Books play a crucial role in the human’s life. They play different roles in our life sometimes they are like friends, sometimes they are like the guide for us and sometimes they are like a teacher who teaches us throughout the life. There is a saying that “When you open a book, you open a new world”. I think it is quite right because from the books we come to know about new stories, new places and new ideas. Book reading is good for everybody, from childhood to old age books plays a significant role. Moreover, books are immortal and with the only help of books, we come to know about our past traditions, cultures, history and backgrounds.
Books are the friends of humankind since ancient civilizations. Books have a great background. When there was no invention of paper, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, and bones, were used for writing. In 1455, Gutenberg printed his first book, a Latin Bible. In 1475, Englishman William Caxton produced the first book printed in English, “The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye”. The Diamond Sutra is the world's oldest known printed book. It was ‘made’ in AD 868.
Different Types of Books
There are mainly two common genres of the books and remaining types fall under these two categories as listed below:
- Fiction: The books of fiction genre are the nonfactual descriptions and events invented by the author. The subtypes of the fiction based books are:
- Comics.
- Fairy Tales.
- Fantasy.
- Historical Fiction.
- Horror and Humor.
- Mystery.
- Mythology.
- Science fiction and Realistic fiction.
- Non-fiction: The books based on non-fiction genre consist of communication in which descriptions and events are understood to be factual. Following are the types of non-fictional books:
- Biographies and Autobiographies.
- Journalism.
- Reference Books.
- Self-help Books.
- Speech.
- Essays.
- Textbooks.
Nowadays, e-books are also trending in the market. These are the soft copies of the books which we can read on our electronic gadgets like PC, tablets, laptops, mobiles etc.
Role of Books in Our Life
There are numerous merits of the book reading in a human being’s life as discussed below:
- Books are our Best Friends: Friends play an important role in our lives. We cannot live a prosperous life without the presence of good friends in our life. So as the books, they play the same role as played by a good friend. As we take advice and knowledge from our friends similarly we can acquire good knowledge and take wise advice from the books whenever we want, just by reading books.
- Books tell us about our History: An average lifespan of a normal human being is around 80 to 85 years. So, we don’t know about our past culture, what was happened before our birth, about our nation’s background etc. So, the only way to come know about all these facts is the books. They tell us about the gone times. We can read about any religion’s background, any nation’s background, about the historical places etc. from the books.
- Books Teach us Positive Values: Books play an important role to nourish the moral values of a person. There are millions of books wrote by the successful persons, saints, motivators, by reading them we can acquire positive values which help us in leading a good and successful life. The biographies written on the successful persons motivate us to do great things in our life.
- Books make us Intelligent: This is scientifically proven that by reading books, our intellectual skills increases. With the reading of more and more books, we can polish our reading skills as well. Reading books also boosts our memory and also we become more practical and logical. The growth rate of our mind increase with the reading. We can able to think out of the box if we have the habit of reading good and knowledgeable books.
- Act as Stress Buster: Due to the factors like advancement and globalization, every person has a hectic schedule and workload in his daily life which further leads to the stress on the daily basis. Living a stressful life is bad in all aspects like for our health, for our relations so at that time we can manage our time and do read the interesting books which will act as a stress buster for you, this will helps you to get relief from the stress and you will have a stress free life.
- Books Increase Confidence: If you are facing the problem with your confidence level. If you have low confidence, then your career must be affected by this. And if you want to overcome from this situation then read the self-help books. There are numbers of the books in the market which will boost your confidence and lead you to achieve the best level. The books like “Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing” or “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” will help you a lot to work on your low confidence.
- Help to Increase Imagination Power: The books like fairy tales, fiction stories can give us the power to imagine a different world which quite different from the real world. We can imagine anything according to our own choice. This will increase the imagination power of the person and makes a man creative. Books are the real treasure for the kids; they play a great role in the childhood of every kid. As children love the fairy tale stories and by listening to these stories they imagine the same things as written in the books which make them the imaginative persons.
- Books Teach Us to Love: The books on the relationships of the people, family relations, and public relations teach us how to make a good bonding with the others and express our real feelings to them. With this we also able to understand the actions of the people and acknowledge their feelings for us.
- Expose yourself to New Things: By reading books you can expose yourself to new ideas, new things, and new information to deal with the problem and achieve the desired aim. Reading might help you discover hobbies or exploring things you didn’t know you like. Exploration begins with reading and understanding.
- Books make you Great Businessmen: There is always a great successful man in every field which sets an example for us. The books on such people help you to get the knowledge about the achieving of such people and also tell us the way to get the same goal in your life. These books tell us about the path which was taken by the successful person in their life. So that with the help of this we can also make such decisions in our life and get motivated by their success and lead our life to the desired level.
- Books Teach us Spirituality: The religious books have a great role in a person’s life. Every religion teaches us to do good things in our lives and help to make the society crime free. So, the religious books do the same. The written by the saints or philosophers of different religions have the motive to spread the religious thoughts among the people so that people cannot take the wrong path in their lives and ruin their life. Even, the great saints which are no more between us are alive through these books; their thoughts are alive in these books and act as mentors for us.
- Books are the Library of Information: if you are habitual of reading books then you automatically counted among the educated persons. Books contain infinite knowledge and we can gather this as much as we want to. In our leisure time, we can read books which help us to kill the vacant time as well as we can get the valuable knowledge which will definitely help you out in the future, by doing so we can use our time and gather the knowledge.
- Increase Standard of Living: The good books always improve our standard of living. We can get the living manners from the books and apply them to our daily life which will result in the good living standards. This will earn you the respect in the society. Just by reading the good books you can amend your simple life into the high standard of life.
- Gives Encourage: Good books are real friends, they get your back in every situation and support you throughout your life and also helps you to make wise decisions in your life. They will always inspire to work hard and give you the courage to do great in your life. Books enrich your experience and sharp your intellectuals. So they are the only best friends in a true manner.
- Entertainment: One should read books when he feels boring. There are various interesting novels or stories which have the capability of entertaining us completely. People can buy the books according to the taste of their entertainment. Some folks like funny entertainment while some like serious stories, so it depends on you completely.
Disadvantages of Books
Every coin has two faces, similarly reading books also have some demerits as given below:
- No Social Life: You have no time for friends as books will be your only friends if you are a book lover. You prefer the company of books instead of spending time with the relatives and friends.
- Eye Fatigue: Your eyes will get tired from all the reading, but still you would want to go on. It is bad for the eyes. Moreover, your body can get sick from just sitting down and not moving.
- Time Consuming: It will long hours to read a book, and due to the hectic schedule it will be difficult to manage time for the book readings on daily basis.
The advantages of reading books outnumbered the disadvantages. But I must say not every book is good so you should be careful while choosing the books for you. Good books develop various qualities in us. A human of extensive reading is a human of culture. Even, they do not bore us like the human beings. You can easily switch the books whenever you want the change. On the flip side, bad books spoil our taste and our decision making power. So, a serious reader of good books knows what divine pleasure he gets from reading the books. A good book communicates the knowledge as well as the wisdom of all kinds. Nothing can add to our intellect more than reading a book. In simple terms what this means is that the more you read the more exposed you are, your attitudes, your ideas and your imagination changes.
