Top 10 Advantages & Disadvantages of Reading Books

The life of a bookworm is highly boring. (At least, for someone who doesn’t read books at all)

Yes, that is correct.

And anyone who denies this either don’t know much about reading books, is in denial mode like most people, or does not want to scare you away from the books.

I AM NOT ONE OF THEM. I am here to give you some straight damn facts and tell you what are the common disadvantages of reading books (obviously for people who don’t like reading), and advantages of reading books (for people who want to read books).

So, let’s dive in.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Reading Books (Quick Summary)

Top 10 Advantages of Books

1. Books Improve your creativity and imagination

Reading fiction helps improve your creativity and imagination by bringing you into a different world. When you read a book, you create a picture in your mind. You start living the character, imagine yourself in their shoes, and experience their emotions.

2. Books expand your world

You will learn about diverse topics, ideas, and perspectives as you read more books. Your point of view about culture, society, money, life, etc will change. You will start thinking differently.

3. Books reduce stress

Books are not only the best friends but also the best healers. While reading a book, you will forget your worries, anxiety, and tension. You will live in a different world for some time, eventually reducing stress.

4. Improves sleep

Reading books before night can also help you fall asleep. Just make sure you don’t lose yourself in the story. LoL!😊😊

5. Makes you a more empathetic person

An individual who reads fiction books a lot becomes more sympathetic as he reads (in fact, lives) a lot of characters and stories. When you read a story in a fiction book, you become that person; you start feeling his pain, sorrow, his emotions. This builds empathy in you for all kinds of people in society.

6. Reading helps you live longer

A study found that adults who read 30 mins a day live more than those who don’t read. Reading to your brain is what exercise to your body is! It makes the neuronal connections in your brain much more robust, which eventually helps you live longer.

7. Reading increases your attention span

When you read for 30 mins, you focus for those 30 mins. If you habitually read for 30 mins each day, you are making your brain practice for 30 mins of focus each day.

8. Increase your vocabulary

When you read hundreds of books, your vocabulary will increase as a byproduct. You don’t have to make any effort to boost your vocabulary. Read as many books as possible.

9. Books can help you become rich

Reading books like rich dad poor dad, or the psychology of money can help you develop financial discipline. After reading these books, you will make better financial decisions which will help you become wealthy over time. You can notice a similar trend: most affluent people read at least 3 hours daily.

10. Books can change your life

Whether you read fiction, non-fiction, or any genre of books, it will lead you to a healthy, happy, and prosperous life.

Top 10 Disadvantages of Books

1. Need Money to Buy Good Books

To read books, the only thing you need is MONEY. And man, money is hard to come by these days.

In this materialistic world, when money gives you freedom, the ability to pursue your dreams, and security.

If you want to read good books, you will undoubtedly require a good amount of money to purchase them, which is altogether a difficult task.

2. Reading Too Many Books Without Taking Action Is a Waste of Time

Yes, simply reading books will not make you a better person. Tell me why you like to read books in the first place because books can add a lot of value to your life. They can provide you with a way of escape and may even teach you some valuable life lessons.

But if you don’t apply the learnings from those books or start looking at your own life to see what you can change and how you should change, what’s the point of reading them all?

3. Physical Books Are Hard to Carry

I add this to my list because I live in a one-room apartment, and with my experience, I can say that physical books are not very space-efficient.

Consider this: a typical book is 200-400 pages long. Right!! And keeping a significant amount of such books in a single-room apartment is difficult.

You can’t change the thickness of a page. Can you?

But, on the bright side, I am happy that technology has taken care of it, thanks to thinner, lighter, and more advanced tablets. Now you can store your books and access them all at any time and from any location.

4. Less Time for Being Cool

Imagine you are catching up with your friends one weekend, and out of nowhere, someone brings up a famous movie about a superhero.

He talks about the plot, action scenes, and fights, and suddenly all of your friends are joining him on the journey of this movie.

And because of reading books and not watching movies, you are sitting beside them just wondering what are they talking about.

See, this is the problem of being a book lover. Books give you less time for being cool.

5. Your Friends Will Treat You Less

Yes, this is also true.

Tell me, how many times you’ve told your friends when they asked you about coffee that you’d like to go out for coffee, but you have this book you need to finish?

And your friends were expecting you at the coffee shop, but you didn’t show up.

For a friendship to be healthy, there must be a balance, and man, you are losing that balance somewhere because of your reading habit.

6. Reading Takes Time & Effort

Reading is not a easy task. You have to put time and effort into the habit of reading to actually get some benefit out of it. And who wants to do the hard stuff these days?

Who wants to stay away from watching those awesome webseries/cricket matches and spend time with books that doesn’t give instant gratification at all.

7. Most Books Repeat the Same Stuff

Raise your hand if you believe that some books repeat the same nonsense repeatedly.

It’s like déjà vu.

For those unfamiliar with the term, déjà vu is the sensation of having previously experienced happening for the first time.

And, to be honest, I’m sick of these books as well, which is why I included this point on this list.

8. Disadvantages of Reading Fiction Books

On the disadvantage level, fiction books exist in a completely different universe; some of the disadvantages of reading fiction books are:

1. Fiction causes your mind to sag
2. Stories can make you unhappy with reality
3. Novels arouse the reader’s emotions

9. Disadvantages of Reading Ebooks or Reading Online

Reading ebooks or reading books online has its own set of disadvantages, like:

1. The sensation of reading a physical book with a pencil in one hand and a blank page in the other is unique from the online reading experience.
2. Ebook files are at risk of becoming corrupted, deleted, pirated or lost at any time.
3. It is common for the quality of work in online reading material to suffer.
4. They are said to impair eye abilities.
5. Online reading is vulnerable to internet and electricity outages.

10. Disadvantages of Audiobooks

Listening to audiobooks has its significant benefits over reading. But audiobooks, too, have some limitations. Here are few cons of audiobooks–

1. You’ll miss the drawings and images.
2. You may obtain the incorrect tone for the writers’ voice.
3. A lack of imagination, as you will not take a break to think about anything while reading continuously.
4. Last but not least, you will miss the smell of old or new book papers!

Conclusion

I would say the benefits of books overweight the cons of reading books. The disadvantages mentioned in this post are for people who don’t want to invest time to become a better version of themself.

So, I’d like to advise you read as many books as possible because what happens if you don’t read books is that you will not change and if you will not change you will not grow!