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Here is a deep and existential question.

How has reading changed your life? Without reading, how do you think you and your life would be different?

Without reading and books, first I wouldn’t have the great community of PBT. I come from an uncultured and long established way of viewing things. Without books and vicariously experiencing different places and cultures and viewpoints, I feel I would be very angry and unyielding with different viewpoints.

I also like to argue point counter point and reading allows me to do that with myself. And learn how much I don’t know.

And I’d watch way more tv.

I can't imagine life without reading, since my parents started reading to me before I remember. My mother's family has been literate for more than 1000 years (Icelandic) and my dad's for hundreds at the very least; even the farmers and poor people could read. My maternal grandfather read books in two languages but only had a grade 8 education (more than grade 8 is now!) because he had to work on the family farm.

Technically I can imagine it, but there's no way to know just how different I would be.

That said, there are books that have made an enormous impact on my life, but the list is too long for one post.

Even though my parents only had 8th Grade educations and were not readers as I was growing up - farming is a 24/7 job - especially dairy farming - we were always read to as children and taught to read from a young age. Public Library visits were part of the weekly trip to town for us kids as we got older although as I've described before, the local public library didn't really have books between adult and children's picture books, not even the series like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys - and had restrictions on access to adult books until you were 16 (though one of the 2 librarians always let me and let me check them out with my mother's library card. School libraries were also very limited then. Thank god for those Scholastic Book purchase options! In fact at one point my mother found somewhere to subscribe to get books for us - The Happy Hollisters for me (loved them!) and Dr. Seuss for my younger sister. Those books were read by my younger sister and I until tattered.

The moment that reading became a personal passion was my 10th birthday and my ten year older brother gave me 3 Nancy Drews. Mysteries are still my favorite genre. I never looked back after that. My first 'boyfriend' and I bonded by swapping my Nancy Drews for his Hardy Boys books. I quickly moved on to Agatha Christie, then the suspense of Mary Steward and Helen MacInnes and others, gradually finding Alistair McLean and at 15 Mario Puzo's the Godfather.

I've never looked back and books and reading have been a critical part of my life ever since. So many of my friendships and relationships have revolved around books to some degree - reading, sharing, discussing, arguing about.

It no doubt contributed to my being a francophile, spending a semester studying in Paris, all my travels and interest in travelling. It opened up a whole expanded world of culture, art, performance, travel and ultimately led to my becoming a lawyer. I mean all those trials and lawyers appearing in the crime fiction I read.

Reading makes time pass easily, provides comfort, escape and of course knowledge. I can't imagine not reading.

Oh and I wanted to mention that I also read to my younger sisters and bought them books, handed down my books to them. I made sure my youngest sister - 11 years younger - got many of the children's classics - like Winnie the Pooh, although I missed a lot because I didn't know about them. Reading is very important to the three Racht Sisters, sharing books - regularly shipping boxes of books we have read to each other. Our older brother isn't a reader of books - but is very up-to-date on current affairs reading many magazines and newspapers everyday. My dad became quite the reader in his later years - I'd catch him standing at the paperback book rack in the chain pharmacy or supermarket reading the smutty parts of romance novels (I assume they were the smutty bits) - when he was in his late 80s. 😅

He'd pick up any book we left lying around, would buy used books at yard sales, even worked through a few old Readers Digest Condensed books we had in the house. It was a new side to him we didn't see when he was still farming.

I know that reading shaped my worldview from a very young age. Though my parents were not readers, they believed reading to children was important. I read voraciously as a teen, particularly the classics. I was bullied in high school, so I escaped into my books so I wouldn't have to deal with those people. I have never been a television or movie watcher, so I read instead. I cannot imagine my life without it.

Joy D wrote: "I know that reading shaped my worldview from a very young age. Though my parents were not readers, they believed reading to children was important. I read voraciously as a teen, particularly the cl..."

I cannot imagine my life without reading, either.

I love what you shared Jason - and the question. Reading opens worlds, and has us learn about so many other cultures and viewpoints. But it also breeds empathy, compassion, humanity, and always love.

Also, some of us are storytellers and story livers naturally. I have always been drawn to character, plots, dialogue, transformation, and dynamics. My world and life is all about that, and also my profession. I have always said psychologists are readers and writers. How could we not?

I have also been a reader all my life. But I did not hit the big time until I joined GR's.

I was scheduled for my first lumber fusion and so I went to the library and found books that were series to read during my recovery. I then scanned GR's, which I just heard about, and found this group and joined. This was my first group and I was so warmly welcomed. I did not feel so alone as I lay couch-bound for months. Two back surgeries later this group is still my savior and I thank you all!

I read so much when I was in middle and high school - I distinctly remember reading in physics class when I was in 9th grade. I sort of dropped off for a few years in college, but I started picking it up again in 2015 before dropping off while getting my doctorate.

Now, I've picked up steam again and since I'm officially fully done with school, I'm hoping that I can maintain my reading pace. I especially love being able to go to new worlds, which is probably why I mostly read sci-fi/fantasy, but I also really like character development heavy books. I'll read anything with thorough/good worldbuilding and deep character development! I also really enjoy sharing books I love with friends and getting book recs from them - I am actually hosting a blind date with a book swap for some friends in March!

Additionally, I think reading really helped me develop my love of writing fiction, which led me to study psychology (just like @Amy said!) and essentially led to my career as a forensic psychologist, so I can safely say that if I hadn't been a reader when I was younger, I would not be doing what I do now.

Theresa wrote: "Oh and I wanted to mention that I also read to my younger sisters and bought them books, handed down my books to them. I made sure my youngest sister - 11 years younger - got many of the children's..."

My sister and I read to two of our younger brothers; we have a picture of my eldest reading to my younger two when she was quite young. I'm guessing that bookworms with younger siblings like to do this :)

My brother who was 6 came home from school each day and taught 4-year-old me to read from the Dick & Jane books. Before that, my mother read to us. I still remember the first book she brought us from the library, which was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. From then on, I read all the time. We had some children's books that had belonged to my mother and grandfather, so I read a lot of old-time and British stories. The local library was small and the school library smaller, but I read everything I could and repeated my favorites. I also got Scholastic books and for my birthday and Christmas I asked for Bobbsey Twins books. I didn't want Nancy Drew, unlike most kids, I never wanted to be older than I was or read about teenagers before I was one.

Because we were far from town, we had no after-school activities or weekend activities, plenty of time to read. We watched TV in the evenings as a family, since there were so many sitcoms and variety shows that were ok for all ages.

My mother read a lot, her family was very educated and she got a degree in the 1930's, not common for women then. My dad was very self-educated and read about politics, economics, etc. My mother read literary fiction and a LOT of mysteries. My brother became a huge sci-fi fan.

As an adult, I cut down on TV watching a lot when my kids were young, because there were so few evening things I wanted them to watch. And later, I just wasn't that interested, and preferred to read. I am often amazed at how many series some people watch, but they don't read over 100 books a year as I have been doing for a long time.

Not being able to read would be a terrible fate for me, at least there are now audiobooks.

Joy D wrote: "I know that reading shaped my worldview from a very young age. Though my parents were not readers, they believed reading to children was important. I read voraciously as a teen, particularly the cl..."

I think I was very much like you, Joy. My parents were not big readers (though Dad more than Mom), and I was also bullied as a pre-teen (it did get better in high school), so it was then I started losing myself in books. And the reading stuck even when things got better!

My mother always said I could read when I was three. I remember my cousins (who babysat us in the summer) teaching me to write my name. I hadn't started school yet.

And I remember that first interview with the nun who was assessing my readiness for school. She seemed impressed with some of my answers (when she showed me a lion I said, "that's the King of Beasts" and proceeded to tell her all about a book I was reading on that subject). But, rules are rules (Catholic school), and since I was only 5, they would not let me start in first grade. Now, in my little 5-year-old brain, I believed that kids went to school to read ... literally, to read all day long. But KINDERGARTEN wasn't school. Who needed naps! And in K the teacher read TO you, because they didn't start teaching reading until 1st grade. So, my response was that I would just stay home for another year, because I could read all day at home anyway. I didn't need to learn my colors (already knew them) and I didn't need anyone to read TO me. Of course, my mother and the nuns did not agree with my plan so I went to kindergarten and was bored to tears.

I got "in trouble" more than once because I was reading ahead and not doing the assignment ... teacher didn't want to hear that I'd already read the entire book twice. By 4th grade I gave up and just sat with my head cradled on my arms on the desk for much of the day. When I came back to class after Thanksgiving break I was told I was now in 5th grade.

Specifically how reading has impacted my life goes to high school when I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. I flew through that book I was so enthralled by the psychology of Raskolnikov! And I decided I would major in psych for college, which I did.

If I couldn't read? The last month, due to packing, moving and now unpacking, I've hardly read a book. It's the first time that I will have not read for the tag since joining PBT back on Shelfari. And it's making me miserable. But needs must .... At least I know this is temporary.

That's funny about kindergarten, BC. I always felt gypped because in our rural area there was no kindergarten. I knew that in kindergarten you got to play with toys, playhouses, and such but in 1st grade you just had school (which was boring since I already knew how to read and do simple math.) But since in the country school, 1st and 2nd grades were in the same room, I supposedly did both in the same year and went to 3rd grade the next year. After that the teachers tried to give me some "enrichment" but I was still bored a lot till we moved to the city and I got to go to a "gifted" class. I was never a troublemaker, always wanting to please the teacher, except that I would get reprimanded for talking to my neighbors too much.

Books impacting my life - the summer after high school, I read War and Peace, which made me decide to take Russian. I didn't end up using that later, so it wasn't a lasting impact. Another thing was that when I read and loved The Mists of Avalon, there was an author's note at the end about modern women's spirituality groups carrying on goddess traditions. I got involved with that and that led to the first presentations I made, which morphed into paid talks I now do on issues from women's history. I usually get my ideas for talks from new books that come out on lesser-known figures.