“A room without books is like a body without a soul” – Marcus Tullius Cicero. What Cicero meant by this was that he had hoped that books that he read would change and enhance the way that we thought, feel, and connect with others. Others have taken their own spin on it, choosing to craft the meaning as books are immortal. A room with books is a room with millions of lessons and virtues that can enhance someone’s knowledge if you only open it up. Books to me are a way to escape from reality and delve into a different world for only five minutes or hours depending on how much you decide to read.

Books can be interpreted or stereotyped as these long boring stories that we have to read in high school or those scholarly texts that you lose interest in after the introduction, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Books come in all shapes and sizes and types, there are comic books, picture books, fiction and nonfiction, poem books. The list goes on and on of what you can read. It doesn’t matter what you read, knowledge is power and books are a great way to gain that. The fun part about a book is that it takes you into this fantasy world that you create in your head, enjoying what characters are doing. Behind the scenes, you’re learning new ideas and expanding your mind.

The Expert Editor created an infographic that showed how reading improves not only your mind but your body. In the infographic, a study showed that reading is considered a brain exercise and reading frequently decreases mental decline for the elderly by 32%. For your body, researchers have found that reading can reduce stress by 68% and a study showed depressed patients in a mental health ward described feeling better and had more positive thoughts when they read stories aloud. For younger children, those that read are able to grasp abstract concepts, apply logic into scenarios, and utilize good judgment. Also, children’s books expose a child to 50% more words than a TV show.

Without a doubt reading enhances your brain but it starts out with the right book. Immersing yourself with a good book makes your brain come alive. You don’t have to start out reading a book like War and Peace or Dante’s Inferno to gain anything. Whatever your interests are, there is a book out there that can accommodate that. It doesn’t matter when you start or for how long you read because a book is always timeless. During a time of staying home all day every day and passing through boredom, there is never a time like now to start reading.