We know that reading is good for children and for adults as well. Now a new study suggests that just being around books has its benefits — even if you don’t read them a lot. A team of researchers in Australia finds that growing up in a home with a sizable library improves literacy, number sense and even technological knowledge in later life.

The researchers were interested in what is called the “Radiation Effect”. “Radiation Effect” is a situation where children grow up around books, even though they don’t read them as much as their parents would like them to. But somehow books benefit them.

Joanna Sikora, a sociologist at the Australian National University, and her colleagues studied data collected between 2011 and 2015. The survey tested more than 160,000 adults from 31 different societies, and it included a question about how many books testers had in their homes during adolescence (青春期的).

“We found that people who grew up around books had better literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving skills than people who had fewer books growing up but had similar education levels, similar jobs and even similar adult habits.” In fact, teens who only made it through high school but were raised in a bookish environment were successful as well in adulthood as college graduates who grew up in a house lacking books.

“So if we grow up in a house, in a home where parents enjoy books, where books are given as birthday presents and cherished and valued, this is something that becomes a part of our identity and gives us this lifelong influence to improve our reading and writing ability.” said Sikora.

So keep those shelves filled with books. Your kids will not only be grateful, they’ll be more likely to be able to spell grateful correctly as well.

I never knew anyone who’d grown up in Jackson without being afraid of Mrs. Calloway our librarian. She ran Jackson’s Carnegie Library absolutely by herself. SILENCE in big black letters was on signs hung everywhere. If she thought you were dressed improperly, she sent you straight back home to change your clothes. I was willing；I would do anything to read.

My mother was not afraid of Mrs. Calloway. She wished me to have my own library card to check out books for myself, She took me in to introduce me. “Eudora is nine years old and has my permission to read any book she wants from the shelves, children or adults,” Mother said.

Mrs. Calloway made her own rules about books. You could not take back a book to the library on the same day you`d taken it out；it made no difference to her that you’d read every word in it and needed another to start. You could take out two books at a time and two only. So two by two, I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. I knew this was extreme happiness, knew it at the time.

My mother shared this feeling of mine. Now, I think of her as reading so much of the time while doing something else. I remember her reading a magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game of "Little Red Riding Hood" with my brother's two daughters. She'd just look up at the right time, long enough to answer– in character –"The better to eat you with, my dear," and go back to her place in the magazine article.

If having to make a choice between reading an e-book and a printed book, which would most people choose? Some would go for an e-book while some still prefer the hard-printed book.

Undoubtedly, e-books do have benefits. Firstly, changes to an electronic publication are relatively easy to make. They are quicker to obtain. E-books are more easily updated. The printed books on many subjects can become outdated very quickly. Secondly, e-books can be easily and quickly kept up to date. You usually get far more than just the e-books. Most e-books are sold with bonuses and related information that usually do not come with the purchase of a printed book.Moreover, they take up less space. Instead of a big library,you can fit literally thousands of books on your computer. It also makes it easier to share this information with families and friends.

For nearly twenty years, additionally, futurists have been predicting the development of printed books. They hold the view that digital e-books are on the edge of replacing paper books. However, this has not been the case.A printed book has its advantages too. Firstly, it is an object that can be carried and used alone. It needs no electric outlet (插座), no batteries, nothing. Secondly, e-books will always require some forms of support that the printed book does not need. I believe that the online publishing has not taken off because people want real books. What is being published online more and more are pamphlets (小册子) and things that really do not need to be in print. These are stuff that people throw away afterward. More often, people do not want to read a book on the computer. What could be better than a paper book? It lasts a long time.These books are designed to last a long time without disappearing.

To sum up, there is no denying that the printed book is still very much preferred over its digital cousins. Reading electronic publications is just not the same when it comes to books. People are still very interested in real books and notebooks.