Readers make better lovers. Not merely because they are often more empathetic, more patient and better listeners, though they usually are. They also tend to be more imaginative, more attentive and more curious. Reading teaches us that every human being has an inner world waiting to be discovered, rather than merely an exterior to be admired. Good lovers, like good readers, pay attention.
Demagogues thrive where books disappear. Readers recognise logical fallacies, emotional manipulation, selective statistics and recycled propaganda. They may still disagree with one another, but they are less likely to surrender their judgement. Reading is one of democracy’s quietest defenders
THERE is something insidious going on in the world: people are now proud not to read. People now ask why one should read when the internet seems to know everything and artificial intelligence appears ready to answer anything.
The answer is simple: reading does not merely give us information; it transforms the kind of people we become. A society can produce engineers, accountants, politicians, and even professors without readers. What it cannot produce without readers is truly cultivated human beings.
#ReadNigeria, a lively literary movement dedicated to promoting Nigerian authors and reading, asked me to write a straightforward note explaining why reading is important. Here are twelve oftenoverlooked reasons I compiled to show that reading remains one of the best investments anyone can make.
- Readers Think Before They React
Reading slows the mind just enough to curb impulsivity. It teaches us that almost every important question has more than one side and that certainty often follows curiosity. Readers are therefore less likely to mistake emotion for evidence.
- Readers Live More Than One Life
The average person has one childhood, one profession and one old age. A reader has lived in Athens and Beijing, Lagos and London, in the courts of kings and in the homes of fishermen, in the future and the distant past. Books multiply one’s life.
- 3. Readers Become Better Conversationalists
Interesting people are rarely those who speak the most. They are usually those who have encountered many ideas, recognise unexpected connections, and know when to ask the right question. Reading broadens conversation by expanding imagination.
- Readers Make Better Decisions
Every decision is ultimately a comparison of possibilities. Reading expands those possibilities. Someone who has read history avoids past mistakes; someone who has read economics understands incentives; someone who has read literature recognises human weakness before it becomes a human tragedy. Experience is an excellent teacher, and reading allows us to borrow the experience of thousands of others.
- Readers Are Harder to Manipulate
Demagogues thrive where books disappear. Readers recognise logical fallacies, emotional manipulation, selective statistics and recycled propaganda. They may still disagree with one another, but they are less likely to surrender their judgement. Reading is one of democracy’s quietest defenders.
- Readers Are Better Leaders
Leadership begins long before any decisions are finalised. Reading broadens one’s perspective, sharpens judgement, and fosters humility by showing leaders that most challenges are not new. Exceptional leaders remain students for life because they realise that without ongoing learning, power can breed ignorance-induced arrogance.
- Readers Age More Slowly Mentally
The body inevitably grows older. The mind need not grow smaller.Readers continually exercise memory, language, imagination and analytical reasoning. They build intellectual resilience that often outlasts physical strength. Growing older is compulsory. Growing dull is optional.
- Readers Travel Without Immigration Officers
Books remain the most affordable means of travel ever created. Without the need for visas, queues, or luggage, readers journey across centuries, civilisations, and continents. No passport has ever provided such freedom.
- Readers Become More Interesting to Love
Here is an observation likely to provoke disagreement. Readers make better lovers. Not merely because they are often more empathetic, more patient and better listeners, though they usually are. They also tend to be more imaginative, more attentive and more curious. Reading teaches us that every human being has an inner world waiting to be discovered, rather than merely an exterior to be admired. Good lovers, like good readers, pay attention.
- Readers Are Better Lovers Physically Too
Before anyone accuses me of literary romanticism, consider this.Physical intimacy is never purely physical. Desire begins in the imagination. Attraction is sustained by communication. Long-term intimacy depends on curiosity, confidence, attentiveness and the ability to understand another person’s thoughts as well as their body.Reading strengthens each of these capacities. A person who has learned to observe carefully, communicate precisely, imagine vividly and remain curious about others usually carries those habits into relationships. In other words, books improve more than conversation does.
- Readers Leave Better Legacies
Most wealth disappears within a few generations. Ideas often endure for centuries. Every civilisation remembers its readers and writers long after it forgets many of its richest citizens. The libraries of the world are monuments to those who refused to let thought die with them.
- Readers Become More Fully Human
Perhaps this is the greatest benefit of all. Reading teaches us to recognise ourselves in strangers and to recognise strangers in ourselves. It reminds us that beneath nationality, religion, profession and politics lies a shared human condition: hope and disappointment, ambition and fear, love and loss. Books do not merely make us smarter. They make us larger.
Here is one Final Thought. People often ask which book changed my life. The honest answer is that no single book did. Reading changed my life. One book opens a window. A lifetime of reading builds a house with windows in every direction. Enter often. The view keeps improving.
- Anthony Kila is the author of “Crucial Cs Around D: The Disciplines of Decision-Making and Leadership”, and a member of the League of Nigerian Columnists. He is a Jean Monnet Professor of Strategy and Development at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS). He also serves as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Michael and Cecilia Ibru University (MCIU)
