it can hone and improve our thinking skills. It enhances one's vocabulary and improves one's language skills.
One gets ideas, can become innovative, mature and gain the ability to improvise just by reading.
knowledge tends to build on itself. Learning is often hard, knowledge often has prerequisites before it can be learned, and learning can quite often be considered ‘risky’ in that the amount of time needed to learn something can be unpredictable, if the knowledge can be learned at all.