The art of recreational reading
By Cara Matsukane
Congratulations. By simply reading this, you are fighting a national issue. Sadly, according to Jonathan Kozol's "Illiterate America,"'»¿ 50 percent of American adults today are unable to read at an eighth grade level. Being an obsessively avid reader myself, I find it hard to believe that half of our adult country cannot even read at a high school level.
Though not well-informed enough to understand all the issues that have contributed to this blaring problem, I fully believe that daily reading is a crucial recreational activity that all Santa Clara students should employ.
The importance of reading is an easy concept to push as a die-hard English major. As a child, the worst punishment my mom could and would give me was revoking my reading privileges.
That being said, however, I do believe that reading is a vehicle for many important daily life skills that can be easily honed by picking up a book every day.
1. Vocabulary and reading comprehension. No matter what subject you are studying, the skills of reading and writing will always be vital. Reading on a daily basis will lead to a more well-rounded vocabulary, which helps with contextual learning and will enable clearer written and verbal communication and self expression. Test-taking and daily reading for classes will also become much easier if you are used to reading often.
2. Broadened perspectives. Reading can introduce you to places, time periods and people that you wouldn't normally see, experience or know. It allows you to think and understand from the points of view of characters who lead different lives than you do, and to see the world through the lens of the author.
3. Imagination. Reading will develop creative thinking. Although this sounds like a skill needed only for students of the liberal arts, thinking outside the norm is also extremely useful in fields like business, math and the sciences.
4. Self-reflection. Reading will inevitably stimulate you to consider your own thoughts, opinions and feelings about what is going on in the plot or within or between the characters. It can even lead to realizations about yourself that you may not have stumbled across otherwise.
5. Entertainment. They don't call it pleasure reading for nothing. Reading is an extremely healthy and beneficial way to pass time, much more so than watching TV, playing video games or surfing the web.
I realize that there are many people who absolutely hate to read -- I have two sisters who fall into that category. However, in my opinion, that is only because they are reading the wrong books.
Read what you like -- it doesn't have to be an intellectually challenging book to encapsulate the qualities listed above. There are many entertaining books by fantastic authors out there waiting to be read, and I challenge you to find them and embrace the many advantages that a love of reading will offer you.
Cara Matsukane is a senior English and studio art double major and a designer for The Santa Clara.