Festive season has started in Nepal and people are planning for different recreation activities while utilizing their long spare hours during festivals. Reading has remained one of the great pastimes. In Nepal, reading is linked to something scholarly work, only done by book freaks or experts. However, reading is for people of all walks and age groups. No matter if you are a housewife, a musician, a literate mason, a businessman or any other professional, reading can change your life after you delve deeper and create a habit of reading well published texts.
Our lives are getting busier and busier with the development and modernization. For the sake of progress, we are focusing on the outward. Reading during festivals gives us the opportunity to self-reflect and look towards our inner self. By reading, I mean reading different kinds of books ranging from stories, novels, biography, memoir, travelog, poetry, drama, essays, interviews, magazines, comics, blogs, newspapers, websites and others. Readers who continually engage in leisure reading possess higher self-esteem because they are able to comprehend the reading material they read. Many researchers have come to the conclusion that those who regularly do leisure reading tend to achieve better academic results due to increased knowledge and their wide general knowledge.
Leisure reading can be reading newspapers or niche websites as well. You can read an interesting essay or story in the newspaper which may not demand your serious thought. The best part of leisure reading is that you need not work hard, yet enjoy the process of reading itself and find joy in the segments. One can improve reading comprehension, reduce stress and improve achievement in one’s discipline through leisure reading.
Reading for the sake of reading has proven to yield various benefits. Passive reading, or reading for the sake of pleasure is significant to develop reading habits in the long run. Reading books during holidays keeps you stimulated. When you are not working, your idea generation and brainstorming habits can be impaired. Thus, with books you continue to develop thought patterns while you read words. When you do not participate in social meetings or office gatherings, reading books keeps you self-engaged. While you pass your leisure time, chances are high that you keep learning something new while you read.
There are different platforms available to read nowadays. The common and popular one is the print form. You can visit the bookstores in person, buy and read the books. You can also read books in digital formats on your personal computers or laptops. For that, you can buy e-books online and some free e-books are also available on the web. With technological progress, if you want to read for longer hours and with more convenience, you can read on Kindle devices. The devices are lightweight and the feel they provide is similar to reading physical books.
All age groups and walks of people can engage themselves in reading. Reading materials have been developed age-specific and discipline-specific. If your children are a third or a fourth grader, there are specific story books with illustrations and text size that are suitable for their reading age. If you are a high school goer, there are comics and novels suitable to your reading age and competency. If you are not a professional and just an ordinary person, there are different self-help books that match your interest. There are also biographies and memoirs to start with, for your reading habit. If you have interest in research, you can read journal articles based on your discipline. You cannot excuse yourself for not reading because there are varieties of materials as per your personality and just far from your fingertips.
In this festive season, you may have already planned to read books but you may be stuck on deciding the kinds of books to read. In order to decide the kind of book, I present to you some tips that will help you. First, you can go through/scan book reviews published recently in newspapers, news portals and magazines. If anything seems to match your interest, you can pick it. The other way is asking for recommendations from your teachers, mentors or friends. They can understand what you are seeking in the book and thus recommend out of their knowledge and information. Thirdly, you can visit the bookstores that are popular for possessing large quantities of books. You can visit them, check the books out of your preferred domain and read the synopsis. You can do the same visiting the book portals that place the book synopsis. The fourth option can be joining the virtual book clubs and book groups. You can find the reviews put by the members, join the conversation about the books and get recommendations.
