Social Gold

Dr Seuss, by the way, is required reading. Just brilliant.

In fact, even our social life benefits from reading, and not in a nerdy book club kind of way.

As the aforementioned article noted, well-read people (or people who have read a lot on a wide range of subjects) can have more in-depth conversations, and are able to relate to a wider range of people.

This even benefits our own self-esteem. When we learn new things we get a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of "I knew that!" when we hear it again. This is good news for our self-esteem.

Another benefit or reading comes from reading fiction. Fiction is all about the characters. What this means is that when reading fiction (whether Jane Austen or a murder mystery), we actively and unconsciously try to guess at the mental state of those characters: is he the murderer; is she secretly in love with him, no, him; can anyone be that nice... and so on. Doing this while reading fiction is excellent practice for real life.

In short, books are mental and social gold.