Books and reading

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”. This quotation belongs to a famous English philosopher Francis Bacon and I’ll try to prove it.

Book is a valuable source of knowledge. People read for information, for fun, or just to while away the time. If a person reads a lot, he knows very much. That’s why I consider books to be helpful for students. For my classes I often consult reference books, encyclopedias and dictionaries. An encyclopedia is extremely useful in my work; it gives information about every branch of knowledge. I use dictionaries for classes of English and Russian language.

Books help us not only to study. A book is one of the greatest wonders in the world. Thanks to books we can talk to people who lived in different ages and countries.

“There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.”
— these lines are from a poem by Emily Dickinson, America’s most famous woman poet and I’m quite agree with her. Books make us travel through the time in different countries, continents and even like spaceship takes us away to the unknown planets.

Reading teaches us how to live. We get advice from books. I agree with the idea that “reading is to the mind what exercise to the body”. It develops our feelings and emotions, it make us think, suffer and rejoice together with the characters of the book. After reading a book, we analyze actions and mistakes of heroes and remember them. so, I can say, that from books we get life experience.

When we read books, they arouse different emotions in us: love, hate, joy, fear, anger, adoration, grief and others. For example, dramas make us sad, when we read detective, adventure, spy stories, we feel fear.

“There is an art of reading as well as an art of thinking and an art of writing” – said Isaac D’Israeli and I agree with this quotation, because it is very difficult to express views and ideas in clear simple words.

There are books, which have been our great favourites since childhood. We grow up with them, and they stay in our memory for ever. As for me, my favourite book was “Pinocchio”. I still remember this story and I always remember its main idea – you should not lie.

That’s why I can say, that books, which our mothers read us in our childhood play a very important role in character-building.

I became very keen on literature early in life. This probably happened because we had a good library at home. Also I often was alone at home, so I had enough time to read. I liked reading so much, that my parents often called me a bookworm.

Since childhood I liked to read fairy tales by Pushkin. Their language was rather simple and expressive and the plot was interesting. When I was 10 years, I read the poem “Ruslan and Ludmila”. I was enchanted by this poem and I wanted to read it again and again.

As I have already said, there are a lot of different kinds of books. But in each kind of books I enjoy the expressive beautiful language. Such books as detective and adventure stories, biographies appeal to me.

And, like books, readers are different too. One kind of readers is a person, who reads for fun. He chooses books for an hour, such as humorous stories. Other people read for information. They think over what they read and make some notes. And some people can’t be called readers at all. When they begin to read book, it seems boring to them, they prefer to watch a TV program or just to fall asleep.

Many popular novels and stories have been adapted for the theatre and television. I think that not all screen adaptations are successful. But films, in which brilliant actors appeared can be really good. For example, not long ago the famous book “The Idiot” was successfully turned out into film with famous Russian actor Mironov in the main role.
I think that different screen or stage adaptations can either add to the popularity of the book, or spoil the impression of it.

In conclusion I’d like to prolong Francis Bacon’s quotation and advice the readers to eat as many books as possible, no matter whether you have to swallow, chew or digest them.