Growing Up Surrounded by Books Has a Lasting Positive Effect on the Brain, Says a New Scientific Study

I sim­ply note that in this arti­cle, and in the abstract of the study that it describes, and links to above the vari­able of impor­tance is to be _surrounded_ by books in some­thing they call a “book ori­ent­ed” social­iza­tion style, indi­cat­ed by home library size. The notion that actu­al­ly _reading_ these books is not broached, at least not here or in the abstract. This seems to me to indi­cate a like­ly con­found, as the result may be caused by anoth­er fac­tor that attends hav­ing a siz­able home library. The most obvi­ous one would be social class, I’d think. As one moves upward in social class to the upper-mid­dle class at least, the pres­ence of books as mark­ers of class ris­es as well. That would be my sus­pi­cion, at least. If cor­rect, then the pre­dic­tor of the “pos­i­tive effect” on the brain would be social class and the mag­ic totem of the pres­ence of books would be less effec­tive. We want it to be books, because then we can assign suc­cess or fail­ure to the indi­vid­ual, or at least to the indi­vid­u­al’s fam­i­ly. If social class is deter­mini­tive, then we need to engage in com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fi­cult work, both edu­ca­tion­al­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, and we cer­tain­ly don’t want that.

Researchers found that the more men­tal incite­ment a young­ster gets around the age of four, the more built up the parts of their minds com­mit­ted to dialect and insight will be in the decades ahead.

Some­thing that’s not tak­en into account is the access to, and the use of, pub­lic libraries. My fam­i­ly moved around a great deal, from the time I was 6, until 11, and lived in a small ‘mobile’ home, that had pre­cious lit­tle room for many books. But I was intro­duced to the pub­lic library at age 7, and was absolute­ly stunned that there could be so many. The first book I ever actu­al­ly owned was an inex­pen­sive copy, but new, of Tom Sawyer, giv­en to me as a 7th birth­day present, which I read in about a day and a half, then reread, and reread, and reread … until I was tak­en to the local library, where the idea of so many books avail­able to be read for FREE just made my day. Addi­tion­al­ly, when we vis­it­ed friends and rel­a­tives, I did have access to a vari­ety of mag­a­zines, that var­ied in con­tent from Fish­ing and Hunt­ing, to mechan­i­cal sub­jects, avi­a­tion, trav­el, home projects and build­ing. There were more mag­a­zines than books, actu­al­ly, and they were much more com­pre­hen­sive in their dis­cus­sions, and bet­ter writ­ten, than now, though I doubt I actu­al­ly appre­ci­at­ed that. The library also pro­vid­ed a more social con­text for read­ing, which the soli­tary envi­ron­ment at home, while both par­ents worked, did not. As life became more set­tled, a few books made their way into a ‘real’ house, most­ly ref­er­ence books to start — a Mer­ri­am-Web­ster Col­le­giate Dic­tio­nary was the first, which intro­duced the for­mal world of words, that has become almost an obses­sion ever since — near­ly 70 years now. I do pos­sess large-ish num­ber of books, now, many yet to be read — but it all start­ed with the pub­lic library. Sad­ly they seem to a much dimin­ished resource in many places. Far too many Carnegie Libraries have been left to dete­ri­o­rate, the build­ing them­selves often aban­doned, when the archi­tec­ture was con­sid­ered ‘too expen­sive’ to main­tain, or restore.

Is this real­ly true?

I empathise with Gene Engene’s com­ments on the pub­lic library habit and ben­e­fits. A home library is cer­tain­ly good, but the very ‘famil­iar­i­ty’ of its con­tents, both read and UN read, over time tends to dull the edge of the excite­ment of ‘find­ing some­thing new’, which is a major plus in read­ing books! One of my bet­ter mem­o­ries of board­ing school life was our, real­ly quite large, library-cum- read­ing room. And the ver­i­ta­ble shelf-full of Zane Grey’s col­lec­tion of West­erns; red rex­ine bound with titles etched in gold on the bind­ing cov­ers. Many gov­ern­ments fuss and focus on ‘edu­ca­tion’ at pri­ma­ry and advanced lev­els. They might do bet­ter to fund and main­tain high qual­i­ty pub­lic libraries at which young­sters from state fund­ed schools are man­dat­ed to spend school time. Curi­ous young minds will do the rest — bet­ter than many teach­ers!

Signs of the times?
A pic­ture of books that is of pic­ture books.
Mea­sur­ing out­comes “on the brain” . . . based on books around the body.

If you open a book, it will open you — and enter, way beyond the brain.

”A book is a door; on the oth­er side is some­where else . . .
Books work from the inside out. They are a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen­ing some­where in the soul.”
From Jeanette Win­ter­son­’s won­der­ful essay, “A Bed, A Book, A Moun­tain;” with essays from nine oth­er authors in “Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!” (Vin­tage Books, 2011).