Five minutes of reading a day is as valuable to mental well-being as walking 10,000 steps and eating five portions of fruit and vegetables is to our physical health, according to research commissioned by the Queen’s Reading Room, a literary project led by the U.K.’s Queen Camilla, to promote the power and benefits of reading.

The study found that just five minutes of reading a work of fiction immediately reduced stress in participants by nearly 20%. “A short period of reading can actually help us better manage our stress, significantly increasing our concentration and improving our ability to focus on the next task. Those five minutes really can make the rest of our day better,” says Vicki Perrin, chief executive of the Queen’s Reading Room. “We found that high frequency readers are significantly less likely to experience feelings of loneliness — important not just for the health of society, but because leading research tells us that loneliness can increase the likelihood of different dementias.”

Queen Camilla, an avid reader, highlighted the research: “Just as we always suspected, books are good for us — and now science is proving us right!”

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Bhilar in Maharashtra is India’s first book village. Located between Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar, the village is formally named Pustakanche Gaav or ‘The Village of Books’. Families in the village have given parts of their homes as reading hubs, which stock nearly 35,000 books in Marathi, Hindi, English and Gujarati, for people to explore free of cost. The walls of their homes showcase designs by artists from all over India, which advertise the books you will find inside. E.g., a house decorated with Warli art depicting folk legends has books on folk tales, while Mangaltara Mansion, painted with pictures of forts and Maratha king Shivaji, stocks history books. Other genres include poetry, literature, environment, biographies, among others.

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My childhood was spent in innumerable escapades, getting lost in caves with Tom Sawyer, solving mysteries with the Five Find-Outers and their dog, and hunting man-eaters with Jim Corbett. Oh, what a glorious time I had, sometimes even going Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea with Jules Verne or hearing the Hound of the Baskervilles howl over the English marshes with my hair standing on end along with Sherlock Holmes!

All these adventures were mine without spending a single pai, as I entered the cover of one book or another that my mom or dad brought me from various libraries they were members of, and later on, which I too became a member of.

Oh, the world of books that kept me propped up in some different corner of my home or perched on a window sill, and without a ‘do not disturb’ board around. Everyone kept away from me as I disappeared often from one meal time to another into the imaginary fantasies of some wonderful author.

Never a dull moment for me as holiday mornings saw innumerable authors calling out to me from within the confines of their very descriptive or picturesque covers, shouting, “Bob, you want to be kidnapped today? And I would grin at Robert Louis Stevenson as he took me into the realms of his book Kidnapped!

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“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”
— Dr Seuss

Reading allows us to learn about life, stretch our imagination, and broaden our perspective. Reading is a way to learn from people through their experiences and stories. Books allow us to use our imagination, share ideas, obtain information and inspire people through stories. Therefore, World Book and Copyright Day, is celebrated on 23 April to promote the enjoyment of books and reading.

Here are five timeless classic books that every teenager should read.

ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear

If you are looking for ways to instil good habits and get rid of bad habits, this is the perfect book for you. Atomic Habits is a comprehensive guide to creating and maintaining habits that lead to success in any area of life. The author emphasizes the importance of creating habits that are “atomic” — small, incremental changes that when combined, create significant impact. The book provides a step-by-step process for habit formation, including how to create an environment that supports good habits, how to set achievable goals, and how to overcome common obstacles to habit formation.

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Author: Denny Joseph
Publisher: Better Yourself Books
Publication year: 2021
Pages: 119 pages; Price: Rs 140

“Work hard until the lamplight of your study table becomes the spotlight on stage.”

The above line is commonly shared on social networking sites, but how far have young people emulated it? Many teenagers today are unwilling to take risks and work hard, but keep daydreaming of success. It’s time you leave the confines of your comfort zone. Dare to dream but also dare to work hard for it. It’s time to make your dreams a reality and read career coach Denny Joseph’s motivational book Roadmap To Success. It is one of the few books on success that teaches a reader that to be one of the successful 10 per cent, you must NOT do what the other 90 per cent are doing.

The book is written in an easy-to-read manner with 12 core success principles that can lead especially disadvantaged youth to dream big and to go miles ahead. Using motivational quotes from successful persons like Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, etc., Roadmap To Success brings out the essence of what it means to achieve success. Success, hard work, diligence, perseverance, patience, commitment, optimism and self-learning are pondered upon.

Denny Joseph’s anecdotes, from his own life and the life of famous personalities in history, make the reader realize that education doesn’t guarantee success but enhances your chances of success. So stop procrastinating, stick to your education, and accelerate your path to success through a goal-directed behaviour. Begin with reflecting on the hard-hitting statements in this small yet impactful book.

You probably spend more time daily being your enemy than your best friend. Toastmaster Denny Joseph is here to change that with his deeply motivating and challenging self-help book that is simple, unpretentious, rich in content, frank, practical, and engaging. Get this liberating book today and change how you treat yourself and your dreams. Remember that there is only one person today standing between your dream and your goal — and that person is you yourself. Read this amazing book, reflect and march on to action-oriented behaviour today and every day.

Available at Better Yourself Books and all St Paul Book Centres in India

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A tree inside a book

Trees and books have a sad relationship — one sacrifices itself to make the other bloom. So in order to make a difference, a publisher in Argentina came up with a unique project — Tree Book Tree. It came up with a set of books made of acid-free paper and eco-friendly ink. But that’s not all — each book has jacaranda seeds in it. Read the book, plant it in soil afterwards and watch a tree come to life. Poetic justice!

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“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
~ Plato

Reading is a pleasure, reading is inspiring, and reading enriches our lives through our imagination. Reading allows our mind to go on adventures and explore new places, meet new people and understand different perspectives and opinions all in the words on a page.

In today’s digital age with social media and multiple entertainment sources, there are numerous options that make it hard to motivate ourselves to read. However, if your daily reading consists of social media and WhatsApp messages, you are missing out. If you need motivation to convince you that reading every day is an essential habit for success, this article is for you. There is a perfect genre of books for everyone from novels and classical literature, science fiction, romance to biographies, self-help guides and business books — there’s something for everyone.

Reading has many benefits, and one of the most obvious ones is learning new things. You can learn practically anything from reading a book — from how to be more productive, start your own business, to cooking to managing your time effectively, everything can be found in the pages of a book.

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“I want to write a book!” declared bright-eyed 8-year old Risha to her mother. “Go for it!” her mom said smilingly. And she did go for it! Today, Risha is a teen author of three novels, the founder of a successful Instagram blog, and an inspiration to young girls and aspiring teen authors everywhere.

Risha Chaurasia, born in Indore in 2007, started writing at the tender age of 8. Her early works consist of two plays — Wonder Car and Journey Of The Island, followed by her first book, Tales Of Twinkling Tweens, which she published at the age of 11. The book is based on the various aspects of a tween’s life and elaborates on school experiences such as teachers, relationships with friends, experiencing bullying, etc. A book for tweens by a tween! The book received a considerable response and was greatly loved and appreciated by its readers. She also did her first author’s visits and ‘Meet and Greet’ soon after.

While many people encouraged and supported her, some did try to pull her down. Here’s where Risha’s role models played an important part. Her mother’s best advice was: “Risha, you write for yourself, not for the world”. This profound statement continues to guide through her journey.

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When was the last time you read a book, or a magazine article? If you’re one of those countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing a lot. I was an occasional reader during my school/college days and even the first half of my career in the Indian Navy. Those days I read only story books and novels and I never bothered to finish reading a book. Probably, I did not find the right book!

In 2002, I moved to Singapore and was involved in the training of Republic of Singapore Navy’s Officers and Specialists. It was indeed an exciting and adventurous career and I loved it. But after a few years, the degree of excitement dropped and lethargy set in. I began to ask a series of questions to myself. In my search for the answers to those questions, I began to be a regular visitor to the Regional and National Libraries of Singapore. Being a Singapore Permanent resident, I had the privilege to borrow books from all the libraries in Singapore.

I became an ardent reader and began to read non-fiction and self-help books. Some of the first few books I read were Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Power Of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, Live Your Dreams by Les Brown and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, which ignited in me a passion for reading.

Gradually I began to find answers to my questions and became very passionate about reading. Books enlightened me and transformed me in many ways. I was able to overcome some of the limiting beliefs and began to look at life from a different perspective. Through these books, I was able to download decades of life lessons and experience of great authors. They challenged me, and pushed me beyond my comfort zone.

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Nothing gives me more delight than seeing a book that has been annotated by the previous reader. Seeing a book with underlined words, highlighted sentences, notes on paragraphs, scribbles on the pages, and seeing that the reader has entirely become one with the book, makes me fall in love with it.

It is the reason I have a fascination with old books. The feeling that someone read the same lines before you and felt something. Something that moved them, something that struck them so much that they had to mark it.

It is the feeling of being able to relate to the person who read the book before you and feeling an emotional connection with them, even if you’ve never seen them.

It makes me curious about what was going on in their mind while reading it.

Did they savour the book just like me?

Did they pause after reading something powerful so as to let it sink in fully?

Did they imagine what a character would be like in the real world?

Do they fold the pages as I do?

Did they love the book as much as I did?

So reader, love a book passionately, make it yours deliberately… but when you’re done, pass it on ardently.

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