Reading is legal plunder—it's the lowest-threshold, highest-return value transfer behavior in this world. Perhaps you only need to spend the price of a beer to take away a genius's lifetime of thinking. You can spend a few hours and understand all the pitfalls someone spent their entire life stepping through. If you don't learn to read, your worldview will forever be shaped only by those closest to you, and your cognition will remain confined to a narrow corner.