Books Are Mirrors
“Books are mirrors: you see in them what is already inside you”. This quote, from the book The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, talks about how personal reading is. We all have such different tastes in books. For example, empathetic people tend to prefer novels; more impulsive people prefer action, and imaginative people like something fictional.
Books are mirrors
For book lovers, there is nothing like coming home and relaxing with a good book. Reading opens the door to new lives, new cultures and new ways of looking at things. It is also relaxing, as it reduces the brain’s cortisol level.
Reading regularly is good for your brain. It improves cognitive skills such as abstraction, imagination, concentration and memory, and also prevents degenerative brain diseases. In a way, the brain works like a muscle and we train it to read.
Creating reading habits is like building a refuge you can go to when life gets complicated. A home that embraces you and helps you avoid feeling alone. After all, you are there with the characters in the stories, and you automatically make them your own. That is why we say that books are mirrors.
Books are mirrors that improve our ability to concentrate
Every time we start reading, the left half of the brain starts working full time to activate different areas. According to neurologist Stanislas Dehaene of the Collège de France, our reading abilities modify our brains.
Psychologist Nicole K. Speer from Washington University says that by reading, we recreate what we imagine. In fact, we activate areas of our brain as if we were actually doing what the character does in the book.
According to evolutionary psychology, this is because if our ancestors were not on guard, it could cost them their lives. What if hunters were not aware of activity around them?
They could have been eaten or died of starvation. Therefore, it is considered to sit still and concentrate on something like reading has been a big step in our development. Evolution allowed us to spend time sitting still and resting without being constantly on the lookout for all the threats around us.
If you want to develop good concentration skills in children, reading is encouraged as a good habit. Just twenty minutes of reading aloud to your child each day can improve their attention span and concentration. These are two abilities that they should definitely succeed in later in life.
Reading affects professional success
For over 20 years, a team at Oxford University has been analyzing the habits and activities of almost 20,000 young people. They wanted to see what activities could predict professional success within 30 years. It was apparently only reading that had an impact on professional success : no other activities, such as sports or movies, had any effect.
The ability to read changes our brain, according to neurologist Stanislas Dehaene, head of experimental psychology at the Collège de France. A reader has more gray matter and neurons in his brain than people who do not read.
Gustave Flaubert, a French writer, could not have said it better when he wrote: “Life must be a constant education”. The world continues to change. So it is better to train ourselves professionally, continuously through reading.
We must stay up to date and prepared for new conditions. Just as we take care of ourselves by going to the gym, we should feed our cognitive processes, which are also possible to strengthen to some degree through reading.
