In the same way how a body needs physical excercise and a healthy diet, a mind needs meditation and reading for the wellbeing and improvement. In other words reading is the mental exercise for mind and books are the exercising machines in the gymnasium called library.
As according to Francis Bacon, reading makes a full human, the meaning, sources and uses of reading are worth to discuss in an era when mental health of most of us is declining.
The action of realizing and concentrating of someone's imaginations or informations over a topic through a printed media by words is reading. This printed media can be a book, brochure, magazine, newspaper, an article in social media or a site like Steemit or even a poster or a leaflet. The significance is, a man who reads something becomes more knowledgeable on a topic than he was before.
Short stories take us to a new world through 5 or 6 pages while we are made to live in someone else's life for a longer period by novels. We may not be able to feel a thrill in real lives like the thrill given by fictions. Curiosity is improved by reading stories while poems increase our creativity. Newspapers also have a seperate fan base. Thanks to internet anything can be read on wikipedia, wikihow or quora at a distance of a fingertip.
So reading is like a companion whom we can travel anywhere with tangling hands and come home again safely