera—as well as elements of style, like point of view or tone.

When performing analysis, you consider some of these different elements of the text and then form an argument for why the author chose to use them. You can do so while reading and during class discussion, but it’s particularly important when writing essays.

Literary analysis is notably distinct from summary. When you write a summary , you efficiently describe the work’s main ideas or plot points in order to establish an overview of the work. While you might use elements of summary when writing analysis, you should do so minimally. You can reference a plot line to make a point, but it should be done so quickly so you can focus on why that plot line matters . In summary (see what we did there?), a summary focuses on the “ what ” of a text, while analysis turns attention to the “ how ” and “ why .”

While literary analysis can be broad, covering themes across an entire work, it can also be very specific, and sometimes the best analysis is just that. Literary critics have written thousands of words about the meaning of an author’s single word choice; while you might not want to be quite that particular, there’s a lot to be said for digging deep in literary analysis, rather than wide.

Although you’re forming your own argument about the work, it’s not your opinion . You should avoid passing judgment on the piece and instead objectively consider what the author intended, how they went about executing it, and whether or not they were successful in doing so. Literary criticism is similar to literary analysis, but it is different in that it does pass judgement on the work. Criticism can also consider literature more broadly, without focusing on a singular work.

Once you understand what constitutes (and doesn’t constitute) literary analysis, it’s easy to identify it. Here are some examples of literary analysis and its oft-confused counterparts:

Summary: In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator visits his friend Roderick Usher and witnesses his sister escape a horrible fate.

Opinion: In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses his great Gothic writing to establish a sense of spookiness that is enjoyable to read.

Literary Analysis: “Throughout ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ Poe foreshadows the fate of Madeline by creating a sense of claustrophobia for the reader through symbols, such as in the narrator’s inability to leave and the labyrinthine nature of the house.

In summary, literary analysis is:

Breaking a work into its components
Identifying what those components are and how they work in the text
Developing an understanding of how they work together to achieve a goal
Not an opinion, but subjective
Not a summary, though summary can be used in passing
Best when it deeply, rather than broadly, analyzes a literary element

Literary Analysis and Other Works

As discussed above, literary analysis is often performed upon a single work—but it doesn’t have to be. It can also be performed across works to consider the interplay of two or more texts. Regardless of whether or not the works were written about the same thing, or even within the same time period, they can have an influence on one another or a connection that’s worth exploring. And reading two or more texts side by side can help you to develop insights through comparison and contrast.

For example, Paradise Lost is an epic poem written in the 17th century, based largely on biblical narratives written some 700 years before and which later influenced 19th century poet John Keats. The interplay of works can be obvious, as here, or entirely the inspiration of the analyst. As an example of the latter, you could compare and contrast the writing styles of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe who, while contemporaries in terms of time, were vastly different in their content.

Additionally, literary analysis can be performed between a work and its context. Authors are often speaking to the larger context of their times, be that social, political, religious, economic, or artistic. A valid and interesting form is to compare the author’s context to the work, which is done by identifying and analyzing elements that are used to make an argument about the writer’s time or experience.

For example, you could write an essay about how Hemingway’s struggles with mental health and paranoia influenced his later work, or how his involvement in the Spanish Civil War influenced his early work. One approach focuses more on his personal experience, while the other turns to the context of his times—both are valid.

Why Does Literary Analysis Matter?

Sometimes an author wrote a work of literature strictly for entertainment’s sake, but more often than not, they meant something more. Whether that was a missive on world peace, commentary about femininity, or an allusion to their experience as an only child, the author probably wrote their work for a reason, and understanding that reason—or the many reasons—can actually make reading a lot more meaningful.

Performing literary analysis as a form of study unquestionably makes you a better reader. It’s also likely that it will improve other skills, too, like critical thinking, creativity, debate, and reasoning.

At its grandest and most idealistic, literary analysis even has the ability to make the world a better place. By reading and analyzing works of literature, you are able to more fully comprehend the perspectives of others. Cumulatively, you’ll broaden your own perspectives and contribute more effectively to the things that matter to you.

Literary Terms to Know for Literary Analysis

There are hundreds of literary devices you could consider during your literary analysis, but there are some key tools most writers utilize to achieve their purpose—and therefore you need to know in order to understand that purpose. These common devices include:

Characters: The people (or entities) who play roles in the work. The protagonist is the main character in the work.
Conflict: The conflict is the driving force behind the plot, the event that causes action in the narrative, usually on the part of the protagonist
Context : The broader circumstances surrounding the work political and social climate in which it was written or the experience of the author. It can also refer to internal context, and the details presented by the narrator
Diction : The word choice used by the narrator or characters
Genre: A category of literature characterized by agreed upon similarities in the works, such as subject matter and tone
Imagery : The descriptive or figurative language used to paint a picture in the reader’s mind so they can picture the story’s plot, characters, and setting
Metaphor: A figure of speech that uses comparison between two unlike objects for dramatic or poetic effect
Narrator: The person who tells the story. Sometimes they are a character within the story, but sometimes they are omniscient and removed from the plot.
Plot : The storyline of the work
Point of view: The perspective taken by the narrator, which skews the perspective of the reader
Setting : The time and place in which the story takes place. This can include elements like the time period, weather, time of year or day, and social or economic conditions
Symbol : An object, person, or place that represents an abstract idea that is greater than its literal meaning
Syntax : The structure of a sentence, either narration or dialogue, and the tone it implies
Theme : A recurring subject or message within the work, often commentary on larger societal or cultural ideas
Tone : The feeling, attitude, or mood the text presents

How to Perform Literary Analysis

Step 1: read the text thoroughly.

Literary analysis begins with the literature itself, which means performing a close reading of the text. As you read, you should focus on the work. That means putting away distractions (sorry, smartphone) and dedicating a period of time to the task at hand.

It’s also important that you don’t skim or speed read. While those are helpful skills, they don’t apply to literary analysis—or at least not this stage.

Step 2: Take Notes as You Read

As you read the work, take notes about different literary elements and devices that stand out to you. Whether you highlight or underline in text, use sticky note tabs to mark pages and passages, or handwrite your thoughts in a notebook, you should capture your thoughts and the parts of the text to which they correspond. This—the act of noticing things about a literary work—is literary analysis.

Step 3: Notice Patterns

As you read the work, you’ll begin to notice patterns in the way the author deploys language, themes, and symbols to build their plot and characters. As you read and these patterns take shape, begin to consider what they could mean and how they might fit together.

As you identify these patterns, as well as other elements that catch your interest, be sure to record them in your notes or text. Some examples include:

Circle or underline words or terms that you notice the author uses frequently, whether those are nouns (like “eyes” or “road”) or adjectives (like “yellow” or “lush”).
Highlight phrases that give you the same kind of feeling. For example, if the narrator describes an “overcast sky,” a “dreary morning,” and a “dark, quiet room,” the words aren’t the same, but the feeling they impart and setting they develop are similar.
Underline quotes or prose that define a character’s personality or their role in the text.
Use sticky tabs to color code different elements of the text, such as specific settings or a shift in the point of view.

By noting these patterns, comprehensive symbols, metaphors, and ideas will begin to come into focus.

Step 4: Consider the Work as a Whole, and Ask Questions

This is a step that you can do either as you read, or after you finish the text. The point is to begin to identify the aspects of the work that most interest you, and you could therefore analyze in writing or discussion.

Questions you could ask yourself include:

What aspects of the text do I not understand?
What parts of the narrative or writing struck me most?
What patterns did I notice?
What did the author accomplish really well?
What did I find lacking?
Did I notice any contradictions or anything that felt out of place?
What was the purpose of the minor characters?
What tone did the author choose, and why?

The answers to these and more questions will lead you to your arguments about the text.

Step 5: Return to Your Notes and the Text for Evidence

As you identify the argument you want to make (especially if you’re preparing for an essay), return to your notes to see if you already have supporting evidence for your argument. That’s why it’s so important to take notes or mark passages as you read—you’ll thank yourself later!

If you’re preparing to write an essay, you’ll use these passages and ideas to bolster your argument—aka, your thesis. There will likely be multiple different passages you can use to strengthen multiple different aspects of your argument. Just be sure to cite the text correctly!

If you’re preparing for class, your notes will also be invaluable. When your teacher or professor leads the conversation in the direction of your ideas or arguments, you’ll be able to not only proffer that idea but back it up with textual evidence. That’s an A+ in class participation.

Step 6: Connect These Ideas Across the Narrative

Whether you’re in class or writing an essay, literary analysis isn’t complete until you’ve considered the way these ideas interact and contribute to the work as a whole. You can find and present evidence, but you still have to explain how those elements work together and make up your argument.

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay

When conducting literary analysis while reading a text or discussing it in class, you can pivot easily from one argument to another (or even switch sides if a classmate or teacher makes a compelling enough argument).

But when writing literary analysis, your objective is to propose a specific, arguable thesis and convincingly defend it. In order to do so, you need to fortify your argument with evidence from the text (and perhaps secondary sources) and an authoritative tone.

A successful literary analysis essay depends equally on a thoughtful thesis, supportive analysis, and presenting these elements masterfully. We’ll review how to accomplish these objectives below.

Step 1: Read the Text. Maybe Read It Again.

Constructing an astute analytical essay requires a thorough knowledge of the text. As you read, be sure to note any passages, quotes, or ideas that stand out. These could serve as the future foundation of your thesis statement. Noting these sections now will help you when you need to gather evidence.

The more familiar you become with the text, the better (and easier!) your essay will be. Familiarity with the text allows you to speak (or in this case, write) to it confidently. If you only skim the book, your lack of rich understanding will be evident in your essay. Alternatively, if you read the text closely—especially if you read it more than once, or at least carefully revisit important passages—your own writing will be filled with insight that goes beyond a basic understanding of the storyline.

Step 2: Brainstorm Potential Topics

Because you took detailed notes while reading the text, you should have a list of potential topics at the ready. Take time to review your notes, highlighting any ideas or questions you had that feel interesting. You should also return to the text and look for any passages that stand out to you.

When considering potential topics, you should prioritize ideas that you find interesting. It won’t only make the whole process of writing an essay more fun, your enthusiasm for the topic will probably improve the quality of your argument, and maybe even your writing. Just like it’s obvious when a topic interests you in a conversation, it’s obvious when a topic interests the writer of an essay (and even more obvious when it doesn’t).

Your topic ideas should also be specific, unique, and arguable. A good way to think of topics is that they’re the answer to fairly specific questions. As you begin to brainstorm, first think of questions you have about the text. Questions might focus on the plot, such as: Why did the author choose to deviate from the projected storyline? Or why did a character’s role in the narrative shift? Questions might also consider the use of a literary device, such as: Why does the narrator frequently repeat a phrase or comment on a symbol? Or why did the author choose to switch points of view each chapter?

Once you have a thesis question , you can begin brainstorming answers—aka, potential thesis statements . At this point, your answers can be fairly broad. Once you land on a question-statement combination that feels right, you’ll then look for evidence in the text that supports your answer (and helps you define and narrow your thesis statement).

For example, after reading “ The Fall of the House of Usher ,” you might be wondering, Why are Roderick and Madeline twins?, Or even: Why does their relationship feel so creepy?” Maybe you noticed (and noted) that the narrator was surprised to find out they were twins, or perhaps you found that the narrator’s tone tended to shift and become more anxious when discussing the interactions of the twins.

Once you come up with your thesis question, you can identify a broad answer, which will become the basis for your thesis statement. In response to the questions above, your answer might be, “Poe emphasizes the close relationship of Roderick and Madeline to foreshadow that their deaths will be close, too.”

Step 3: Gather Evidence

Once you have your topic (or you’ve narrowed it down to two or three), return to the text (yes, again) to see what evidence you can find to support it. If you’re thinking of writing about the relationship between Roderick and Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” look for instances where they engaged in the text.

This is when your knowledge of literary devices comes in clutch. Carefully study the language around each event in the text that might be relevant to your topic. How does Poe’s diction or syntax change during the interactions of the siblings? How does the setting reflect or contribute to their relationship? What imagery or symbols appear when Roderick and Madeline are together?

By finding and studying evidence within the text, you’ll strengthen your topic argument—or, just as valuably, discount the topics that aren’t strong enough for analysis.

Step 4: Consider Secondary Sources

In addition to returning to the literary work you’re studying for evidence, you can also consider secondary sources that reference or speak to the work. These can be articles from journals you find on JSTOR, books that consider the work or its context, or articles your teacher shared in class.

While you can use these secondary sources to further support your idea, you should not overuse them. Make sure your topic remains entirely differentiated from that presented in the source.

Step 5: Write a Working Thesis Statement

Once you’ve gathered evidence and narrowed down your topic, you’re ready to refine that topic into a thesis statement. As you continue to outline and write your paper, this thesis statement will likely change slightly, but this initial draft will serve as the foundation of your essay. It’s like your north star: Everything you write in your essay is leading you back to your thesis.

Writing a great thesis statement requires some real finesse. A successful thesis statement is:

Debatable : You shouldn’t simply summarize or make an obvious statement about the work. Instead, your thesis statement should take a stand on an issue or make a claim that is open to argument. You’ll spend your essay debating—and proving—your argument.
Demonstrable : You need to be able to prove, through evidence, that your thesis statement is true. That means you have to have passages from the text and correlative analysis ready to convince the reader that you’re right.
Specific : In most cases, successfully addressing a theme that encompasses a work in its entirety would require a book-length essay. Instead, identify a thesis statement that addresses specific elements of the work, such as a relationship between characters, a repeating symbol, a key setting, or even something really specific like the speaking style of a character.

Example: By depicting the relationship between Roderick and Madeline to be stifling and almost otherworldly in its closeness, Poe foreshadows both Madeline’s fate and Roderick’s inability to choose a different fate for himself.

Step 6: Write an Outline

You have your thesis, you have your evidence—but how do you put them together? A great thesis statement (and therefore a great essay) will have multiple arguments supporting it, presenting different kinds of evidence that all contribute to the singular, main idea presented in your thesis.

Review your evidence and identify these different arguments, then organize the evidence into categories based on the argument they support. These ideas and evidence will become the body paragraphs of your essay.

For example, if you were writing about Roderick and Madeline as in the example above, you would pull evidence from the text, such as the narrator’s realization of their relationship as twins; examples where the narrator’s tone of voice shifts when discussing their relationship; imagery, like the sounds Roderick hears as Madeline tries to escape; and Poe’s tendency to use doubles and twins in his other writings to create the same spooky effect. All of these are separate strains of the same argument, and can be clearly organized into sections of an outline.

Step 7: Write Your Introduction

Your introduction serves a few very important purposes that essentially set the scene for the reader:

Establish context. Sure, your reader has probably read the work. But you still want to remind them of the scene, characters, or elements you’ll be discussing.
Present your thesis statement. Your thesis statement is the backbone of your analytical paper. You need to present it clearly at the outset so that the reader understands what every argument you make is aimed at.
Offer a mini-outline. While you don’t want to show all your cards just yet, you do want to preview some of the evidence you’ll be using to support your thesis so that the reader has a roadmap of where they’re going.

Step 8: Write Your Body Paragraphs

Thanks to steps one through seven, you’ve already set yourself up for success. You have clearly outlined arguments and evidence to support them. Now it’s time to translate those into authoritative and confident prose.

When presenting each idea, begin with a topic sentence that encapsulates the argument you’re about to make (sort of like a mini-thesis statement). Then present your evidence and explanations of that evidence that contribute to that argument. Present enough material to prove your point, but don’t feel like you necessarily have to point out every single instance in the text where this element takes place. For example, if you’re highlighting a symbol that repeats throughout the narrative, choose two or three passages where it is used most effectively, rather than trying to squeeze in all ten times it appears.

While you should have clearly defined arguments, the essay should still move logically and fluidly from one argument to the next. Try to avoid choppy paragraphs that feel disjointed; every idea and argument should feel connected to the last, and, as a group, connected to your thesis. A great way to connect the ideas from one paragraph to the next is with transition words and phrases, such as:

Furthermore
In addition
On the other hand
Conversely

Step 9: Write Your Conclusion

Your conclusion is more than a summary of your essay's parts, but it’s also not a place to present brand new ideas not already discussed in your essay. Instead, your conclusion should return to your thesis (without repeating it verbatim) and point to why this all matters. If writing about the siblings in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” for example, you could point out that the utilization of twins and doubles is a common literary element of Poe’s work that contributes to the definitive eeriness of Gothic literature.

While you might speak to larger ideas in your conclusion, be wary of getting too macro. Your conclusion should still be supported by all of the ideas that preceded it.

Step 10: Revise, Revise, Revise

Of course you should proofread your literary analysis essay before you turn it in. But you should also edit the content to make sure every piece of evidence and every explanation directly supports your thesis as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Sometimes, this might mean actually adapting your thesis a bit to the rest of your essay. At other times, it means removing redundant examples or paraphrasing quotations. Make sure every sentence is valuable, and remove those that aren’t.

Other Resources for Literary Analysis

With these skills and suggestions, you’re well on your way to practicing and writing literary analysis. But if you don’t have a firm grasp on the concepts discussed above—such as literary devices or even the content of the text you’re analyzing—it will still feel difficult to produce insightful analysis.

If you’d like to sharpen the tools in your literature toolbox, there are plenty of other resources to help you do so:

Check out our expansive library of Literary Devices . These could provide you with a deeper understanding of the basic devices discussed above or introduce you to new concepts sure to impress your professors ( anagnorisis , anyone?).
This Academic Citation Resource Guide ensures you properly cite any work you reference in your analytical essay.
Our English Homework Help Guide will point you to dozens of resources that can help you perform analysis, from critical reading strategies to poetry helpers.
This Grammar Education Resource Guide will direct you to plenty of resources to refine your grammar and writing (definitely important for getting an A+ on that paper).

Of course, you should know the text inside and out before you begin writing your analysis. In order to develop a true understanding of the work, read through its corresponding SuperSummary study guide . Doing so will help you truly comprehend the plot, as well as provide some inspirational ideas for your analysis.

Why Do We Still Read Books?

Humans appear to have a primal need for narrative and the written word..

Posted May 12, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

People predicted that reading books would become extinct due to digital technology.
Reading books has remained a popular activity in the Digital Age.
Reading appears to be a basic human drive rooted in cognition.

As it became clear in the 1990s that digital culture would transform everyday life, many critics predicted that books would go the way of the horse and buggy. Books, and print culture in general, would soon be seen as anachronisms in a world in which information was sent and received by more advanced technology, they held, echoing experts who expressed a similar opinion when television appeared a half-century earlier.

Print culture has not become obsolete, however, and reading books, both as hard copies and in digital form, remains a popular activity. In fact, book sales have been robust in recent years, partly due to the pandemic. Sales of print books rose 9 percent in 2021, according to Publishers Weekly , and the market has remained strong since then.

Why is this so? What is it about books, which have been around in some form since 500 BC (as hand-written scrolls) that make them an essential feature of the human condition?

Bright minds have offered some answers to these questions, one of them being Carmen Martin Gaite, who expressed her views in 1989. “Reading provides insight into a secret world that liberates one from the hostile pressures of the environment , from the routines and deceptions that the confrontation with reality produces,” she wrote, having experienced that special feeling at an early age.

It was ironic that this “prize awarded by reading,” as Gaite described it, was being recognized and appreciated at a time when sitting down with a book was already being seen by some as an antiquated, even absurd practice. The concentration required by deliberate reading afforded a sense of calm in an increasingly frenetic world, Gaite held, considering the chance to escape from the noise and chaos and embrace solitude “a miraculous feat.”

In his 1988 Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure , Victor Nell said much the same thing. Reading was for Nell, as he began his book, “as rousing, colorful and transfiguring as anything out there in the real world” and a rare opportunity to “acquire peace, become more powerful, and feel braver and wiser.”

Alongside such musings, Nell provided statistics drawn from clinical research that lent evidence to his argument that reading offered psychological benefits to those who took the time to do it. Reading was not just a joyful experience but a nearly universal one, he pointed out, implying that there was a basic human drive to both produce and consume narrative. Losing oneself in a book, as the title of his suggested, was good for both brain and body, the research showed—something that devoted readers already knew.

The questioning of the role of reading in the digital age provoked a flurry of thoughts that offered keen insights into why people chose to spend their valuable time looking at words in a book or on a screen. Why read rather than watch a film, listen to music, or take a walk in the park?

Barbara Herrnstein Smith asked that good question and provided some equally good answers. For her, reading was essentially a certain kind of scanning of the environment, i.e., a visual attempt to determine what was good or bad out there in the world. People scan the environment all the time in such a way, a natural instinct to assess signs to gain information that might be useful.

As a cognitive activity, reading could serve all kinds of purposes, with particular ones contingent on the motive of the individual in relation to the material. “What reading can do depends on who is doing the reading as much as on what is being read,” Smith wrote, with “personal, cultural, and intellectual histories, distinctive situations, interests, and anxieties, and distinctive physiologies, including brain wiring,” entering the equation.

Durable, resilient , and somehow resistant to external forces, reading at its core remains a fundamental human endeavor, and reports of its impending death are greatly exaggerated. Reading books, whether fiction, non-fiction, or everything in between, is not just a sanctuary from the cultural storm but a healing, therapeutic agent that appears to be based in brain chemistry.

Nell, Victor. (1988). Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Samuel, Lawrence R. (2024). Literacy in America: A Cultural History of the Past Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D. , is an American cultural historian who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and was a Smithsonian Institution Fellow.

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How I learned to make the most of summer reading

The leisurely season, I came to realize, offered me the freedom and time to delve into classics like “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Invisible Man.”

It’s hard to tell this story without sounding pretentious, but here goes. Not too long ago, I reached for my old copy of “The Brothers Karamazov.” (I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the Grand Inquisitor sequence.) Opening the pages, I was startled to see a tiny rivulet of sand spill out. I could be even more pretentious and call the moment Proustian, because in the next second, I was lofted back over a span of decades to the place where I first read that book.

It was a beach in Duck, N.C., where my mother liked to rent a house every summer. Like many other English people I’ve met, she welcomed unfiltered sunshine wherever she could find it, and I was happy to go along because, more than the ocean or the salt air, I was drawn to the emptiness, which I knew I would be able to fill with reading.

By then I’d ventured into some approximation of post-collegiate adulthood, and it had dawned on me that reading was no longer a thing the world rewarded. It had to be carried out on the bounce, on the sly, when the day’s drudgery was done or before it had begun. So a week at the beach was the kind of gift I was in no mood to squander. I can still see myself, collapsed in a folding chair beneath a rented beach umbrella. Every part of me is covered or lotioned up (half-English kids burn easy) except for my feet, which are buried in the sand. From time to time, I look up, stare at a sandpiper or a garland of kelp. If there’s no breeze to cool things down, I might get up and wade out in the water, execute a few halfhearted body surfs. Then it’s back to the chair.

I was in a family that valued the written word, which meant that nobody bothered me or expected me to do anything other than what I was doing. The hours didn’t so much fly by as condense into a tidal pool. And it was precisely because I’d been given this expanse of freedom that I couldn’t see spending it on what are normally called “summer books.” This wasn’t snobbery: I was a way-back lover of mysteries and thrillers, which I read and enjoyed throughout the year. But where else would I have the leisure to read, yes, “The Brothers Karamazov”? Or “The Magic Mountain,” “Invisible Man,” “Lord Jim,” “Wuthering Heights” or “Sense and Sensibility”?

It had to be summer because that was the only route to immersion. When I learned, for instance, that I had two months after my college graduation to be idle, I didn’t lounge by a pool — I started reading Henry James and kept reading. “The American,” “The Portrait of a Lady,” “The Bostonians,” “The Golden Bowl”: I plowed through them like sand castles. The more byzantine James’s syntax grew, the harder I pushed, because I had never encountered a sensibility of such infinite subtlety and nuance. (In later months, I would learn that James was both a great writer and a terrible writing model, but the original enchantment lingered.)

Summer reading

I suppose you’d call all these books warhorses now, or else tokens of overstriving, but when I think back to that ardent young man, I don’t believe he was trying to impress anybody. He was operating on the assumption that had driven him since childhood, that people out there knew things, and if he wanted to know them, too, he had to come knocking. And that innocence, that hunger, was part and parcel with summer, because he was entering his own life’s summer.

I sit now, in effect, at the tail end of that summer. The future, which once seemed an endless plain of possibility, is now a peninsula. So many things have changed, including my relationship to the written word. I couldn’t possibly sit down today and read — or do anything — for six consecutive hours. Books are now inseparably tied to my work. When I’m not reading for research, I’m reading for a review or a writer’s workshop or some other professional obligation. Now and again a book fills me with the old engine roar of wonder — I cherish that — but even then, I’m still, consciously or unconsciously, poking under the hood to see how it’s happening. The authorial eye never relaxes. In my mind, I edit the instructions on shampoo bottles.

So I miss, even envy, that disinterested lad on the beach, swathed in towels and sunblock, and I wonder if, by the time my life’s autumn and winter roll around, I’ll be ready to rejoin him. Not on the beach, perhaps, but the nearest best thing. All the deadlines and contracts will be cast to one side, and I’ll be able to say once more, and mean it: Tell me a story . The Karamazovs will be there waiting.

Louis Bayard, a Book World contributing writer, is the author of several novels, including “Jackie & Me” and the upcoming “The Wildes.”

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Love everything about books? Make sure to subscribe to our Book Club newsletter , where Ron Charles guides you through the literary news of the week.

Check out our coverage of this year’s Pulitzer winners: Jayne Anne Phillips won the fiction prize for her novel “ Night Watch .” The nonfiction prize went to Nathan Thrall, for “ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama .” Cristina Rivera Garza received the memoir prize for “ Liliana’s Invincible Summer .” And Jonathan Eig received the biography prize for his “ King: A Life .”

Best books of 2023: See our picks for the 10 best books of 2023 or dive into the staff picks that Book World writers and editors treasured in 2023. Check out the complete lists of 50 notable works for fiction and the top 50 nonfiction books of last year.

Find your favorite genre: Three new memoirs tell stories of struggle and resilience, while five recent historical novels offer a window into other times. Audiobooks more your thing? We’ve got you covered there, too . If you’re looking for what’s new, we have a list of our most anticipated books of 2024 . And here are 10 noteworthy new titles that you might want to consider picking up this April.

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How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

Young writer looking at a flash card showing a picture of a dog and writing various words that begin with a "D" like dog, donut, duck and door.

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Essay on Books for Students and Children

500 Words Essay on Books

Books are referred to as a man’s best friend . They are very beneficial for mankind and have helped it evolve. There is a powerhouse of information and knowledge. Books offer us so many things without asking for anything in return. Books leave a deep impact on us and are responsible for uplifting our mood.

This is why we suggest children read books from an early age to gain knowledge. The best part about books is that there are various types of books. One can read any type to gain different types of knowledge. Reading must be done by people of all ages. It not only widens our thinking but also enhances our vocabulary.

Different Genres of Books

There are different genres of books available for book readers. Every day, thousands of books are released in the market ranging from travel books to fictional books. We can pick any book of our interest to expand our knowledge and enjoy the reading experience.

Firstly, we have travel books, which tell us about the experience of various travelers. They introduce us to different places in the world without moving from our place. It gives us traveling tips which we can use in the future. Then, we have history books which state historical events. They teach about the eras and how people lived in times gone by.

Furthermore, we have technology books that teach us about technological developments and different equipment. You can also read fashion and lifestyle books to get up to date with the latest trends in the fashion industry.

Most importantly, there are self-help books and motivational books . These books help in the personality development of an individual. They inspire us to do well in life and also bring a positive change in ourselves. Finally, we have fictional books. They are based on the writer’s imagination and help us in enhancing our imagination too. They are very entertaining and keep us intrigued until the very end.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Reading Books

There are not one but various advantages of reading books. To begin with, it improves our knowledge on a variety of subjects. Moreover, it makes us wiser. When we learn different things, we learn to deal with them differently too. Similarly, books also keep us entertained. They kill our boredom and give us great company when we are alone.

Furthermore, books help us to recognize our areas of interest. They also determine our career choice to a great extent. Most importantly, books improve our vocabulary . We learn new words from it and that widens our vocabulary. In addition, books boost our creativity. They help us discover a completely new side.

In other words, books make us more fluent in languages. They enhance our writing skills too. Plus, we become more confident after the knowledge of books. They help us in debating, public speaking , quizzes and more.

In short, books give us a newer perspective and gives us a deeper understanding of things. It impacts our personality positively as well. Thus, we see how books provide us with so many benefits. We should encourage everyone to read more books and useless phones.

FAQs on Books

Q.1 State the different genres of books.

A.1 Books come in different genres. Some of them are travel books, history books, technology books, fashion and lifestyle books, self-help books, motivational books, and fictional books.

Q.2 Why are books important?

A.2 Books are of great importance to mankind. They enhance our knowledge and vocabulary. They keep us entertained and also widen our perspective. This, in turn, makes us more confident and wise.

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Importance of Reading Books Essay - 100, 200, 500 Words

One of the nicest pastimes one may engage in is reading. It's enjoyable to read a variety of novels. We learn a lot about individuals from different parts of the world, their cultures, traditions, and much more by reading books. By reading various novels, one can discover so much. They are people's closest friends and offer a wealth of knowledge. We learn about every subject and topic by reading books about it. There are many different kinds of books available on the market, including publications about science and technology, fiction, culture, historical events, and warfare.

100 Words Essay On Importance Of Reading Books

Books have a vital recreational function in addition to being a source of knowledge. The statement that books provide a window into another world is seldom understated. They are effective stress relievers because they allow us to forget about the pressures and worries of daily life. There is a book for everyone, which is an added bonus and makes this the ideal stress reliever. It aids in brain and memory stimulation through improved cognitive performance. Additionally, it keeps the creative energies flowing. Your mind will remain active and healthy as a result. Every time we read a book, we are learning something new.

200 Words Essay On Importance Of Reading Books

Excellent scholars and thinkers expressed their knowledge and understanding of life in the form of books. Many things can be understood and learned by reading. Because of this, reading is advised as a daily brain booster and a way to learn new information. Reading inspires creativity, growth, and original thought. It is a prudent investment in one's personality with countless long-lasting benefits. You have to remember the place, the characters, their backstories, their attitudes, the subplots, and a tonne of other things every time you read a book. As your brain becomes more adept at remembering everything, your memory gets better.

Reading is a fundamental skill that has numerous benefits and impacts almost every aspect of a person's life. It not only improves vocabulary, comprehension and language skills, but also expands one's knowledge, perspective and understanding of the world. Reading can also stimulate creativity and imagination, relieve stress, and provide a source of entertainment and relaxation. Additionally, reading helps to develop critical thinking and analytical skills, making individuals better equipped to solve problems and make informed decisions. In today's digital age, reading is more accessible than ever, and it can be done in a variety of formats, including books, magazines, newspapers, and e-books . The importance of reading cannot be overstated and it is a habit that should be cultivated from a young age.

500 Words Essay on Reading Books

The ability to read allows us to learn new information and gives us access to a wide range of opportunities, ideas, and tales. We can gather a lot of information and apply it correctly to carry out a variety of duties in our lives. Reading regularly broadens our knowledge and improves our intelligence and sense of judgment. Early reading encouragement aids children's understanding of their surroundings.

One of the reading's key benefits is its ability to enhance critical thinking skills. For instance, reading a mystery novel can help you think more effectively. What elements of a story enable one to draw a conclusion? If the novel is based on actual events, you could periodically wonder if the author is correct. Making significant decisions frequently requires the use of critical thinking abilities. Comparing reading to watching television requires distinct types of thought and information processing. As you read more, you become more aware of what you're reading and its significance.

Because we live in a culture where competition dominates every part of life, we need to nurture a child's personality so that they have a lot of self-confidence. Books have a significant role in our educational process . Books are extensive knowledge archives. Publications can be found all around us in a variety of formats, including magazines, novels, self-help, and scholarly books. They were able to develop a genre that perfectly suited everyone's requirements. Whether it was for bedtime reading or study material, everyone has had some sort of connection to books. This wasn't always the case, though.

In the past, books were not as readily available as they are today. The advancement of printing technology has reduced the cost of books and increased accessibility for everyone. Books encourage our imagination and inventiveness while assisting us in visualising the material.

The growth of a person is significantly impacted by reading. Language development is the primary and most significant advantage of reading. It expands our comprehension of words beyond their meaning to include the context of their use, which aids in vocabulary development. The second is the growth of cognitive capacities, particularly in young children. It aids in the development of viewpoints on numerous topics, from the self to society.

Reading allows us to take in information, making it a passive learning method, according to the study. This makes it possible for us to comprehend challenges in society and personal difficulties in a more thorough and holistic way. The advantages that books provide us still holds true even in a world where everything can be found online.

Reading books can uplift you when you're feeling sad or uninspired and even provide you with company while everyone else is busy. One benefit of reading is that it helps to calm the body and mind. You can refuel much more quickly by reading. Reading is the best way to unwind after a long day. Due to the concentration required to read literature or fiction, readers can tune out distractions from their daily lives, fostering inner serenity and enhancing general health.

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What’s better for the climate: A paper book, or an e-reader?

Chloe Veltman

In the face of human-caused climate change, paperbacks and e-readers each have pros and cons. JGI/Daniel Grill/Getty Images hide caption

The summer reading season is here.

Some people will opt for paperbacks because they're easy to borrow and share. Others will go for e-readers, or audiobooks streamed on a phone.

But which is the more environmentally sustainable option? Reading's carbon footprint is not large compared to other things people do, like travel, and it isn’t something most people consider when choosing how to read a book. But for those looking for small changes in their lives to reduce their impact on the climate, it might be worth exploring how the ways we choose to read books affect the planet.

A complicated question to answer

Whether it's better to read books in print or on a device is complicated, because of the complex interplay of the resources involved across the entire lifecycle of a published work: how books and devices are shipped, what energy they use to run, if they can be recycled.

Digital reading is on the rise — especially audiobooks. According to the Association of American Publishers , they now capture about the same share of the total US book market as e-books — roughly 15%. But print is still by far the most popular format.

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"Publishers are interested in preserving the business that they've created over hundreds of years," said Publishers Weekly executive editor Andrew Albanese, explaining why the industry is focusing most of its efforts on improving the sustainability of paperback and hardcover books, rather than digital formats. "They are looking to run those print book businesses as efficiently as possible, as cleanly as possible, as green as possible."

On the one side: traditional book publishing

Traditional print publishing comes with a high carbon footprint.

According to 2023 data from the literary industry research group WordsRated , when it comes to pulp and paper, print book publishing is the world's third-largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, and 32 million trees are felled each year in the United States to make paper for books. Then there's the printing and shipping — to say nothing of the many books that are destroyed because they remain unsold.

Although it's standard practice in the industry, publishers don't want to destroy books. So instead, many are donating unsold copies, switching to on-demand printing, or, like Chronicle Books, are reducing their initial print runs to see how well the titles sell before they print more.

"We felt that it was better to have a higher cost and have less waste," said Chronicle Books president, Tyrrell Mahoney.

Chronicle Books, like many other publishers, is also trying to use more sustainable paper.

"We have this great partner in India who has now figured out how to use cotton-based up-cycled materials to print as paper," Mahoney said.

Publishers are also rethinking book design. It might be a surprise, but certain fonts can be more climate-friendly by using less ink and less paper.

A side-by-side comparison of one of Harper Collins' new sustainable fonts (right) and a regular font (left.)

Harper Collins has introduced sustainable fonts that use less ink. Harper Collins/Harper Collins hide caption

"So far, these subtle, imperceptible tweaks have saved more than 200 million pages across 227 titles since September," said Harper Collins' senior director of design Lucy Albanese. NPR could not independently verify these page savings.

On the other: digital publishing

All well and good. But digital reading seems to have a considerable eco-advantage over print because it is paperless, so it saves trees, pulping and shipping. Moreover, tech companies that make e-readers such as Amazon, which sells the market-leading Kindle e-reader, offer recycling programs for old devices.

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"By choosing e-books as an alternative to print, Kindle readers helped save an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of carbon emissions over a two year period," said Corey Badcock, head of Kindle product and marketing. NPR could not independently verify these emissions reductions.

But digital devices also come with a substantial carbon footprint, predominantly at the manufacturing stage. Their cases are made with fossil-fuel-derived plastics and the minerals in their batteries require resource-heavy mining.

The short answer to which is better: it depends

"It's not cut and dried," said Mike Berners-Lee, a professor of sustainability at Lancaster Environment Centre in the United Kingdom , of the comparative climate friendliness of digital versus print reading.

Berners-Lee, the author of The Carbon Footprint of Everything , said the average e-reader has a carbon footprint of around 80 pounds.

"This means that I've got to read about 36 small paperback books-worth on it before you break even," he said.

Here are the Books We Love

Figuring out whether to take a digital device or a paperback to the beach ultimately depends on how voraciously you read.

"If you buy an e-reader and you read loads and loads of books on it, then it's the lowest carbon thing to do," Berners-Lee said. "But if I buy it, read a couple of books, and decided that I prefer paperback books, then it's the worst of all worlds."

Yet Berners-Lee said that reading is still, relatively speaking, a pretty sustainable activity — regardless of whether you read using an e-reader, phone or old-fashioned paperback.

Both audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Jennifer Vanasco . Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento mixed the audio version.

Correction May 26, 2024

This story has been corrected after an earlier version of the article stated that book publishing is the world’s third-largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, when in fact it is the third largest within the pulp and paper industry. Additionally, this story has been updated to provide greater perspective on the effect of book publishing on the climate as a whole.

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‘Butcher’ Tells the (Mostly) True Story of a Very Bad Gynecologist

Through the lens of a 19th-century doctor, Joyce Carol Oates explores gothic medical horror.

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An illustration shows a collage of various organs and hands, centered on a cutout of a white lab coat with four smaller hands emerging from its center at different intervals.

By Daphne Merkin

Daphne Merkin’s most recent book is the novel “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love.” She is currently at work on a memoir about psychoanalysis.

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BUTCHER, by Joyce Carol Oates

There are many things one could note about Joyce Carol Oates’s long writing career — including, most strikingly, its legendary prolificness. Gifted with a protean talent, she has shifted with ease from one literary genre to another, be it novels, short stories, memoir, poetry, children’s books, essay collections, plays or librettos.

To the envy, admiration and annoyance of less fluent authors, Oates has clearly never suffered from writers’ block. When she is not writing in longhand, she is busy on X and Substack, airing her opinions on Donald Trump and the events of the day. For a time she also wrote suspense under two different pseudonyms.

Indeed, there is something almost compulsive, verging on the hypergraphic, about her need to write. It seems to come to her as readily as breathing, and leaves one wondering whether she ever stops long enough to brew a cup of tea. (One of her few diversions is running.) Now 85, Oates shows no sign of slowing down: “Butcher” is, by most accounts, her 63rd novel, and the book has the feverish energy, narrative propulsion and descriptive amplitude — sometimes to excess — of much of her earlier work.

Even when Oates isn’t writing in an explicitly Gothic mode, as she did in “Bellefleur” (1980) or “My Heart Laid Bare” (1998), she has always been interested in intimations of the sinister, the way it suddenly hoves into view on an ordinary summer day. “At the periphery of many of my poems and works of fiction, as in the corner of an eye,” she once observed in an essay, “there is often an element of the grotesque or surreal.”

The title of “Butcher,” the very starkness of it, gives a clue to the lurid, bloody tale Oates has in store. Like several previous works (her seminal 1966 short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” and the 1992 Chappaquiddick reimagining “Black Water,” for example), it is inspired in part by real figures who committed real crimes — including, in this case, an undertrained doctor named J. Marion Sims, who in the 1840s began performing experimental surgeries on women recovering from difficult childbirths.

Here, the “Butcher” of the title is now called Silas Aloysius Weir, who for 35 years oversees the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics, where conditions range from abysmal to horrifying. His medical instruction is minimal, consisting of only four months of training at an inferior school, though he is happy to tell everyone that he comes from a distinguished family (one of his uncles is a renowned astronomer at Harvard, from which two brothers have also graduated; Weir seems to be the bad egg).

Silas becomes heralded and then ultimately detested as a pioneer in the field of gyno-psychiatry, through which misogynistic scrim he views the vagina as “a veritable hell-hole of filth & corruption” and the female genitals as “loathsome in design, function & aesthetics.”

It is a time when the seat of hysteria is thought to be the uterus, and pesky clitorises — “the offensive little organ at the mouth of the vagina … like a miniature male organ, with an obscene fire lit from within” — are held accountable for obstreperous behavior in young women and snipped without a second thought. Various ailments are treated, without aid of anesthetic, by scalpel and sometimes a shoemaker’s awl, and the most frequent cure-all is phlebotomy, or bloodletting (“ When in doubt, bleed ”), even if in many cases it causes death. The arsenal of drugs includes laudanum, foxglove, mercury, belladonna, “small quantities of arsenic” and cocaine drops.

“Butcher” is told by different narrators, all of whom cast alternating lights on Weir and his God-given (or so he believes) commitment to the patients in his care. From the start, we are given a sense of his unease and unattractiveness: “His head was overlarge on his stooped & spindly shoulders; his stiff-tufted hair of no discernible hue … his eyes rather deep-set in their sockets, like a rodent’s eyes, damp & quick-shifting.” (Reading, I wondered whether a rodent’s eyes are, in fact, deep-set; from the little I have spotted of them, their eyes seemed flat against their heads. But that is a quibble.)

When his use of a pair of pliers to reposition a 5-month-old’s cranial plates results in the infant’s death — even though he relieves his guilt by noting her “very poor stock, virtually subhuman” — Weir is forced to leave his community. Shortly thereafter, he is called to the asylum, where, relying on the assistance of an experienced midwife, he delivers a baby for an orphaned albino Irish servant named Brigit, who is also purportedly deaf and mute. (The child, naturally, is immediately taken from her.)

Eventually, Brigit becomes his assistant, and Weir becomes obsessed with her otherworldly beauty — “Those staring eyes! The faintest blue, uncanny” — believing that there is a special unspoken communion between them. One of those men whose ignorance is matched by his arrogance, he hopes to achieve worldwide fame by finding a way to cure madness by literally cutting it out of the body, and as the novel proceeds, his approach becomes only more brazen. He uses a tarnished tablespoon for intimate examinations as well as heated forceps, confident in his knowledge that “the interior of the vagina is known to be insensitive to sensation, like the birth canal. There are no nerve endings in these organs.”

His ambitions seem limited only by what he can achieve in a series of increasingly depraved experiments, conducted in his private laboratory. Finally, though, the inmates revolt, in a scene that Oates delineates with grotesque specificity. “Butcher” is undoubtedly one of her most surreal and gruesome works, sparing no repulsive detail or nefarious impulse.

In the end, though, the purview of the novel is larger than one might think, becoming an empathic and discerning commentary on women’s rights, the abuses of patriarchy and the servitude of the poor and disenfranchised. Oates, as is her wont, succeeds in creating a world that is apart from our own yet familiar, making it impossible to dismiss her observations about twisted natures and random acts of violence.

My prevailing question about Oates is where her imaginative fantasies derive from, which has always seemed a mystery to me. We don’t get a sense of who she is behind her writing the way we do with, say, John Updike, John Cheever or Alice Munro . But this unyielding impersonality may be the way that she wants it: In the same essay collection I quoted from earlier, she offers, “Elsewhere I’ve stated that JCO is not a person, not even a personality, but a process that has resulted in a series of texts.”

We have become so used to the notion of the recognizable auteur blazing through the artifice of fiction and calling attention to his or her self that Oates’s approach — not dissimilar from the novelist Gustave Flaubert’s insistence that “an author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere” — feels like a singularly uncommon one. Long may she run.

BUTCHER | Joyce Carol Oates | Knopf | 352 pp. | $30

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Five Books That’ll Fit Right Into Your Busy Schedule

A s much as I love falling into a book and letting it consume an entire day, my free time doesn’t always arrive in uninterrupted stretches. Instead, it might be sprinkled throughout a hectic schedule: 10 minutes while I’m waiting at the doctor’s office, another 15 minutes riding the train, 30 minutes before falling asleep. These pockets of idle time could be spent scrolling on TikTok or answering emails, but I find that they are perfect for sneaking in reading—particularly short-story and essay collections, which you can enjoy in starts and stops.

Last month, I revisited the Pulitzer-winning volume Interpreter of Maladies , by Jhumpa Lahiri, and its intimate vignettes of the Indian diaspora. Lahiri’s short fiction focuses on characters, young and old, confronting the pangs of assimilation and alienation; each narrative conjures a rich and vivid world of its own. I decided that a concrete, achievable task would be tackling one story every night. They welcomed me in for a brief stay before releasing me to a dinner reservation, to my unfinished laundry, or to sleep. When reading starts to feel impossible, turn to books that you can work through at your own pace. These five titles can be consumed over days, weeks, or even months—ready for you whenever you want to dive back in.

Cooking as Though You Might Cook Again , by Danny Licht

In the time it takes to boil water for pasta, you can finish several of Licht’s delightful hybrid recipe-essays. The 78-page zine-like book encourages home cooks to view the task of preparing a meal not as a chore but as an act of emotional nourishment. Just as Licht prompts his readers to slow down and appreciate the process of assembling ingredients and letting them meld, his conversational language is best savored unhurriedly. The instructions for the simple Italian-ish dishes—a pot of beans, a creamy lemon risotto, pasta with braised chuck roast—cultivate an intuitive and meditative approach to putting food on the table. “Cooking does not need to be a race to the table, and it does not need to have an upper limit on what is possible or what is delicious or even what is beautiful,” Licht writes. “Instead, it can be a drama in parts, each act vital, and each giving way to the next. It can be like life itself.”

Cursed Bunny , by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur

Squeamish readers beware, because no one does body horror like Chung. Her frightening stories force you to sit in discomfort: A family seeks revenge on an unscrupulous businessman through a supernatural bunny lamp that destroys everything around it; a woman begins taking birth-control pills, but they fertilize a surreal, immaculate pregnancy, and she’s forced to look for a husband; a boy escapes Promethean torture at the hands of a monster, only to be further abused by the people who rescue him. For some, the subject matter may actually necessitate taking breaks. Thankfully, moving through the collection at a measured pace allows Hur’s straightforward translation—and the macabre scenarios that Chung creates—to feel fresh on every visit.

[ Read: You can read any of these short novels in a weekend ]

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self , by Danielle Evans

Deliberately reading Evans’s 2010 debut allows the collection’s tenderness and warmth to wash over you the same way a conversation with an old friend does: Secrets are divulged, and old memories start to creep into the present. Her best stories—“Snakes,” “Virgins,” “Harvest,” and “Robert E. Lee Is Dead”—focus on the complicated and intense relationships between young women, many of whom are Black. Evans’s characters betray and uplift one another, sometimes simultaneously, and are infused with humor and generosity. Some of her plots deal with major coming-of-age milestones, like a first pregnancy or the end of high school. But in her deft hands, a night at the club or a summer with Grandma can also be a defining moment, one whose weight might not be realized until much later.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat , by Oliver Sacks

During his career as a neurologist, Sacks studied people with the most curious brain abnormalities, such as Dr. P., the titular man who could not accurately identify objects (or other humans). This collection of neurological case studies moves beyond clinical descriptions and focuses on the humanity of Sacks’s patients. The 24 essays are grouped by theme—“Losses,” “Excesses,” “Transports,” and “The World of the Simple”—but they don’t have to be read chronologically, as they are all discrete accounts. Sacks combines explanations of psychological theory, as well as snippets of dialogue between him and his subjects, to create nuanced portraits of people facing extreme medical challenges. What may be abnormal for much of the audience is normal for Sacks’s patients, and seeing through their eyes generates a renewed recognition of the tenacity of the human spirit—a feeling worth sitting with.

[ Read: The adults who treat reading like homework ]

Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories , by Hisaye Yamamoto

Yamamoto’s 1988 collection captures the dignity and disillusionment of the Japanese community in America during and after World War II. Together, the stories create a snapshot of a group during a transitory phase in the United States. But reading them separately, as singular narratives, allows for a greater appreciation of the ordinary people who lived through this sweeping and weighty moment in history. The title story, “Seventeen Syllables,” highlights how the realities of immigration—such as a language barrier and shifting cultural norms—contribute to the divide between a mother and a daughter. Despite being written in the second half of the 20th century, Yamamoto’s stories about anti-Asian racism, sexual harassment, and generational estrangement transcend their period; they could easily be transplanted to the current day, thanks to her ability to make the mess of daily life resonate across the decades.

Five Books That’ll Fit Right Into Your Busy Schedule

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