It is difficult to be interesting when you know nothing. It is suggested that reading is an antidote to avoiding a vapid existence. I think reading — especially nonfiction — is a meager anecdote that tries to lull your audience (socially) with tidbits from a false experience.

Reading is an event that occurs in isolation. Absorbing words from a page requires lumps sumps of concentration — there's no such thing as collective concentration — which is necessary to piece words together into a coherent pattern. The reader will need to link these patterns into a comprehensive narrative. A narrative understood, is a story well told. Understanding something demands brain power, vis-à-vis, concentration.

Collective concentration does not exist (apropos reading) because of the aforementioned argument. Book Clubs, libraries, public or private readings also hold true to this notion. At such an event, an individual is required to listen. Listening involves piecing spoken words into a formal structure that one can understand. Listening in small bouts is no daunting feat, but if the session were extended to a couple of hours, it'd start being a little laborious. If a distraction is introduced, say your cellphone vibrates, concentration is halted. The onus is on the onlooker to rekindle that lost attention. This is an internal process, therefore concentration is done in isolation.

The information that we keep receiving from paper isn't necessarily socially interesting, save Book Clubs. Their sole purpose is to discuss those words and what they could possibly mean. This discourse, of course, takes place post-concentration, post-reflection and post-isolation.

Reading is an occurrence, it is not an experience. The phrase "experience is the best teacher" springs to mind. This popular phrase does not undermine the knowledge that one will find in books. All that it alludes to, is that chapters cannot teach us how to ride a bicycle, but that those chapters can shed some light on how an object in motion operates.

Riding a bicycle is an experience, so too is falling off one. Reading a physics book on falling bodies will not drown the sizzle from your skinned knee.

A well-versed person may have a way with words that can charm the vileness from a brute, but this does not infer that the studied are interesting people. More often than not, they come across as pompous narcissists who believe so blindly that their last word is the gravest comment you'll ever hear.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness" — Mark Twain

Of course there are exceptions to the proverbial rule. These are the ones I prefer; those who create a seamless blend between reading and life, fantasy and reality.

Now, imagine a well read person sharing an experience from their life. I imagine it to be an awe inspiring romantic tale, only if the story is akin to your interests and aspirations (If not, it'll amount to monotonous rambling). It is the experience that is interesting and not necessarily how it is unravelled with words. Experiences build character and those much needed people skills (which can be summed up to charisma), not necessarily intellectual repoir. Experiences make people interesting. They draw wisdom from them. Knowledge and wisdom are two different facets of the learning experience: Knowledge is information, facts and theory — while wisdom is applied knowledge with good judgement. You get the latter by interacting with the real world.

Words can often leave you emotional, but those with experience speak with emotion that engulfs you in the catacombs of their lives, their thoughts and their passions. This is addictive. I eagerly welcome new people with all their loads.

Furthermore, the best experiences hardly happen in isolation. They involve close friends, family and sometimes strangers. An event that occurs in isolation, like reading, has no place in a social domain. It is considered rude to read at a dinner party, and will most likely be an outcast because you've chosen to isolate yourself. Reading takes you away from people, while experiences draw you to people and people to you.

"Everything is nothing when you got no one" — © Bee Gees, Islands in a Stream.