I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points

I agree with a lot of the other commentators. I am a voracious reader, with normally 3-4 books on my reading stand at any point that I read at different points during the day. Reading provides a very cheap and easily accessible form of entertainment that allows you to exercise your imagination and creativity, and provide a wealth of detailed knowledge (even if it were fiction - a good fictional story can provide an insight into different situations, cultures, even the psyche of people in general) A good book can keep you company at any point in time in a day, and more so, stay with you a lot longer (this is true even with fiction). I have found myself going back to several books over the years, because some are _that_ good. Having said that, there are a lot of crappy books out there (I have commented about that earlier) and invariably you will get one that is despite checking it out (amazon reviews etc). That has not prevented me from continuing to find good books, and it should not deter anyone else either. A quick cursory glance over amazon's best-seller lists will give you a good overview on the types of fictional books, and you will quickly see that almost every kind of curiosity can be satisfied - technical, mystery, espionage, war strategy, sci-fi, you name it... And yes, staring at a tube-light all day cannot be a good thing...