Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

Kind of makes sense in a way. Only anecdotal, but I’ve learned to read at 5 years of age almost all by myself (my dad had taught me the letters a little time before that) only because I was bored as hell while I was vacationing at my grandparents’ house and there were a couple of books around. I picked one and started reading it loud while I was alone, and that was it. I’m no genius, mind you, that’s why I think that my experience is not unique.

'Respondents, who ranged in age from 25 to 65, were asked to estimate how many books were in their house when they were 16 years old.'

It's very likely that avid readers will overreport the books, while reluctant readers are likely to underreport.

Maybe not in this particular study, but the whole point is that any given study is going to be done in the larger context of a one or more fields of pre-existing research.

If you look at the paper I linked to, the proposed model is that in order for kids to be good at reading, they need to read. And the kids who read the most are going to be those who love reading. Now when you as a parent read books to your kids, some kids will love that and others will hate it. And if you read to them if they don't like it, that can actually turn them off from reading and lead to them being worse at reading in the long term. Whereas if you just leave books around the house, sooner or later they're likely going to read some of them, and are more likely to develop a love of reading just by reading things they're interested in when they're interested in them rather than having reading being forced on them before they're interested.

No one is arguing that there isn't an SES component or whatever. But the actual proposed explanation comes from the context of the last 50+ years of research on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and is interesting on its own.

Any one paper isn't going to look at more than one specific thing, but if you're only looking at that one paper without understanding the larger context of the research then you're not going to understand what's interesting about it or why it was worth doing.

My great grandma never had the chance to go to school, but she loved to read. She would work, save up, and buy books whenever she could. Books were all she ever wanted for her birthday or Christmas. Even though she had no formal education to speak of, she was an intelligent woman and wrote prose and poetry as good as any I experienced in college.

My great-grandmother's love of reading has been passed down through four generations now (down to my children). I have over a thousand books in my house, some of which belonged to my great-grandmother. I learned software engineering by reading books I borrowed from my local public library and built a successful career through reading and studying these freely available tomes on my own. When my kids were in school, I told them to put all their efforts into reading. I knew from personal experience that if they could read well they would be able to learn anything they wanted to. So far, that has been the case.

If I could only have one life skill, it would be reading. Having access to hundreds of books growing up certainly helped me and made me who I am today. Of course, having books around does nothing for you unless you crack them open and read. The only downside has been schlepping all those books around every time we move.