The value of reading is enormous. Reading teaches us about life on a very real level, its challenges, its dilemmas, its joys and its cruelties as well as its vast spectrum of human nature.
In Thinking with Literature, Terence Cave argues that ‘literature is highly pervasive, robust, enduring, and pregnant with values,’ and that ‘what it affords above all is a way of thinking.’
Reading seems to have a causal effect on more general cognitive abilities (e.g. Gottfredson, 1997), suggesting that reading over time is valuable for the ways our brains work, each experience building on the previous one.
Reading is also important in its own right: a therapeutic escape; a portal to a much-needed community; a vital pursuit for the human brain; a deserved and valid indulgence in pleasure. But having a narrow idea of what reading literature looks like can rob us of accessing its real worth.
Even snatched moments of reading are worthwhile, serious, and a source of important joy in busy lives.
