No snotty remarks. No highbrow peacocking. Just be straightforward and clear, Veeky Forums. What is, in your opinion...

No snotty remarks. No highbrow peacocking. Just be straightforward and clear, Veeky Forums. What is, in your opinion, the most beneficial result of reading?

Makes me want to kill myself less.

it's a fun, quiet leisure activity

Introspection

Empathy

Picking up girls/conversation starter

How about the expanding of the intellect and understanding?

Stimulates your brain (exercise)

Definitely not the most beneficial but it develops your vocabulary

I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress.

Articulation
Critical thinking (not necessarily a direct causal relationship but certainly correlated in some magnitude)
Vocabulary

It helps me have something to talk about so I'm not such a boring faggot
You've got to start somewhere

I love the feeling of finding the perfect expression for a phenomenon. I also love figuring stuff out. Reading makes both of those happen.

I want to know a lot and it's interesting. Books are fun and also soul crushing, because I remember nothing, understand nothing and it makes me feel like a total failure. I want to kill myself.

>beneficial, end in existential despair

Allows you to connect with dfw.

It gives me mental content to play around with. Also I only read textbooks, so I have an equivalent of several Bachelors by now.

Provides a frame of reference for ideas and the world.

Gee I dunno having fun maybe. Fucking self improvement faggots. Threads like this confirm that 90% of literature "enthusiasts" really, really hate reading for its own sake.

Now if you said beneficial side effect I would've stayed quiet because it would be dumb to deny this but "result"? You either read to have fun, to further knowledge so you can eventually build something of value or to be a faggot.

RESULTS just came in, you're a faggot.

ree~

1. entertainment
2. education
3. an inherently good "sublime" that cannot be compromised because it is the one and only goal that all art has in common

Expanding your thought-sphere or perspective and nourishing your imagination for even a little bit. If you can also get something from it that will have a place in your life, even better. There are also side benefits like learning new words, having something to talk about etc.

alright camus lad?

Knowledge and exercise for the brain. Even the dumbest book will have some little tidbit of information--a new word, perhaps--that you didn't know, and some (good historical fiction or older works) are packed with information. The framing of narratives, mysteries, etc., is good practice in empathy, alternate viewpoints, analysis--all proven by studies. Reading makes you smarter, more knowledgeable, more open-minded and empathetic to others, and can be done almost any time, anywhere, for free or almost free.

You missed the first two sentences of the OP.

reading is a requirement for writing well, prove me wrong

It puts thoughts in your head and gives you the language to describe things you might not have been able to vocalize otherwise.

The danger today is that everything is image based, which just emotionally upsets you with none of the advantages of reading.

It gives you and your imagination more personal freedom than any other medium by engaging the fewest bodily senses. I think the greater your own mental creativity, the more powerful and engrossing you can find the book. I still love other forms of art, too, but literature is my favourite. In particular I like abstract art and instrumental music for allowing the same level of ambiguos projection by the viewer. The greater the definition imposed by an artist, the less freedom I feel to interpret it as I want to - not always a bad thing when there's a direct message to come across, but my personal favourites are always complicated messes.