I recently managed to nudge my German cousin into reading. Having been raised on consoles and Spongebob, he never enjoyed the written word and was more of a thr

I recently managed to nudge my German cousin into reading. Having been raised on consoles and Spongebob, he never enjoyed the written word and was more of a thrillseeker, getting into trouble with a gang of his friends that landed him in custody for a couple months. I started talking to him about Goethe's "Faust", which I was reading at the time, and suggested he take it up. He told me his probation officer nearly fell off her chair when he said he was reading "Faust"; seasoned academics shy away from it. Yesterday he said he read through 2 GoT books over the course of a weekend and asked me if reading raises IQ. I cited that famous "Freakonomics" chapter that correlates having books with high IQ but can't define a causal link between the two. I told him reading allows us to see patterns in the world around us, which is what IQ testing tests for, therefore if he can detect patterns through reading that apply to the real world he'll be increasing his IQ by reading.