[News Digest] Bill Gates’s childhood reading habit and family tradition of reading aloud

   
The fol­low­ing is excerpt­ed from an inter­view arti­cle pub­lished by the Bei­jing News on Feb­ru­ary 27:
   
Approach­ing Gates
What mat­ters is end­less curios­i­ty (link to full arti­cle)
 
Like Bill Gates, his father is also named Bill Gates. Or rather, like Bill Gates, his son is also named Bill Gates. Any­way, you get the idea: the father and son have the same name, so they had to add an “H” in the mid­dle of “Dad” to clar­i­fy. For­tu­nate­ly, the famous Bill Gates also has a nick­name: Ter­ry. Bill Gates Sr. wrote a book called “How Bill Gates Was Raised.” Hon­est­ly, it’s not entire­ly about Bill Gates Jr., but rather about Bill Gates Sr.‘s insights into life over the past 80 years. For­tu­nate­ly, in a recent email inter­view with this news­pa­per, Bill Gates Sr. dis­cussed Bill Gates Jr. more.
 
　Gates has a very good read­ing habit
Bei­jing News: You wrote in your book that Bill Gates prob­a­bly reads far more than oth­er chil­dren his age. Why is he so inter­est­ed in read­ing? What kinds of books does he read?
Bill H. Gates: As a child, Bill read a wide vari­ety of books, espe­cial­ly sci­ence fic­tion. As a teenag­er, he began read­ing finan­cial mag­a­zines like For­tune. Because he loved read­ing so much, we had to dis­ci­pline him if he tried to read even dur­ing meals. We hoped to teach him that the beau­ty of the din­ner table lies in the live­ly con­ver­sa­tions we can have with oth­ers, not in soli­tary read­ing.
Bei­jing News: I heard that his read­ing became more exten­sive and eclec­tic as he grew old­er. Does he still read exten­sive­ly today? What does read­ing mean to him?
Bill H. Gates: Of course, he still has a very good read­ing habit. I write about this in the book. Although he no longer reads at the din­ner table, his wife, Mer­lin, says that Gates has an insa­tiable curios­i­ty when it comes to read­ing. He is always eager to dis­cuss his lat­est reads with every­one around him. The result is that when he meets acquain­tances at cock­tail par­ties, they some­times turn away, fear­ing that Gates will grab them and talk about tuber­cu­lo­sis. In fact, the books he is cur­rent­ly inter­est­ed in are indeed becom­ing increas­ing­ly unpalat­able, such as “On the Elim­i­na­tion of Infec­tious Dis­ease,” “The Mos­qui­to,” “Malar­ia and Man,” and “Rats, Lice, and His­to­ry.”

 
   
Read­ing aloud is a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion
 
Bei­jing News: Read­ing aloud is a tra­di­tion in your fam­i­ly, and it is also a habit of liv­ing by the Hood Canal. Can you tell us more about this sto­ry?
Bill H. Gates: Research on ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion shows that even very young chil­dren who are read to aloud, even if it’s con­tent they don’t yet under­stand, expe­ri­ence numer­ous ben­e­fits after a series of read­ings. First, chil­dren learn that their fam­i­ly, the adults in their home, care deeply about them and are will­ing to spend sig­nif­i­cant time with them. In my fam­i­ly, my par­ents and grand­par­ents are all will­ing to do this, espe­cial­ly my grand­moth­er, who is tru­ly a great grand­moth­er.
Sec­ond­ly, chil­dren will learn the val­ue of books or news­pa­pers, which con­tain many inter­est­ing and excit­ing sto­ries, and they will devel­op the habit of read­ing and research­ing. In our fam­i­ly, good fam­i­ly tra­di­tions are passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion through per­son­al exam­ple. We also learned many good qual­i­ties from our par­ents and strive to pass them on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.