Read this article aloud.

Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, world-renowned professor of neuroscience at Tohoku University, has discovered how to give the brain a good workout.  The two best methods are calculation and oral reading. 

Calculations don’t have to be difficult.  Simple things such as 12 divided by 2, and 6 plus 4.  The trick is to do them quickly. The second workout method is particularly dear to my heart. Reading to yourself still stimulates more brain cells than watching television, but reading aloud is on par with quickly calculating. This is something grownups almost never do for themselves. Yes, reading to children counts and this also has the added benefit of promoting literacy, but now you have two reasons to read aloud - to promote literacy for your children, and to keep your own brain in shape. 

Here are a few stories to get you started. Susan Trott’s The Holy Man and Thomas King’s One Good Story, That One are collections of short stories.  Once you’ve tried short pieces you’ll love to read longer stories. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News might have been the book that brought me back to reading aloud with the voice of the east coast. Since then, I’ve re-discovered the joy of the sound of words.  For a real challenge, Anne Donovan’s Buddha Da is a lot of fun with a strong Scottish accent. 

My all-time personal favourite author for reading aloud is Arturo Perez-Reverte,

but it’s not all about the sound of the words. There has to be a good story to invest time reading aloud and these books have it all: great words musically put together with a story that hooks you. Just listen to Perez-Reverte in The Painter of Battles.

“He swam one hundred and fifty strokes out to sea and the same number back, as he did each morning, until he felt the round pebbles of the shore beneath his feet. He dried himself, using the towel he’d hung on a tree trunk that had been swept in by the sea, put on his shirt and sneakers, and went up the narrow path leading from the cove to the watchtower. There he made coffee and began, mixing blues and greys that would lend his work the proper atmosphere. During the night – each night he slept less and less, and that only a restless dozing – he had decided that cold tones would be needed to delineate the melancholy line of the horizon, where a veiled light outlined the silhouettes  of warriors walking beside the sea.”

Now that you’ve been hooked, come into the library and pick up a book to read – aloud.  Your brain will thank you.

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