Books and reading

16. BOOKS AND READING

Knihy a čítanie

People like reading books. It is one of the most favourite leisure activities. We can buy books in a bookshop or we can borrow them from a library. We can read books anywhere - at home, in the bus or train, at the doctors…
The books are a good source of information and entertainment. Reading books can be fun when it is a hobby, but it can also be boring when we need to study. For example, students have to prepare for their exams and learn a lot of information. It is really difficult to remember every piece of information when we read the book only once.

INTERESTING FACTS:
The bestselling book is the Bible. There are more than 5 billion copies over the world and the Bible is translated into 349 languages.
Every year, the Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to the writer whose work of fiction is considered unique and great. Nobel Prize winners are for example: Samuel Beckett with Waiting for Godot. Jean-Paul Sartre with The wall.
Writers you should know: William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, and Oscar Wilde....

WHY YOU SHOULD READ MORE?
One of the reason that makes human beings amazing is their ability to learn not just from their own experiences, but also from others’. This gives you the extraordinary opportunity to save an incredible amount of time, cutting years from your learning.

When you read a book, you need to remember the characters, their stories, ambitions, and history as well as various plots in the twist of the story. That’s a lot to keep in your head, but the brain is an amazing organ capable of storing much information. Each time you make a new memory, new images are formed, or old ones are strengthened. It improves your short-term memory and stabilizes your mood. Not bad.

Reading Expands your Vocabulary
The more books you read, the more words you will know. If English is not your native language, reading a book - in that language - will help you learn new words, by using the context of what you’re reading to make connections when you think about a word or two that you don’t know. The vocabulary is improved with the larger number of novels read. Not only did one’s vocabulary improve, but also their general knowledge, spelling, and verbal fluency.
General knowledge stored in your brain can hold conversations with people from all topics of life, sharing the latest facts and figures in literature, scientific breakthroughs, and global events.

When you read a novel, all of your attention is concentrated on the story - the rest of the story falters into the background and you can immerse yourself in the plot. Try reading for 15-20 minutes during your early morning commute, and you’ll be surprised how much better your attention span gets while studying, at the workplace or spending time on tasks.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF BOOKS.
Literature can be divided into 2 categories.
1.) NON-FICTION BOOKS. They usually include information.
They can be divided into:
TEXTBOOKS are educational books which contain information about a school subject. For example: mathematics, geography, or a foreign language.

DICTIONARIES explain the meanings and grammatically correct forms of words.

ENCYCLOPAEDIAS are large books which contain a lot of general facts about different subjects. For example: the world encyclopaedias, the animal encyclopaedias…

BIOGRAPHIES contain information about famous person’s life. Sometimes there are also biographies about ordinary people. Autobiographies and memoirs
TRAVEL BOOKS / GUID BOOKS serves information about destinations, transportation, accommodation, restaurants, and attractions for visitors.

COOKERY BOOKS contain recipes and teach people how to cook different meals or bake cakes.

2.) FICTION BOOKS.
If you read fiction books you need to know it is a work of fiction created in the imagination of its author. The author invents the story and makes up the characters, the plot or storyline, the dialogue and sometimes even the setting. A fictional work does not claim to tell a true story.

There are 2 types of fiction books:
POETRY contains poems, sonnets, blank verse, odes, and ballades.
PROSE contains short stories, fairy tales, westerns, science-fiction, crime novels, romantic novels, historical novels, thrillers, diaries…
Fictional characters can be a source of inspiration just like people met in real life. You can learn from them and get influenced by their words and actions. Same with places, events and facts described in what you read. Let’s say you come across a book on Japanese culture or a novel with a main character who is a carpenter. Next day you might find yourself studying Japanese or making wooden chairs for your kitchen.

MY FAVOURITE BOOK
My favourite book is The picture of Dorian Gray. It is a philosophical novel written by Oscar Wilde. Why is it my favourite? Because a young and innocent man somehow keeps his youthful beauty. When he begins to turn his character in a wrong way, a special painting reveals his inner ugliness. It is a mysterious and breath-taking story I had to read from the beginning to the end.