After having heard about last weekend’s 2013 Epsom Book Fair, which raises money for charities like Action for Children, as an English student it really got me thinking about reading. Who is it that goes to these fairs to buy books? For a start, most young people are certainly ruled out. With the increase in technology and the number of younger children who own an Apple product (or even several), a laptop, a television or of course a games console means that diving into a good book is something that we rarely find them doing these days.
I then started thinking about people my own age: sixth formers, or ‘young adults’. Maybe, we’re just as bad. The truth is, after finishing their English GCSEs many people never pick up another book again. And even if they do, a lot of people are drawn in by the popular chick-lits: 50 Shades of Grey, and The Twilight Saga, or, they are only reading for their subjects because they ‘have to.’ But why is it that teenagers are not reading as much anymore, or even at all?
Having asked some of my friends and classmates, it seems to be that we’re just ‘too busy’. Sixth form student Emma Robson said: ‘I’d like to read more because I read a lot when I was little, but I don’t have enough time. I can never finish a book because I’m always stopping and starting.’ On the other hand, fellow student Nikisha Mistry was much more optimistic and said ‘I make time for reading.’
So is it that the stress of school is just too much? Can we really not find a spare hour a day to read a book? Are we ‘too tired’ to even pick one up? Or, are these just silly excuses? Sadly, once you get to sixth form, ‘reading for fun’ is something that is not often encouraged. Unlike primary school and the first few years of secondary school where ‘World Book Day’ and ‘Literary Week’ are things that were hard to ignore, for sixth formers, there appears to be very little emphasis on reading which is probably why people don’t feel the need to make time to do it.
With so much reading for A-Levels the thought of reading more just doesn’t seem pleasurable and a lot of us have probably forgotten what it’s like to enjoy a book. But just think about the benefits of reading. It makes you a more knowledgeable person, you become more interesting to talk to, you can learn new things and it’s actually really relaxing. And let’s not forget that good old ‘sense of achievement when you finish a challenging book’ (even if you actually don’t understand any of it).
So the next time you’re on the bus on the way to school, watching a boring programme on television or wasting a few hours on Facebook, maybe you should think about reading a book instead.
