Books are amazing! You don’t need much to escape the world around and discover new knowledge, visit fascinating places or be somebody else for a while. There is a different world between paper pages (or clicks of a book reader ?) which can be yours when you allow yourself to submerge in the story. There is a whole new world at your hands, the incredible world of books and reading!

I wrote about all the benefits of reading in my older post (please check Benefits of reading books- why should you read every day if you haven’t before) but this post was inspired by the TED talk by Ann Morgan which I happen to discover today.

Ann Morgan is a writer and blogger who one day realized that her bookshelves contain mostly pieces of literature by British or North American authors and decided to challenge herself to read a book from every country in the world.

You can find the whole talk below, it is amazing story and pretty inspirational. The power of reading, learning, book lovers and humanity!

Few words of wisdom by Ann Morgan

“As those who enjoy reading will know, books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else’s mindset, so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes. That can be an uncomfortable experience, particularly if you’re reading a book from a culture that may have quite different values to your own. But it can also be really enlightening. Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking. And it can also show up blind spots in the way you might have been looking at the world.”

“These days, when I look at my bookshelves or consider the works on my e-reader, they tell a rather different story. It’s the story of the power books have to connect us across political, geographical, cultural, social, religious divides. It’s the tale of the potential human beings have to work together.”

“And, it’s testament to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever before for a stranger to share a story, a worldview, a book with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet.”

“If we all read more widely, there’d be more incentive for publishers to translate more books, and we would all be richer for that.”

Check out Ann’s blog , where you can find a complete list of the books she read, and what she learned along the way.

Very inspiring!

Check out also The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe book by Ann Morgan.

What are your thought about Ann’s journey? How diverse is your books selection?

What reading and the books mean for you?