The benefits of book reading is mental activity include keeping your memory sharp, your learning capacity nimble, and your mind basically hardier as you age. No one's advising that you toss the DVD player—or books on tape, which, Pugh says, provide more work for your brain than seeing a movie—but print should take up part of your life too. A literate mind is a more complex one. "There's a richness that reading gives you," Wolf says, "an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface." Even when it is superficial (what's a plane ride without a little celebrity gossip?), indulging in a tabloid beats watching TV—just processing the words boosts the brain. "If you had your druthers," Pugh says, "you'd rather be reading."

Source:oprah.com