The Role and Importance of Books in Everyday Life

ABSTRACT

Ever since man discovered fire the world has been constantly evolving. Advancement in
technology yields progress in all fields. New forms of entertainment have been invented to keep
pace with the evolution of technology. Why bother with reading when there are other, easier
ways of entertaining oneself? In a time when new forms of ways to divert ourselves spring up
like mushrooms, can books sustain themselves outside the classroom? Is there a place for such a
time-consuming activity in a fast-paced world and which place is that? What is the role of family
environment, background and school in creating a reading habit? Most importantly, why do we
read, what is the effect it has on us? How does it keep us under its spell? This research is a closer
look at the reading preferences, interests and motives of today. The method used to explore these
questions was a survey. A total of 25 participants contributed to the study.

key words – books, knowledge, personal development, recreation

 INTRODUCTION

I'm sure I heard this somewhere: ''We are the sum of everything we've read''. It's hard to
tell whether we are who we are partly because of what we have read or whether we read certain
books because of who we are. I love the sensation reading gives you, like something inside you
has escaped and leapt up on the page in front of you. It's scary how it knows you better than you
know yourself. Having a natural inclination towards laziness, reading was the perfect pastime for
me. As a child I read incessantly. It was somehow dreary to say goodbye to the children’s section
of the library, like relinquishing a part of myself, accepting defeat, my own mortality. Books
taught me so much more than school ever did. If you asked me what adjective I’d use to describe
the process of reading I’d say natural, it’s the easiest thing in the world. Unlike the boring things
we were taught in school, obligations which required cunning deception in order to weasel your
way through, reading was an escape. A window into a world of adventure which became mine
the moment I opened a book. Reality went out and an imaginary world formed in its stead. In this
alternate reality, time stood frozen. An intricate web of words would catch you under its spell
with mysteries waiting to be unraveled. But just like it started, it stopped, I no longer read with
the same zeal. Books were still there but they were no longer my fort. I still love it, I'm just not as
into it as I was. It's still a hell of a lot of fun though. This was an account of my experience with
books.

''Finally when we're done with it, we may find that we're a bit different from what we were before
we read it, that we have been changed a little...crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's
very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. ''

In this research I wanted to explore how reading had changed other people’s lives, in what way
had it influenced them. I wanted to explore their side of the story. I established a couple of
hypotheses to help me organize my thoughts in an orderly fashion. In supporting my thesis, I’ve
used quite a few online articles which have all been neatly filed under references.

1. Family is the number one contributing factor for developing a reading habit
2. Reading motivation in early stages of life is extrinsic, while it is intrinsic in later life
3. Required reads are unsuitable and unappealing to children
4. Light reading leads to heavier reading later in life
 METHOD

Participants

I conducted the study with the help of 25 participants. Demographic profile is drawn as
follows, 14 of the respondents were female and 11 male. Their age ranged between 21 and 55. I
included four basic categories relating to occupation: employed, unemployed, student (or still in
school) and pensioner. I also included general educational background because I wondered
whether there was a link between levels of education and the quantity and quality of reading
material. The division being: elementary school, high school, education above high school. As for
place of residence I cannot draw any conclusive evidence that would be enough to compare and
contrast. Most participants came from either Serbia or the US with a ratio of approximately 2:1.
Fifteen participants came from Serbia and six from the US. The remaining four resided in former
Yugoslavian countries (Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro).

Question type & structure

The questionnaire comprises a set of 31 questions. Five questions are basic demographic
questions relating to gender, age, place of residence, educational background and occupation.
Five of the remaining 26 questions are open-ended whereas the rest are various types of closed-
ended ones. The objective of those previously mentioned questions was to establish the following
categories: reading preferences, reading interests, reading motives and reading attitudes.
Although reading preferences and reading interests sound similar they are not the same thing.

Reading preferences deal with expressed attitudes about hypothetical situations. Given a certain
situation, how would the subjects respond. An intrinsic variability would be a specific sample of
subjects such as ethnicity, gender or age. The only mode of questioning I used linked to reading
preference is ranking. It will be examined according to gender since it is the only viable option
according to the number of participants.

Reading interests assess and describe actual reading behaviour, our reading patterns, therefore it
does not deal with the hypothetical. It tells us what we read, e.g. the fiction vs. non-fiction
question.

Reading attitudes are the way we perceive reading, our outlook on reading. It can be either
positive or negative and it depends on several factors, one of the strongest being family
environment which is closely examined in several questions.
 Reading motives are the reasons why we read. Those motives can be either intrinsic or
extrinsic. Intrinsic reading would be free voluntary reading, when we read for ourselves, for the
sheer pleasure of doing so. Extrinsic reading would be driven by the desire to please our parents,
teachers, boss and so on. I tackled this issue in the question of how we became interested in
reading in the first place and a few others.

First I distributed my questionnaire. After getting feedback on it, I began to assess the
inflow of data. First I checked for any suspicious inconsistency in my respondent’s answers and
ruled it out of the examination process. Then I divided the answers into the aforementioned
categories for an easier overview. The major distinction I made was related to gender as the most
obvious difference.

THE RESULTS AND DATA ANALYSIS

First and foremost, educational background, out of 25 participants in the survey, 64 %

(that is 16 people) circled education above high school, 8 % (2 people) circled elementary school
and 28 % (7 people) circled high school. Fifty-six per cent of participants are female and 42 %
are male.

Sixteen per cent openly admitted to reading not being an essential part of their life. (one female
respondent and 3 male ones, which would make females the more avid readers with around 92 %
) with a whopping 84 % of certified book lovers. On to the categories.

Reading motivation

Most people in the survey had positive connotations associated with reading, the most
common response being ‘’broadening your horizons’’, only 12 % had the negative ‘’social
isolation’’.

As far as free voluntary reading is concerned, 76% were active readers, 16 % were passive
readers and 8% were non-readers. The love of books shared by many was in most cases a habit
adopted in childhood ( 60%), four participants claimed to have started reading profusely in
adulthood and two in adolescence. Only five participants come from a rural environment and all
5 are book lovers, therefore we can dismiss the link between a rural background and a diminished
love of reading, at least in this survey. Almost all respondents claimed that reading had helped
them define their personality, two begged to differ. When it came to reading making you more
mature than your peers, opinions were more equally distributed, 57 % claimed that they were
indeed more mature than their peers. Family was the most commonly given answer to the
question what got them interested in reading ( 66% ), four people claimed they had found their
own way, 1 found school incentive and 2 got intrigued by what their friends were reading. One
particularly interesting story details a man who got interested in reading through a most unlikely
medium, a video game (Massive Effect). He liked the plot so much that he decided to pick up the
corresponding book, though he did admit it wasn’t a great book per se, but it got him started. As
for the profound, life-changing effects books had, the most beautiful one was inspiring creativity
in others with three people becoming writers, which brings me to my next topic - the link
between occupation and literary ambitions. Out of those whose occupation had something to do
with books only two had literary ambitions. Those who had nothing to do with books except in
their leisure time and the occasional book reading at the workplace had a significant increase in
literary ambitions, six people were interested in becoming writers.

Reading interests

No battle has yet been lost when it comes to books (except perhaps the online reading
part, only three people circled that answer, romanticism is not dead yet), with a bunch of people
selecting the answer ‘‘I buy books’’, though it slightly trails behind ‘’ I borrow books from the
library’’. Fiction won a landslide victory over non-fiction. (85%)

As expected, in the ‘’if you don’t read what do you read then?’’ category, the award went to ‘’I
surf the Internet’’ with 92 %, the other 2 probably just don’t have Internet, or have a really lousy
connection. Magazines and comic books shared the last place with 2 votes each. One surprising
piece of information came from one of the two pensioners who graced my survey with their
answers. She wrote ‘’cereal boxes’’. (she also reads comic books and surfs the Internet, she’s one
hell of a lady)

Reading preferences

When it comes to choosing which book to read, not surprisingly the ‘’synopsis/page’’ style is
what most people prefer, it amassed the highest number of votes, with ‘’author & genre’’ hot on
its trail, the 3rd place was reserved for recommendations. Equally unsurprising was that nobody
wanted to take the book and run away with it. It got a rather unimpressive score, exactly 0 people
voted for it.
Reading attitudes

As for encouraging their children to read only one person voted against it, which gives it
the highest percentage yet, 96%. Not all family environments are that supportive, only 64% are
literacy-rich environments according to data. All is not black though, a plethora of participants
admitted to being read bedtime stories when they were children with only two claiming they
didn’t recall such a memory. In the category of ‘’where do you read?’’ bed is by far the most
alluring place for most readers. The only answer that stood out was by a certain US John Doe
who enjoys taking a book with him to lunch instead of actual company. As for ‘’when do you
read’’ the tables have turned there, most people seem to live on the wild side and read whenever
they can and as much as they can. As for the open-ended questions their role in this survey was to
determine what types of books you read as a child and where do you go from there. Do we
advance or do we regress into becoming non-readers? The most common answers included
various fairytales and children’s books (notably Heidi and The Little Prince), they do pop up
again under books that made a strong impression, probably because they were read at an
impressionable age but not as current favorites, that place is reserved for more mature books such
as Steppenwolf, the works of Goethe and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to name a few. As to how
reading stacks up against other activities, the results are encouraging. Listening to music is the
winner, scoring nine more times than other activities with both male and female population.
Reading is somewhere in the middle, coming in 4th place in the female category and in the male a
little less successful, trailing behind activities such as playing video games, sports and the
internet which puts it at place no. 5, for emphasis sake, it is still above studying. I left
compulsory reads at the very end, most people seemed to breeze through them, only two people
responded with ‘’all-time favourites’’, most said it was enjoyable (56 %) and five claimed to
have skipped/ didn’t like them. ( 3 of those are active, compulsive readers ).

CONCLUSIONS

Reverting to my original hypotheses, out of the four of them, I have to revoke only one.
Maybe compulsory reads don’t get the attention they deserve, but they don’t generate any public
hatred either, negative responses mostly come from people who hadn’t even read them. To
summarize, family is the factor that usually leads to a lifetime love of books, we don’t regress but
instead advance in our pursuit of knowledge and constantly improve our literary taste and we do
read for the sake of others at the beginning, afterwards we read to please ourselves.
 REFERENCES:

Electronic sources:

1. Reading interests vs. reading preferences: Using the research, written by Katherine L.
Spangler
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20198352?uid=3738928&uid=2134&uid=373760511&ui
d=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=373760501&uid=60&purchase-
type=article&accessType=none&sid=21102576897601&showMyJstorPss=false&seq=2&showAcc
ess=false

2. online article The Influence of Reading, written by Diane Mehta

http://www.redassociates.com/conversations/on-modern-learnin/memory/

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_motivation

4. terms fvr ( free voluntary reading ) and light/heavy reading are taken from the book

Krashen, S.D. (2004). The power of reading: insights from the research. 2d ed. Westport CT:
Libraries Unlimited & Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.

5. Quote at the end if the introduction is taken from Ursula K. Le Guin’s introduction to
her sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness
 Questionnaire

1. What is your gender? Male/female

2. What is your age?
3. What is your occupation? Student ( or still in schoo), employed, unemployed, pensioner
4. Which country are you from?
5. What is your level of education? ( e.g. if you currently attending high school, circle that
answer, for my survey's purpose it doesn't matter that you haven't graduated yet )
Elementary/high school/education above high school
6. Do you consider reading books an important part of your life? Yes/no
7. Which of the following do you associate with reading books?

 Broadening your horizons

 Pleasure
 Relaxation
 Social isolation
 Time-consuming
 Escape
 Freedom
 Good language skills

With the exception of books required for school or work how often do you read in your free
time? *This question is required.

 Often ( a few days/weeks ago )

 Occasionally ( a few months ago )
 Rarely ( a few years ago )

4. When did your love of books start?

 Childhood
 Adolescence
 Adulthood
 Maturity

5. Where do you live? *This question is required.

 In a rural area ( villages, etc. )

 In an urban area (cities, towns )

6. Did your parents read to you when you were a child? *This question is required.

 Yes
 No

7. What about books you had to read for school? *This question is required.

 I didn't read them

 I mostly enjoyed them
 They ended up as some of my all-time favourites
 I was indifferent/didn't like them for the most part

8. When choosing a book for yourself, which of the following applies to you and how much (
with 1 being the lowest slider value and 7 being the highest )
I look at the number of pages
I search by author or genre I'm interested in at the moment
I read the synopsis or a few pages of the book
I look for recommendations (online sources/friends/newspapers)
I judge a book by its cover
I'm not superficial I judge a book by its title
I randomly grab a book and take it home with me
9. Will you encourage your children to read books? ( if you don't have or want any, let's play
pretend for the sake of the survey ) *This question is required.

 Yes
 No

10. Do people in your family enjoy reading? ( by family I mean parents and siblings ) *This
question is required.

 Yes
 No
 Some do and some don't

11. Has any book left a profound, lifelong effect on you and which book was it? ( or books, name
as many as you want ) *This question is required.

 Other Please enter an 'other' value for this selection.

 No
 12. Has your reading habit increased or decreased with age? *This question is required.

 It has increased
 It has decreased
 It has remained fairly constant

13. Do you think reading books made you more mature than your peers?

 Yes
 No

14. Do you believe reading has helped define your personality?

 Yes
 No

15. If you don't read books, what do you read? ( if you read books, what else do you read? ) *This
question is required.

 Newspapers
 Magazines
 Comic books
 I surf the Internet
 Other Please enter an 'other' value for this selection.

16. Which do you prefer?

 Fiction (a story or book written about imaginary characters and events and not based on real
people and facts)
 Non-fiction (writing that is about real events and facts)

17. How did you become interested in books?

 Family
 Friends
 School
 Other Please enter an 'other' value for this selection.

18. Have books inspired you or changed your life in any way? If yes, please say in what way.
 Yes Please enter an 'other' value for this selection. *This question is required.
 No

19. Does your occupation have anything to do with books? *This question is required.

 Yes
 No

20. Do you have any literary ambitions yourself? *This question is required.

 Yes
 No

21. I ( please select all that applies to you )

 borrow books from friends

 buy books
 borrow books from the library
 read books online

22. What was your favourite book when you were a child? If you didn't have one, do you
remeber the book that got you into reading? ( name as many books as you'd like )

23. What is your favourite book now? ( more than one is welcome )

24. Why is it your favourite? ( write the first thing that comes to mind about it, there are no
right and wrong answers here )

25. Where do you most often read?

 In bed or in some other comfy position
 In class, no better way to zone out of a boring lecture
 On public transport
 At work, they don't pay me much anyway
 Other Please enter an 'other' value for this selection.

26. When do you read?

 In the morning
 Before I go to sleep
 Whenever I can
 I have no particular time
 Other Please enter an 'other' value for this selection.

27. Rank the following activities according to time spent on doing them ( with 1 being the
lowest slider value and 9 being the highest ) *This question is required.
Watching films, tv shows, etc.
Surfing the Internet
Playing video games
Reading
Doing sports
Listening to music
Studying
Socializing
Other activities ( gardening, cooking, etc. )