What is the importance of literature in a person’s life? Becoming a Reader

Andreeva Vera

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Twenty first century. The age of computers, interactive systems and virtual reality. Do modern people need books? My answer is yes. Every person needs books, because in the whirlwind of modern life we worry about school, work, whether our phone is charged, and we completely forget about our soul, which also needs solitude and recharging. Books are a one-of-a-kind spiritual healer that can heal our spirit as well as positive emotions. A person grows both intellectually and morally by reading. For me, every work I read is a life lived, after which I gain experience and become wiser. Some simply do not understand the value of literature and everything contained in it. By reading, I learned to understand human nature, what is hidden in it, the motivation of certain people’s actions. And most importantly, I learned not to judge people without knowing their story.

You can't judge a book by its cover. Books are the same people, and, as the Strugatsky brothers wrote, among them there are “kind and honest, wise, knowledgeable, as well as frivolous dummies, skeptics, madmen, murderers, children, sad preachers, self-righteous fools and half-hoarse screamers with bloodshot eyes " As for me, literature is my everything: mentor, friend, hobby. She taught me only good and bright things, opened my eyes to many things, taught me to love the word, in the words of Mayakovsky, “the commander of human power.”

Literature is an art, and like any art, it has its own names that have glorified it. I have my own respect for each writer who has contributed to the development of literature, but I especially highlight a few names and works from all that I have read so far. So, my adoration of psychological novels grew into a love for the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. With full confidence I can call him our contemporary, unlike some other classics, because everything he wrote is relevant to this day. I admire his style and experience aesthetic pleasure from what I read. Dostoevsky is an expert on the Russian soul; I am surprised every time at how one can so accurately and accurately describe human feelings and emotions that are hidden very deeply.

An equally important and favorite work for me is the parable story written by Richard Bach, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”A sermon about self-improvement and self-sacrifice, a manifesto for boundless spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom is something I would like to have in this life. This book is the cry of the soul of every person who understands this world at least a little. For me, Jonathan Livingston is the embodiment of the ideal of a strong, independent person who loves life in all its manifestations. Re-reading this book, each time I discover something new that fills, frees me and gives me strength for further achievements. Books are supposed to do just that - inspire. Literature inspires me to do good deeds, love people, gives me hope for a better outcome of events and teaches me to understand people.

The concept of true love was given to me by Charlotte Bronte's novel "Jane Eyre". The most fantastic thing about it is not the love story itself, but the fact that the essence of any relationship lies in the ability to forgive and accept a person for who he is, along with his past and his demons. Few people know how to truly forgive; the residue from betrayal still remains in us and comes to the surface in the future. There is power in forgiveness. Rereading this novel, each time I understand more and more the essence of the word forgiveness.

For me, a mini-manifesto of love and bright human feelings is the allegorical fairy tale story “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A story about how important it is to preserve the child within you and not freeze your soul. Even the largest epic novels cannot convey the vital things contained in this small book.“The most important thing is what you cannot see with your eyes...”, said the Little Prince. Feelings are something that will always be higher and clearer than any spoken words.

Literature is my little world in which you can hide from all the storms of life, and books are my friends who will always calm you down, never betray you, and instill hope. Even the great Anton Pavlovich Chekhov said: “Everything in a person should be beautiful: his face, his clothes, his soul, his thoughts...” Literary works help us in this, making us beautiful on the inside, and if a person is beautiful on the inside, he is charming on the outside - this is an unchanging truth of life, the same as the law of the boomerang. When reading books, a person retires and finds time to think. Just don't confuse loneliness with. Loneliness for mepsychological, spiritual, solitude is physical. The first dulls, the second calms. Solitude leads to harmony with yourself, with your mind, thoughts and feelings. Books help us with this by making us better, instructing us and calming us down. When I read, I take a break from the daily routine, I can forget about everyday problems for a while and just enjoy reading. Literature is the best human invention that has ever existed.

You can argue on different topics, but when it comes to the importance of literature in modern society, you can talk about it for a long time, each time discovering amazing conclusions.

We are living in the era of computerization, television and high technology. One keystroke and you can easily find all the information you are interested in, but no technical devices can replace people’s pleasant hours of communication with books.

Books are our wonderful and faithful friends, who can enrich our inner world, dispel anxieties, doubts and resentments. For some, it is much easier to watch a film based on a book that interests you, but it may not contain interesting, funny and witty expressions that you would like, remember, make you laugh and make you think.

Most of all fiction is about man. Her calling is to help us understand what each of us should value in life, in friends and loved ones.

How people read today

Employees of the Public Opinion Foundation conducted a survey, the purpose of which was to find out how people feel about literature today. If we summarize the data obtained, we can say that the structure of leisure time has changed dramatically over the past decades, and reading books occupies a less prominent place in it, but there is a reading public, and today it has the opportunity to have a wider and more accessible choice of books, which cannot but rejoice.

If we talk about the results of the study, then in relation to reading, the situation is not very favorable, but the experts spoke quite optimistically: “they are reading less, but today they read more meaningfully and seriously.”

Half of those surveyed have several dozen publications of fiction at home, and only 4% have no books at all in their home.

The answers of those surveyed were divided between those who had read over the past year and those who had not.

If we talk about literary and genre preferences, then modern domestic literature is the most popular - 22%, followed by modern foreign literature - 9%, domestic classics - 8%, and foreign classics and Soviet literature - 4%.

About the benefits of reading

The benefits of books are obvious. This is a unique opportunity to broaden your horizons, enrich your inner world, become smarter and train your memory. It is also useful to read books because:

Reading increases a person’s vocabulary and allows him to more clearly formulate his thoughts.

Logical thinking develops, the ability to analyze information obtained from books, by observing the characters of books, we learn the basics of psychology.

If you are in a depressed mood, the book is an excellent medicine that will help you overcome sadness and take your mind off your problems for a while.

What book can be called “good” and useful for reading? Firstly, the book should interest and captivate you, and secondly, it should carry a deep meaning and not be superficial.

If you haven’t read the school curriculum books, we recommend starting with them. Classic literature of domestic and foreign writers is fascinating and interesting. Pay attention to historical literature: wars, intrigues, fateful decisions and love - all this is not only educational, but also exciting.

Of course, reading the poetry of great authors can be called useful. Works written in poetry contain pain, love, disappointment, joy, comedy and tragedy. In addition to aesthetic pleasure, poetry can enrich our speech with beautiful turns of phrase.

Modern literature should not be ignored either; it is certainly not as replete with talent as in the old days, but among our contemporaries there are authors whose books are worthy and interesting.

Is poetry necessary for modern man?

A person cannot only sleep, eat and work. It is poetry, and art in general, that instills in people a sense of harmony and beauty. Poetry can awaken high feelings in people, forcing them to think, engage in self-development, study and work.

If we consider the need for poetry from the point of view of personal relationships, we will come to the conclusion that we cannot do without it here either. How nice it is to write poems to your loved one, to speak beautifully and romantically about the feelings that overwhelm your soul. Sometimes it’s nice to read the works of other authors, experiencing all the emotions embedded in the poems. Of course, poetry will never become obsolete.

When you are gloomy and not happy about anything,

Picking up a book in the evening is wonderful

For all people there is joy and joy.

Let's evaluate everything that happened before,

All ellipsis of thoughts will become a point.

As if nothing had happened

Poetic lines are pleasant to the heart.

Who needs literature today?

Don't let the empty library halls fool you. A few decades ago, when we entered the library at any moment, we could see a queue. Today the book industry is so developed that it is quite possible to buy and read any book without leaving home.

Today, libraries do not play the role of a unique supplier of information, but rather act as social institutions whose mission is to unite people and educate them. Increasingly, various literary cafes, children's rooms with educational toys and books, literary and theater clubs, as well as studios are opening at libraries, where teenagers, under the guidance of teachers, do their homework and prepare for intellectual Olympiads, competitions and city events.

As the great writer and poet Maxim Gorky said: “Love a book, it will make your life easier, it will amicably help you sort out the colorful and stormy confusion of thoughts, feelings, events, it will teach you to respect people and yourself, it inspires the world and heart with a feeling of love for the world.” , to a person."

The reformatting of culture also leads to the fact that literature is moving into the background, and we can hardly predict how distant. They undoubtedly read less - and I think that the share of literature as such will change. Just like literature itself. Something is happening to her too: I remember how about 30 years ago I first saw a comic book, a luxurious novel about mice. I looked at it in bewilderment, and my artist friend called it books of the future. I snorted, but she was right. Our channels of perception are expanding, they are changing the direction of their work. Human creativity will certainly remain, but people will not write books. But, as we know, an entire culture grew up in the drawings.

Where there is contact between several arts, something new grows. When we saw Fellini's first films, we realized that this was not cinema, but something else. Apparently, everything will be different. Wildly interesting! Please note that if 40 years ago the main genre was science fiction and we read Bradbury, now science fiction is of little interest: we live in the time that science fiction writers of the 20th century projected for us.

Therefore, I really want to record what is happening. I've been writing notebooks all my life. In recent years, these self-reports have become more interesting to me. I don’t remember much anymore and have difficulty remembering what happened last week. Life is so intense and fast that there is not enough memory: I am not Dima Bykov. It even feels like I don’t have time to catch up with my own life.

Background: as a student of the Faculty of Philology, I conducted a survey among my classmates regarding literature: their preferences and the amount of reading they had done over the past year. In 80% of cases, they blatantly lied to me in order to seem smarter, more educated, etc.

Today, reading has become a trend, which means things are bad. It is very difficult to choose a worthy book, because second-rate novels lie on the bestseller shelves, the ratings are filled with garbage, and friends read dummies.

The book becomes something of an accessory. For some reason, readers think that they are doing something out of the ordinary.

In fact, reading has never been an indicator of intelligence. Intelligence cannot be acquired; it is developed. If there is nothing to develop, you just need to be a good person.

If you separate the wheat from the chaff, then everything is simple - a book, as at all times, can serve as a source of information, but information so hidden by the plot and metaphors that not everyone will understand what the salt actually is. Fiction shows us human history in all its splendor.

Why not a movie? There are a huge number of books that are more exciting than the newest films (especially since cinema has been more often upsetting lately).

And finally: all archetypes, plots, conflicts, compositions originated in world literature, so knowledge of this literature makes you an educated person: both the director and the astrophysicist should quote Milton, Boccaccio and Chekhov.

Fiction opens up to us the unknown world of human relationships, allows us to more consciously understand the essence of the human personality, to understand how this or that situation, which seems to be a dead end, will be resolved. This is a special type of art that reflects and emphasizes the essence of all eras, gives us pleasant hours while reading, teaches us morality, makes us more morally stable, and, of course, increases our cultural level.

A truly educated person must certainly be familiar with the main works in literature, drawing his own conclusions from the books he read, which are of great value in the formation and development of personality.

Literature is designed to serve the people, it reveals the problems of past years, describes events and people who lived in the past, tells what thoughts and actions they were endowed with. It is of great importance how accurately and truthfully the present times are conveyed, giving a person the opportunity to paint a picture of a future life in his imagination.

We are deeply imbued with the fate of literary heroes, we watch with sincere emotion the course of events, and we are very upset when we learn that the ending is not quite what we would like. Then the mind begins to reason why the situation was resolved this way, why did the hero act this way and not otherwise? Did he have another choice?

From generation to generation, with the help of literary works, knowledge was carefully preserved and the truth was revealed. Books are intended to be a source of wisdom, a true guide in a person’s life, and also to perform an educational role, being our mentors and teachers.

Thanks to the study of literature, I understood many things that are inaccessible without reading great works. I definitely draw my own conclusions after reading the work. I also always ask myself what morals I was able to extract from the book I read, and what it was able to change in me for the better.

Literature in the most honest way broadens our horizons, bestows us with a large vocabulary, which is important when communicating with people in order to form a justified and deservedly worthy impression of ourselves as a person who can speak competently, clearly, and in some cases eloquently, correctly forming thoughts into words.

Some writers teach us through humor, funnyly describing incidents, exposing the human soul, and revealing vices. Others instill in us a love for the world around us, the beauty of nature, and encourage us to treat it with care. Still others describe terrible events, military actions, interspersed with stories from human life, while others, in their characteristic manner, try to answer the question about the meaning of earthly existence.

It is likely that the writer once experienced serious mental anguish and, through a story, short story, play or novel, sought to convey to us his emotions and experience. The same is true with poetry, studying which we come to understand what the author was experiencing at the time of writing, how he looked at the world, and what his inner state was. We subconsciously become imbued with the pain, joy, anxieties and experiences of the great classics of literature.

I would really like to see as many new authors as possible appear who have a high-quality outlook on life, are talented, have avant-garde thinking and a decent style of presentation. Increasingly, on the shelves of bookstores you can find works by modern writers, whose books, just by flipping through, you understand that they are not written at the proper level, are difficult to read and clog literature in its highest sense.

Books. The quiet rustle of paper, reminiscent of the whisper of the wind, the aroma of book pages, combining notes of wood, paint and human touch. Small black letters, like beads, scattered across the white sky of the pages. These letters contain eternity.
What do books mean to a person? Answering this question is much more difficult than it seems at first glance, because there are so many people around and it is impossible to look into their heads to read their thoughts. But you can try.

Someone is looking for knowledge in books, like that graying man with glasses who is sitting on the bus seat next to you. The look of his penetrating pale blue eyes remembers every new psychological term that comes across to him in the book. The books he reads do not have bright, flashy covers, but they contain accurate information about the number of people inhabiting the planet, the habits of Australian opossums, or what parts make up a car engine. With the same rapture, the grandson of this graying man is at this very moment reading a history textbook at home, greedily remembering everything that happened in past centuries, when there was no trace of him yet.
But this cute blonde with a dreamy look and bow lips, who sits opposite you, is looking for her love in books. A prince on a white horse, on a black one, a prince on a Mercedes, on a Volga, on a bicycle, or, in the end, a prince on his own two feet - these are her dreams, these are her dreams. The books she reads are hidden under pink bindings with hearts, their covers feature kissing couples, and the title is written in gold and always ornate. People like her fall madly in love with book heroes, because in reality they don’t meet heroes. And she reads only in her free time, for example, when she is riding the bus or taking a bath.
And over there, in the corner, sits a cute girl with brown hair and distant gray eyes. She reads constantly. Wherever she goes, she takes a book with her. She reads a lot and loves different genres. She doesn’t pay attention to the cover, as long as it’s written in an engaging and meaningful way. What is she looking for under the leather bindings? Probably another reality that will be dearer to her than the present one. Maybe she wants to find a corner in books that will shelter her. She is a book traveler. A man who lives hundreds of lives in hundreds of worlds. She is a dreamer, like Peter Pan in a skirt, who does not want to grow up and does not recognize the cruel realities.
And here you are. You sit and read another detective story or a science fiction novel about life on other planets, or maybe a classic, for example, by Bulgakov or Wilde. Don't know. You can read anything. But here's your stop. You close the book and put it in a shabby blue backpack, or maybe not blue at all, but in a bright yellow one. Again, I don't know. You go outside and deeply breathe in the autumn air. What do you look for in books? Maybe you're just reading? You read for pleasure. You just read, you're just a reader. And you will understand what you are looking for in books only when you find it.

So what role does literature play in a person’s life? Don't you understand yet? I will say. The most important role. Book pages store knowledge, dreams, secrets, mysteries, illusions. Books help you understand yourself and the world around you. Books connect us to the past, envision the future, and make the present better.
Books are paper doors to huge new worlds that fit on a small bookshelf.