Reading Books Didn’t Change My Life
I am neither more intelligent nor hard-working
I read 124 books in 2019, 62 in 2020. It seems like I gave up on reading, but I did not. In 2019, I was a student and had more time to read. After I got my first job in 2020, I moved to a different city. There was less time to read, and I read 62 new books.
I like re-reading books. When I am stressed, angry or depressed, instead of reading anything new, I would open a book I have read many times and re-read it. So I read more than 62 books in 2019. My guess is I read about 80 books. Which is not that bad, is it?
The twenty books that changed my life, the other ten books that made me healthy, twelve books that improved my mental health — I can not write such articles because the books did not change my life.
Hold on before you throw away your books and give up on reading. Reading books did not change my life. Yes.
But they made it so much better. Here’s how.
I have read over 400 books in 5–6 years. I started reading late. I was not a reader when I was 5, 10 or even 15 years old. I started reading when I was almost 16. My first book was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I cried my eyes out and immediately bought home the Harry Potter series. Not immediately. But the next…
