BRAIN FOOD | JUNK BOOKS?

It's a known fact that in the physical, food is necessary for growth to occur and at every stage in life, the dietary requirement differs. Therefore, it would be odd to find a child feeding on solid meal.

It's same with books. Book helps us to achieve mental growth, such that we are able to relate intelligently with our society and people living in it based on what we know.

In the words of Jeremy Collier,

"A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading".

Back to foods. Health practitioners tell us that there are Junk meals. These meals have no nutritional content. They cause unhealthy increase in body weight and are a number of reasons why the body malfunctions.

Having established these facts, could it be possible that, since healthy food exist alongside Junk foods, healthy books and Junk books could also exist?

Let's look at it in the light of Jeremy Collier's statement and health facts available.

If we grow stronger by eating good food, weaker by eating junk food, than when it comes to books, one expects to grow wiser by always reading good books and remains stagnant by reading junk books.

So what are junk books?

Junk books are books that do not add value to us. They leave us certainly not better than we first began reading. They sap us emotionally and distort our value system. They render us useless positively and stagnates our intellectual capacity. 

Note that as a junk food, junk books can be read sparingly and not as a life support.

What makes a book Junk?

Human needs are different, therefore when it comes to reading, what is junk for one may not be for another. For example, an expert in a field may find a material useful to enable him practice his work efficiently but someone else would look at same book and call it junk.

That notwithstanding, some books can still be termed as a Junk generally.

Here are a number of factors that could make a book Junk

1) An individual's value system.

2) An individual's belief or faith.
3) Books that are irrelevant to one's purpose and field of endeavour

A note of caution; People's books are their ideas. Except it is immoral and extremely provocative to sound judgement, avoid calling the book junk.

Understand that people write according to how they see things and you must not always agree.

I trust that this would help you identify a junk book and be careful with its/their consumption.