A friend of mine sent me this article from the New York Times, “Read, Kids, Read,” by author/columnist Frank Bruni, and it resonated so strongly with me that I had to pass it on to you.

The lament is this: studies show young people are reading less and less. And Bruni believes, as I do, that reading makes you smart. Reading fiction. There are things I know—about geography, about history, about human nature—that I first learned in novels. Certainly novels piqued my interested in the world beyond my own door and made me long to know more. (Which spurred more reading, of course.)

Bruni writes,

I’m … persuaded that reading does things—to the brain, heart and spirit—that movies, television, video games and the rest of it cannot.

There’s research on this, and it’s cited in a recent article in The Guardian by Dan Hurley, who wrote that after “three years interviewing psychologists and neuroscientists around the world,” he’d concluded that “reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.”

I know this in every fiber of my being, so I’m glad we have data now. (Here’s the Guardian article mentioned above. Can reading make you smarter? Yes, yes it can.)

Partly this is because there is so much media competing for our attention now that the simple act of unplugging from all of it gives our minds a much-needed rest, as William Powers points out in his book Hamlet’s BlackBerry. And reading is a solitary, unplugged activity.

Read the article. And if you’re moved to act, buy a book for a kid you know. 🙂

Tweet: Does reading make you smarter? Yes, it does.
Tweet: Studies show young people are reading less and less—so buy a book for a kid you know.

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