1. Why Read?
List 4-5 reasons why you think we should read great works of Literature.

2. c. s. lewis Friend of J.R.R. Tolkien Created The Chronicles of Narnia
Writer C. S. Lewis gives his reasons:

3. REASON #1 We read literature because it (and art in general) can express the inexpressible truths about life’s most fundamental questions. Literature communicates on a level not possible in other more expository formats.
C.S. Lewis writes that literature has a way of getting “under our skin and hits us at a level deeper than our thoughts.”

4. REASON #2 We read literature to know we are not alone, to find someone else who feels and thinks the way we do.
We live in a world which can at times be intensely lonely and isolating. Reading is important because when we read we get connected to other people, people like us, people we would never have come in contact with otherwise. When we read, we find someone who may be feeling the same things we are, or someone whose perspective on things may be similar to our own. Thus, we read to know we are not alone.

5. IN READING GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE I BECOME A THOUSAND MEN.
REASON #3 We read literature to find a viewpoint different from our own, to expand our limited insights, to broaden our horizons, to go beyond the small world that we live in. In a sense, we read literature to escape from our physical world, to a world of the imagination.
Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own, to expand our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, or exhilarating…Literature gives entrée to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our lives seldom realize the enormous extensions of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk to an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me…
IN READING GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE I BECOME A THOUSAND MEN.

6. REASON #4 We read literature to find inspiration and encouragement by finding someone who has faced adversity and has triumphed. We read to find someone who has gone before us, someone who can serve as a model and our guide.
From The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell:
We have not even to risk the adventure alone,
For the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known;
We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.