Our capability to gain access to and read books has been absolutely important to our ability to comprehend the world around us.
It can be tough to picture what the world would resemble today if the large bulk of people were unable to read, but for the large bulk of history the large bulk of people might not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books much more available. Of course, it was still only actually the richest and well-read that could read or write, but it made it possible for a whole host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to just log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily access the totality of human understanding.
With such a rich history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes easy to forget how exceptionally lucky we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a huge proportion of all the books that have actually ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can easily alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history too. The modern world is built upon understanding that has actually been passed down through books, whether that is philosophy, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.
It is necessary to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, just due to the fact that the huge bulk of people could not read, implying that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a quick boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped dramatically during the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern world.