Reading is a lost art. The rise of screenplays, television shows, and short-form content like TikTok has eroded the love of reading that once shaped society. People increasingly lack the patience to sit with a book, to engage deeply, and to absorb the lasting rewards that reading uniquely offers.
Books remain irreplaceable for two main reasons. First, they allow us to step inside the psyche of a character in a way no film or series can. In movies, we see external actions and occasionally hear fragmented internal monologues, but we never gain the sustained intimacy with a mind that literature provides. George R.R. Martin once said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." In reading, we do not just observe life, we live it from within another consciousness.
Second, books carry a profound beauty in their ability to mirror our own struggles. When we encounter a character who endures the same suffering, afflictions, or questions as we do, something profound happens. The time period or setting may be different, yet the thought process, the way they examine and navigate their hardships, resonates with our own. In that moment, there is a deep recognition, almost a click within us, that assures us we are not alone.
Reading, then, is not just entertainment, it is a means of understanding others and, through them, ourselves.