The not-so-challenging challenge: Reading is good for you

Did you know? Reading is good for you! Here are just a few (or more) of the benefits that come from making time to read:

• Relaxation: reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state (think, meditation).
• Lower stress, muscle tension, and heart rate.
• Improved sleep.
• Vocabulary, communication, and writing skill development.
• An increase in the ability to focus.
• Improved memory, attention, and critical thinking skills.
• A boost in emotional intelligence and relationships when exploring characters whose backgrounds differ from our own.
• Reduced feelings of isolation and alienation.
• The opportunity to imagine different futures than we could envision for ourselves.
• Experience new worlds and charming friendships with fiction. 
• Discover facts that make sense of the world with nonfiction.
• Understand ourselves better with self-help or autobiography.
• Enhanced imagination.
• Get recharged with an escape from the demands of daily life – “Netflix Novel and chill” is our motto!

When we read, our brains are engaged in all sorts of ways. When we are deeply engaged in a story, our brains tend to mimic the actions and emotions of the characters with the help of our “mirror neurons”—neurons that fire both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see one performed by someone else. This empathetic superpower only activates when we are deeply engaged; simply skimming across a few pages for information is not enough for our brains to live the actions and feelings of the characters. So get comfy and sink into a book! It's good for you!

Join the RPL Adult Reading Challenge to get more of these benefits – and have the chance to win some prizes!