It’s World Book Day and as you know, we are absolute book fiends! The feel of the cover, the sound when the pages turn, the joy of getting completely lost inside a written world, there’s so much to shout about so let’s celebrate the wonderful book with a look at the many benefits to be gained by reading.

Relaxation: Books are a wonderful source of escape. Whether you’re climbing through those wardrobe doors into Narnia or summiting Everest with your favourite explorer, they help you to get away from the stresses and strains of life, maybe just for ten minutes or maybe an entire rainy Sunday morning. In 2009, a group of American researchers tested the effects of 30 minutes of either reading, yoga or comedy on stress levels. All three significantly reduced acute stress levels by a similar amount, lowering both heart rate and blood pressure in what is a relatively short period of time; great news for book lovers.

Escape from screens and technology: There’s something so different about reading on paper compared to a screen; maybe it’s the lack of brightness and glare, maybe it’s just the fact that so much of our lives these days is a marriage of our eyes and a luminescent screen. Whatever it is, books help you to feel like you’ve escaped to a bygone era, one where the world moves at a slower pace, everybody knows each other and still says good morning, one where the words ‘Brexit’ and ‘Coronavirus’ sound like the gibberish nonsense of an alien being recently crash-landed just outside the village.

Stories and adventures: books are like keys to the imagination, unlocking doors to incredible and unthought of possibilities, opening your mind to facts, ideas and plots beyond your wildest dreams. Through millennia the human brain has thrived on storytelling to pass on fables of quests, incredible feats, pride in our ancestry and just sheer imagination. For much of that time we had to rely on the spoken word but the book opened up the possibility of sharing those stories and ideas with so many more people. Interestingly, some studies have shown that reading fiction books can help improve a person’s empathy skills, possibly because the book takes the person deep into the thoughts and feelings of another character.

Learning: books teach us so much; non-fiction gives us facts, knowledge, records of people’s experiences and ideas for the future, but fiction can teach us many things too - to think in different ways, about politics, religion, love, art, crime and much more all through a cleverly woven story and all books broaden our language skills, introducing us to phrases, sayings, expressions, other languages, grammar and more besides.

Brain function: I don’t know about you but I always feel so much better able to concentrate through reading; to immerse myself in one thing without interruptions. You don’t get that with technology, you try to read an article but get one of an abundance of different noises to signify a message from a friend, an email offering you the best sale prices on your favourite stuff, or alerts to tell you how many people liked your Facebook post earlier. Only in a book can you truly focus - it’s almost meditative in its quality, your eyes scanning the pages line after line, only occasionally looking away to check how many pages until the chapter ends and wondering when would be best to put it down before it draws you in ever deeper.

Sleep routine: reading an actual book before sleep is our nightly ritual - phones safely stored away in another room, it’s where we can truly start to unwind. And because it’s a habit (and you know how much I love those), our brains know that what comes after reading is sleep. It’s a cue that we use to set up a desired behaviour, a extension of Pavlov’s dogs…words on a page = time to snooze soon. One of the biggest wins of a book over an e-reader is that it doesn’t rely on blue light. The brightness of a screen stimulates the brain into essentially believing it is daytime and can increase levels of stress hormones, delaying sleep.

Pleasure: There’s just sheer joy to be had from reading a book; maybe it’s one you read as a child and reading it again, for yourself or to your children evokes memories of happy times. Maybe it’s the places it takes you; to the ends of the earth, alien worlds, a parallel universe or your favourite town or country, to the middle of nowhere or the centre of the busiest city on Earth. Maybe it’s the enjoyment you get from talking through the twists and turns of the plot with friends, maybe it’s the powerful feelings evoked by the writer; happiness, sadness, fear, passion, intrigue, or maybe it’s just the weight of the book in your hand, the smell of the paper or the fact that it signifies time just for you.

Whatever you love about books, keep reading, they’ll definitely help you to find your balance.