The oldest known library, dating back to the second millennium BC, in Thebes, Egypt, reportedly bore a sign above its portals in Greek: Psyches Iatreion, translated as “healing place of the soul”. The idea that reading may confer healing benefits is not new, but continues to intrigue readers and researchers. Of course, this doesn’t apply to reading […]… Learn more.

“Like most people I read a book or two on holiday,” says Stuart, a character in Julian Barnes’ 1991 novel Talking it Over. He does not have time for recreational reading; it must wait until he is at leisure. H… Learn more.

When practiced on a regular basis, reading has a number of cognitive and emotional benefits . Therefore, identifying the factors that promote this activity is of significant interest, in particular to allow the youn… Learn more.

A few years ago the dating website eHarmony found that profiles that included reading in their list of hobbies were more attractive to the opposite sex. Specifically, the data revealed that men who mention reading a… Learn more.

We all know that reading is good for children and for adults, and that we should all be reading more often. One of the most obvious benefits of reading is that it helps improve language skills. A major review of re… Learn more.

Learning to read begins long before the day when the child tries, for the first time, to decode the words in a book. In the first weeks of life, and even before they are born, babies are already skillfully processing … Learn more.

Reading is key to developing your understandings of what makes good academic writing. Anthropologist Ruth Behar (2020) suggests that academic writers shouldn’t stop at the classic texts in their discipline, but al… Learn more.

When you begin the PhD you will be told to read, and read a lot. But you’ll find not any old approach to reading will do. It’s a particular kind of reading that’s expected. So it’s important to get a grip on th… Learn more.

Tomi Ungerer's Giant of Zéralda has become what we call a classic for young people. Criticized by adults, when it was published in 1971 in L'École des loisirs because it challenged the codes and laws of illust… Learn more.

Neuroscience has established a clear link between music and language acquisition. To put it simply, learning music in the early years of school can help children lay the foundations of reading. In the brain, neur… Learn more.