By: Mangkholun Touthang
It’s a must to take a break from working too much, from listening too much music on headphones as it could affect your hearing, and from spending too much time on social media and whatnot. But I’d advise you not to take a break, even a day from reading books. Always spend atleast two hours reading books in a day. Be it a magazine, novel, tinkle, or anything that is readable, read it everyday. Students in particular should develop this reading habit.
Smartphones do really help us read stuff in the internet. But it’s often misused. Besides you can’t compare reading books from reading through your smartphone. One thing I’ve experienced so far is that when I read things written in books I could retain what I read in my mind longer than what I read in my smartphone.
Someone I know told me the disadvantage of taking a break from reading books. He said, “When I was in secondary school I read books a lot. There wasn’t a day without me reading books for atleast 6 hours. I had already developed reading habit. Therefore I passed the 12th exam in 1st class. Thanks to my reading habit. But then the time for college began and I had to go to college to seek more knowledge. Haplessly, when in college, my reading habit began to wither for I thought to myself, ‘Now that I’ve finished class 12th I could take a break for some time for I struggled like hell to pass the 12th grade and I’m tired now. I need to take a little break from reading books.’ That was a misconception I had. I did take a break from studying books and here I am, over a year has gone and I still am taking a break (I don’t mean I’m completely retired from reading books, I do read them but not like those past days when I’d usually read for about 5-6 hours a day). Since I have not read books for so long, now I can’t even read for thirty minutes.” This is the reality of many young people today. They’d struggle like hell when they are in high school and secondary school but would give up studying when they start going to college. The point here is, if you take a break from reading books it means you’ve given up your reading habit.
And one method that can be used to develop reading habit is to read the newspaper. Read your newspaper everyday. If you are not used to reading it, give it a try for a week and see how it goes. You’ll love it far more than you think. I’ve known a lot of people developing their reading habit from reading newspapers. But we all know that there are good books and bad ones as well. J.K. Rowling once said and I quote, “I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.” But I’d advise you not to read only the good ones, read those bad ones too. As long as you don’t put what’s written in practice, you are safe to read those bad books.
Almost every educated person we know are people who read a lot. Among them is N. Lhungdim. He is a retired IRS officer and a renowned writer. His love for books can be seen from him opening a library in his home. I believe that if there is one library each in every village and town, there’d be genuine development apace.