Let What You Read Reflect In You -By Usama Abdullahi

The problem is not you reading 60 books or so, but the impact of those beautiful books not reflecting in you. I saw so many friends of mine flaunting the books they were able to read last year. What they did is commendable. But one thing is, lies have become so cheap to fabricate and share today. I’m not in any where trying to deny the facts that they did read. Well, I’m not being so envious either.

To read even a single book for the whole year is absolutely okay because there are many people out there who couldn’t afford to flip a mere page. Accordingly, what I have always wished for myself is, never to peruse any kind of book without knowing what the book conveys. I mean the theme. Look, I’m not persuading anyone to buy into my own idea.

The fact remains that nothing is as useless as a person who reads a book, yet doesn’t understand it or cannot explain a bit about what he has read. Nothing could be foolish as that.My question here is, do the so-called bookworms truly read to increase in knowledge or to continue to fabricate lies? Can other people tell the influence of the books you pored over?

Nowadays bookworms mostly read not to grasp the message there in the novels. Also, they barely read to improve their vocabularies or writing skills, which I believe are the very crucial things that help motivate, guide and impel one into thinking of how to develop his own ideas and author them. It’s true that most of them often read for pleasure. But what’s that pleasure you get in something you never understand?

Perhaps I was wrong to say that they read for pleasure. So I think the appropriate term to be used there is impression. Yes, you heard me right. Impression is the suitable term because they probably read to impress their mostly know-nothing loved ones (girlfriends or boyfriends). Isn’t this laughable? You can solely think about this too; that you’re definitely making fool out of yourself by only reading to please an unschooled person.

Actually, there’s nothing to brag about in reading what you know next to nothing about. People will praise you for your ability to read word by word; for knowing how to commit what you read to your brain or for knowing how to say it by heart whatever. Still, that doesn’t mean you’re a perfect reader. The perfection in you is perceived through your capability of knowing how to explicate what you have read. And that’s simply what will distinguish you from your minors.

Let me put it this straight: there are children who can read flawlessly, depending on the words they were taught at their levels of education. To make this more graspable to you, take a look at some children from the Southern States for instance. Most of them can read effectively. You might begin to murmur to yourself that it’s because they receive quality teaching/mentoring.

Sure! They receive quality education but do they really understand what they read? I expect you to ask me this. Not really. Some of them whom adopted English as first language of communication often struggle to derive out some words and interpret them while others can’t. What does this mean ? This means that we’ve bunch of people who can read but cannot give a brief explaination of what they read.

At the age of nine, my six-year-old cousin could read way better than I. Sometimes, she would try to correct me when I err. But at time goes on–when I turned 12 years old, she had to run to me for clarification. She knew how to read very well but couldn’t clearly understand what she reads, hence she would consult with me on that. I never disappoint her.

Reading thousands of books doesn’t determine the level of your proficiency in knowledge nor does it mean you possess higher IQ than others who couldn’t read as much as you, but it, however, shows how passionate you are towards reading.The most important thing is to read to understand, not to read to please others. For it makes no sense for you to excessively brag about or pride in the book that “went through you.”