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As Parkies age, they may become more homebound and may (or, more likely, will) experience cognitive decline. One enjoyable way to tackle both is by joining or starting an online reading club via Zoom. It’s great for socialization, and it keeps your mind as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel.
Here’s some info on how reading benefits older people, from an article I found online:
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A Workout for Your Brain
The English writer Joseph Addison once said that “reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” As the imagination weaves through the details of a story, the brain’s neural networks are strengthened, much in the way muscles are strengthened by an intense workout.
A beloved pastime for people of any age, the cognitive benefits of reading increase post-retirement. Research shows that reading helps improve capabilities such as memory, cognition, and attention span, especially in seniors. By strengthening memory retention, reading can actually slow the degenerative process of dementia and Alzheimer’s by keeping the mind limber.
Boost Analytical Thinking
Being actively engaged in what you’re reading allows you to ask questions, view different perspectives, identify patterns, and make connections. Known to peak in middle age, analytical, or critical, thinking then starts to decline. Luckily, it can be improved by reading…
Live Longer
Attention bibliophiles! Research provides us with yet another great reason to burrow our noses in a book: It might help us live longer lives.
A Yale study showed that reading for 3 1/2 hours each week extends your life by 23 months. Overall, adults who read books survived almost 2 years longer over the 12-year follow-up than non-book readers. While adults who reported reading magazines and newspapers also showed increased survival over non-readers, the effect was much less than with book reading.
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I’m in an online reading group right now. It consists of six people, all friends or friends of friends. We meet for 45 minutes over Zoom every Sunday, and each week we discuss a short story from the collected stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov is most famous for his novel Lolita, but he also composed over 60 superb short stories. Our group is often impressed by his exquisite use of language.
Here, for example, is the first paragraph from his story “The Dragon”:
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The Dragon
He lived in reclusion in a deep, murky cave, in the very heart of a rocky mountain, feeding only on bats, rats, and mold. Occasionally, it is true, stalactite hunters or snoopy travelers would come peeking into the cave, and that was a tasty treat. Other pleasant memories included a brigand attempting to flee from justice, and two dogs that were once let loose to ascertain if the passage did not go clear through the mountain. The surrounding country was wild, porous snow lay here and there on the rock, and waterfalls rumbled with an icy roar. He had hatched some thousand years ago, and, perhaps because it had happened rather unexpectedly – the enormous egg was cracked open by a lightning bolt one stormy night – the dragon had turned out cowardly and not overly bright. Besides, he was strongly affected by his mother’s death….She had long terrorized the neighboring villages, had spat flames, and the king would get cross, and around her lair incessantly prowled knights, whom she would crunch to pieces like walnuts. But once, when she had swallowed a plump royal chef and dozed off on a sun-warmed rock, the great Ganon himself galloped up in iron armor, on a black steed under silver netting. The poor sleepy thing went rearing up, her green and red humps flashing like bonfires, and the charging knight thrust his swift lance into her smooth white breast. She crashed to the ground, and promptly, out of the pink wound, sidled the corpulent chef with her enormous, steaming heart under his arm.
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It takes you to another place, doesn’t it?
I pasted the book’s cover at the top of this post. Down below I’ll paste some more books of short stories, as I think short stories may make sense for a once-a-week online reading group. (I read full-length novels on my own.) If someone has to miss a week, they won’t feel left behind when they show up the following session.
Of course, if you want to tackle Moby Dick, go right ahead…And let me join you!
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I love what you’ve done with the piece.
I will send the research on the benefits of reading to my grandson.