Books--tangible, holdable, readable books--are a substantial treasure for any home.
Because many articles are rendered digitally these days, library in the home are quickly becoming a fond memory. This is tragic for several reasons. First, while online words can be edited swiftly, seamlessly and often without notice, having a written account of something provides a way for that story to remain preserved. You can tear out pages from a book, but doing so is readily noticeable. Further, falling asleep while reading a story is a pastime that Americans should, in the author's opinion, not take for granted. Several decades from now, when people realize that holding a cell phone against one's head is not conducive to anything healthy, it will be a startling discovery for future generations to know that the books that used to be sold in bookstores in those ancient things called malls were, actually, valuable and more than that, meaningful, useful and part of our heritage as Americans.
You can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends, but picking up a good book and reading it cover-to-cover not only increases one's intelligence, but has a cozy way of allowing a person to use his or her brain for something other than scouting out the latest, greatest on Amazon or Facebook.
You’ll be surprised by the amount of information you can absorb when a television is turned off and the cell phones, iPads and other devices are unplugged for a few hours. Although you can learn many things online, reading--as well as writing--are art forms that are losing attractiveness in today's society. Children are no longer taught cursive writing in schools; instead, they are taught to type on a computer. While typing, indeed, has is position in academics, handwriting is a method of communication that should be taught early on in elementary schools, with script writing included. I am also a fan of teaching our children Latin for two years because much of our language was derived from Latin.
Read for Learning as Well as Enjoyment
It disturbs me that today's English classrooms are not using classic books to support archetype themes within literature. Shakespeare has been removed from many schools because it is seemingly too difficult to understand. More offensive to me than anything, the writing of the greats such as Earnest Hemingway, Steinbeck and Frost are not even mentioned in classrooms these days, taking a backseat to whatever a teacher read over their summer vacation. Although teachers are, indeed, underpaid, it is discouraging to find that storytelling, as an art and writing, as an art, come second to football and basketball practice in schools. (#library #Steinbeck #Hemingway #RobertFrost)