Shockingly, it’s not.

Reading is a waste of time. Hazards of reading. Drawbacks of reading.

I  Googled these phrases and many others, trying to see prove reading is a bad thing. I’ve been feeling guilty lately about how much time I spend reading, and writing stuff to read, and reading about people reading, and reading about people writing . . .

(Fortunately I have an internal switch that goes off at 4:30pm and says, “Where are your children? Have you thought about dinner?” And I momentarily think, Wait—I have other responsibilities? That switch also goes off at about 11:30pm telling me to go to bed. Sometimes I get it confused with the buzzing sound my keyboard makes when I’m drooling on it.)

But I couldn’t find anything serious or thoughtful that warned against reading.

So you know what that means? There’s nothing guilty about the “guilty pleasure” of being stuck in a book!

I stumbled across this wonderful piece by former BYU professor Richard H. Cracroft, giving all of us book-nerds more reasons to be anti-social. He lists 5 blessings that come from reading, so the next time you feel guilty about reading or writing, remember—you’re just getting blessings.