Reading a book makes me quiet

Somewhere on a website on the Internet I have a photo of my study. What you see there is a room full of books. Since I have uploaded the photo there, I have received many reactions, all positive, for example: “I think this is my favourite room in the entire world”, “This is my dream”, “That's my goal!”, or “As close to paradise as one can get!”. I have “collected” these books already since a long time. Like those who have sent me their reactions, I like reading and I like having books around me. It is handy, when I am writing a blog, an article or occasionally a book, and what is more important, books make me feel at ease. All these books around me give me the right feeling, when I am there, working or doing something else.
But for me books are not a kind of wall paper that has to bring me in the right mood. Books have contents; they are about something. They say something and they are reflections of the minds of their authors, and often a lot more. That’s why I like reading them and want to have them around me. If that weren’t so, I guess that good photos and other decorations would do, too. Books have an intellectual function and because they are the reflections of other minds, they help me to develop my own mind. They give me an indirect way to talk with their authors and to talk with other authors who have read and who discuss the books that I have read. And they stimulate me to read other books.

However, books have also another function for me. When I come home after a tiring day, or when I have been working hard in my study (while writing myself), I can have a tense feeling. Some people go to bed then, but for me that doesn’t help. For me, other ways of coping with it are better. One way is doing physical activity. It certainly helps. But what also helps always for me is taking a book, and then rather not an easy one, but something like philosophy, for example, about a difficult theme which asks for concentration. The only thing that is necessary that it can distract me from what I did before I took the book in my hands. And then I become gradually relaxed again and forget what I did before. Therefore, it is something I always do and I can count the days that I did not read at least some pages in a book. For reading a book is relaxing for me and it makes me quiet.