How Have Books Changed Over Time

Today, in our society, reading is a crucial part of us growing, and learning. It can cause us to expand our minds, and our thought process. Books can take you anywhere in the world. When we read a book, our mind is in control, and no one can take that away from us. If there were no books, we would not be free.

Throughout the different books we read as a class, the reoccurring theme kept being brought up; why do we need the things in books? At first the answer was easy, we need books to keep learning. But the more we discussed and read the more we discovered that the basic answer isn’t all there is to it. Books give us a look on life, and bring us into so many different situations. Multiple different ideas came to light, ideas that I would have never thought about had the discussions not taken place.

Firstly books are in fact great. They contain whole worlds bound within the pages that are unleashed when the cover is flipped open and the words start to be read. Books do far more than entertain. They educate and practice the process of escapism with the reader. Encyclopedias and self-help guides share information, and novels take you away to Narnia and Hogwarts and the Shire again and again.

Ages ago, spanning from when the Greeks ruled and well into the time when the Colonists first came to America, reading was a skill only the wealthy and the very lucky had the privilege to learn. In those times reading wasn’t necessary to work and to be successful. However, now in this modern era, reading has become necessary for everyday life; it has become vital to a society that is ever more dependent on technology. Nevertheless, reading is beneficial in ways that listening and watching movies can never be. The works of Anne Bradstreet, Henry David Thoreau, and Ben Franklin help acknowledge this idea through the impacts they have had on readers still today.

For years, books have been viewed as powerful instruments that can change lives. A major milestone in a child’s life is learning how to read. The books we read help shape our minds and trigger our creativity. In schools, reading is a crucial component to learning basic writing and speaking skills. This may not be as easy for certain children, as many books are being banned in schools and school libraries.

Reading, an activity that has been around for years, centuries even; appears to be reaching the end of its popularity among the modern youth. Reading literature remains the key to a successful and cultured society. Today the ability to read remains highly valued. In our advancing world, there remains much more to learn and know; the importance of reading is increasing. During the Victorian era, wealthy people gathered around and read books for an hour or so, seeing that being able to read was a sign of social status. But, today people not only read for pleasure and knowledge, but to educate and catch up with the events taking place all around us. Almost every job today, requires the basic ability to know how to read and write.

Books have been the main source of obtaining information and discovering a world of knowledge, imagination, and exploration throughout all periods of time.

How often do we read books? Not textbooks, but books that provide us with an insight into the world? It seems for many of us reading a book occurred the last time as far back as high school. While many people rarely or never open books, others read often or always. MAIN ARGUMENT: The value of literature lies in its relevance to contemporary society because books provide us with detailed accounts of human experiences and help understand other people, their emotions and desires. This claim can be well supported with the evidence from two well-known literary works: Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.”

Books, especially good books, have the power to change a person’s life. When going through a dark time in life, reading can be able to change one’s mood about the situation and perhaps even help find a solution for it. It can be thought as a stress reliever. But books can do more than just that. Books can be able to change lives by giving three things. They are self-knowledge, humility and a sense of belonging.

Books have been used to display information to a reader for many reasons. Some books are created to be read for self-enjoyment, while others may be used as a reference for information. Even then, the book is looked at as a boring, and rather dull object, and that is because a majority of the younger generation tend to pay more attention if there is more eye-grabbing graphics. With more books containing images and more fiction, the idea of books being used for entertainment purposes only appears. Books were not created to be just to be used for enjoyment, but for ideas, formulas, life lessons, world problems, the human condition, and to be learned from.

I never really had a chance to connect with books and reading on a very personal level as a child. They always seemed impractical to me: mainly fiction books. Don’t get me wrong or anything. I kind of got the idea of why students were made to read fiction books in school: to help increase empathy, vocabulary, and imagination, but I never really go into it. My family never enforced reading for me as strictly as other kids parents did for them, but emphasized the concrete skills. This inevitably led me to be mainly interested in the hard skills verse the more abstract soft skills. Out of this reasoning, I decided not to read books of the type throughout elementary, middle, and high school. I didn’t hate them or anything. I just didn’t have them in my tunnel vision. So guess I should of read more non-fiction then? Which, I did. But not as much as you would have thought I should have. My reasoning around this was that the schools would teach me those hard skills I crave so dearly. Plus, I would have more free time on my hands to find a more passive form of entertainment such as TV, movies, and thinking. Of the three I mainly enjoyed, the thinking activity where I would just sit down, be it on the bus, car, or bed and think about the scientific theories behind everything, which I was always wrong about. But it was the thoughts that counted: the expansion of the mind that really caught my attention. So in order to give you the full

Throughout my entire life reading has been a fundamental tool that I use for research on homework and enjoyment; however, reading has been a negative for my life as well. In fact, when I was in grade school reading was a rather tedious chore for me to accomplish. When I was younger I would despise sitting still for long periods of time just to look at the countless pages and I would rather go outside and play with my friends; although, as I have aged my opinions of reading has completely changed. I could read for hours at a time if the subject is about topics that I enjoy or that will benefit me in the near future. When people think of reading they will most likely have the idea of novels and storybooks; whereas, I think of research, learning and reaching my full potential when it comes to writing essays.

Being a reader means you’re more likely to learn something new every day; William Lyon Phelps is an enthusiast of reading. In his speech The Pleasure of Books he writes to persuade everyone to read, “Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down.” When Phelps wrote this speech the time period was the middle ages when German students gathered in Berlin to burn books with “un-German” ideas. The speech itself is telling the readers and listeners that books provide knowledge, and they are an advantage that we have as humans. Reading is fundamental for a human being, and are written for you to read. In The Pleasure of Books, William

In the end, I find books to be a valuable source of information and beliefs that cannot, and should not, be bound by the chains of selfishness. Furthermore, people are privileged to read and express their thoughts in freedom. Thus, I believe that a person’s choice of books should never be affected by anyone and should be chosen accordingly by the person

When I look back on my childhood, it is hard for me to identify the specific point in time when literature entered my life. As far as I know, books have always been a friend to me, a retreat from the ordinary and an escape into unlimited worlds of magic. In fact, the earliest memories of my childhood consist of my mother reading such books as The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn and Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman to me in the fading hours of the evening. Due to my mother’s insistence on reading to us, I gained a love for reading at a very young age, a love that was only cultivated with time.