Benefits of Books

When the holidays approach, our places can start to seem visually cluttered—and sometimes this leads to a little voice in our heads suggesting we get rid of books.

Unloading a few books that haven’t been important to us, donating them to the Salvation Army, hospital libraries, etc., may be in order—but don’t part with books that have had a meaningful effect on how you’ve thought and lived unless you must (and a must situation in this case is truly severe, for instance, you are downsizing to a place where there will literally be no place, on bookshelves or elsewhere, for your books).

One of the prime reasons for keeping any books that relate to your profession is that we learn more effectively from books that we hold in our hands than from online texts, and we also remember more of what we’ve read from those in-paper books also.

Books that you’ve marked up in some way as you’ve learned are also stocked with the clues that will help you refresh your knowledge of important principles when you need them again—you may have forgotten lots of things about how to do a factor analysis, but if you open up the related textbook you’ll again encounter the note in the margin that helped you do them the first time you were asked to do so.

Seeing books, even seeing just the spines of books, whether they are somehow related to how you earn a living or not, can also remind you of key thoughts you’ve had at different times in your life, such as ethical principles you hold dear or plans you’ve made for your life. When you’re pondering, those reminders can be very helpful.

Books can also remind you about important achievements in your life—your shelf of statistics texts, for instance, keep you from forgetting that advanced degree in stats you are proud to possess and which has set the life course that you now enjoy, for example.

Books can be ungainly, and God knows that they’re heavy, but they can be one of the very best things in our lives.