What advantages are there to being well read?

Question

I have a friend who's read since she was very young, and still reads voraciously. She's familiar with an abundance of literary figures, whereas I know next to nothing. Having adopted the habit of reading only very recently, what chance do I have in matching her literary prowess?

and!! what benefits would one recieve from being familiar with literature?

Answer 1

Benefits: understanding of references to classic literature and thus a deeper understanding of your culture, broader vocabulary, opening your mind to new concepts and ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise, expanding your imagination, raising your reading comprehension, etc. etc.

Reading a lot isn't really "literary prowess." It's just a good thing to do. It gets you the benefits listed above, plus all sorts of other things. And it's a nice way to wind down from a day full of stress and/or excitement. :)

Answer 2

One benefit from being well read, that immediately springs to mind, is an improved ability to spell words like.... receive. Learn the little rhyme "I before E, except after C". It works!

Another benefit of reading, and it doesn't really matter what you read, so long as it's not comic strips or trashy magazines, is an improvement in your general knowledge, and a gaining of insight into the way human beings really behave. You learn what motivates people and how people think. This is not something you can learn from watching movies, theatre, or television, where everything is drama and superficial excess emotion.

Literary prowess comes from exposure to good literature and nothing else. A well crafted story will play on your emotions and become lodged in your memory, without any effort on your part, other than turning the pages.

Try to vary your literary diet until you get a feel for what you find most satisfying. Every now and then, for a change, tip-toe into the classics. Some can be heavy going to start with, but persistence is worth the effort.

The main benefit of being well read is that you will have had your imagination and memory stimulated by experts, (because that is what authors do), and that breadth of vision, and source of knowledge and ideas, will be part of you for the rest of your life.

Answer 3

I can give you the example of myself and one of my younger brothers. I've been reading since I was a tiny tot, he hated reading until he was in his twenties. I've still read more books than he has in terms of straight numbers, and I've read far more non-fiction; however he has a broader knowledge of literary classics. He read the Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment before I did, and recommended them to me. Because tastes and interests change over the years I moved away from classics and that gave him time to catch up and surpass me. Every year I read 2-3 books he's recommended, and while some I don't like (Wicked) some I love (Earth Abides).

As far as benefits go, reading is not the cure-all that some would like us to believe, but it can seriously broaden and expand the mind. Some people can remain narrow-minded no matter what they read, but books, and especially novels are about the only way you can really get inside another human being's head. We can only see the world from our own perspective, but a novel gives us a fleeting glimpse of what it looks like from behind another set of eyes. It's imperfect and imprecise, but it's really the closest way. Speech isn't nearly as clear as writing, and what's more writing requires greater work and patience. If you've ever listened to an audiobook you'll know how long it takes to actually say every word of a book, and nobody really talks that long (some do try, I admit). Despite the fact that the author is telling a story rather than simply trying to explain their mind in as few words as possible, the way they describe things, people, places, relationships, etc, give you a window that is otherwise non-existent. If the lessons are learned well, it can improve your interpersonal relationships instead of damaging them, though most of us bookish sorts do tend towards either shyness or hermitry. No other medium has the ability to so completely bare a human mind to another. It's no wonder that so many people write books, even if they're never published. Everybody wants to be understood.

Answer 4

You've got every chance in the world, really. There are millions of well-read people on the planet, but that doesn't necessarily mean they paid attention to that which they read.

It's an issue of what you take from the novel, positionally and philosophically, as well as being dependant on your capacity for remembering the facts ABOUT what you've read, that really define your "literary prowess".

I could say I've read a billion books in my lifetime, but if I only really remember things from ten of them, what difference would it make how "well-read" I was?

As far as benefits go, though it's apparent that your own vocabulary is quite advanced, your personal tome of both vocabulary and vernacular terms would be significantly larger, just from exposure.

/and that's enough for me, for now. Back to work. :)

Answer 5

This improves your social graces when conversing with those people of the 'upper crust'.
If she started to read before you, it`s not likely you will catch up. You probably don`t read the same books any way, so , I wouldn`t loose any sleep over it. Read them for the 'meat & lessons' and of course for the pure enjoyment.

Answer 6

Well-read people have better vocabularies, are more effective communicators, and can understand complex ideas more easily than people who don't read as much.