Read Anything

School makes us study “literary texts” but is that really what we should be reading? Our advice for students and parents: read anything.

Reading and writing are arguably the most important skills we learn at school. If we can understand what we read we can learn almost anything else and avoid believing in false stories. If we can write well we can advocate for our needs and leverage the attention of others.

But do we really learn these things “at school?”

While school contributes the lion’s share of progress in student’s reading and writing, students who don’t also read for fun come up a little short. Trust us, when we see a student’s imaginative writing submission we can tell if they’ve only read the books assigned at school (or maybe not even those).

There are many tropes, cliches and aspects of genre that you can only incorporate in your own work once you’ve read them elsewhere. How else would you know that a wizard speaks in a “booming” voice, rather than just a loud one. How would you know that your heart stopping is a bad thing, but your heart skipping a beat is a good thing? How else would you know when to use “darted” as opposed to “rushed,” “ran,” “fled,” or “streaked”?

It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to read only the most prestigious texts in hopes that your writing style will sound like the great authors’, but that is too difficult a feat for most students (and adults) to achieve — plus, you’ll sound like you just crawled out of the last century, which isn’t what most people want to read. Not to worry! All the great turns of phrase have been reused, remixed and reimagined by every author that has come around since. It’s much more important to read a great volume of texts than it is to read a great text.

The biggest obstacle in reading more is not choosing to do it over the other options we have available. I’d certainly rather watch videos than read the encyclopedia. When I’m hooked on a good book, however, I look forward to sitting down and reading it all evening. Make the choice easier by following your heart and picking something you enjoy — don’t pressure yourself to finish a book you don’t like either. And if you need a comfortable place to restart your reading habit, rereading something you loved is a great way to remind yourself of how enjoyable books can be.

So read what you like: read trash, read fanfiction, read manga, read romance, read children’s books and blog posts. All that matters is that you read as much as possible.

PS: Audiobooks totally count!