Art Of Reading

1201 Words5 Pages
When was the last time that you read a book? If it is taking you long time to remember, it could be because it was long time ago. Have you at least bought a book in the last year? If your answer is no, you are not the only one. According to the University of Daytona, you are among with the 80 percent of U.S. families that did not purchase a book last year. This is a discouraging statistic based on the fact that the percentage of people reading has critically declined in the last few years. One of the declining reasons of reading is that people are reading for obligation, not for pleasure. This is what Lin Yutang exposes on his article “The Art of Reading.” He, as well, believes that reading something that you enjoy will make you forget the place and the time where you are. He refers to reading the right book as finding your soul mate. Yutang also compares reading to eating. Overall, we are in completely agreement with his thoughts. In the article “The Art of Reading,” Lin Yutang makes an important point about the difference between reading for obligation and reading for pleasure. He says that: “If the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted.” In other words, everybody has different likes; well, reading is not different. Some people enjoy Shakespeare while other people hate him. In fact, this is one of the biggest problems in schools. Because children are force to read books that many of them don’t enjoy reading, they think that all books are boring. Indeed, they give up on reading. The children may read the book because they have a quiz about it, but they don’t really learn from it simply because they didn’t enjoy it. While some books might be able to speak right to you, some other books may never cause any feeling to you at all. Like Yutang says, nobody should be ever force to read something just because somebody also thinks it is good.
Open Document