Me gusta leer

One of the perks of being bilingual is that it opens up new avenues for reading material. I imagine that if you can read English, you are going to be pretty well off in the way of things to read, but it never hurts to expand your options. And reading in a second language has some advantages. 

For starters, it's a great way to pick up vocabulary, especially those idiomatic phrases. Depending on the kind of book you are reading, you can get a lot of slang and conversation. You will definitely come across new words. So, it's going to help your second language skills. (But don't forget to listen, too! You need to hear and speak as much as read and write. I find that hearing and reading--taking in the language--are much easier than producing it, i.e. speaking and writing. You have to work at all areas.)

Second, there are a lot of insights that you get when reading a book in another language. I tend to read books that I have already read in English. The advantage is that I know the plot, I know the characters, so I can focus more on the language. If I were more diligent about it, I could probably improve to the point that I don't need to have the plot already outlined, but could absorb everything. In the meantime, it's good practice to maintain and improve. Anyway, when I focus on the language, things take on new meanings or become clearer than they were in English. There are words that other languages have that express a certain nuance that the English phrasing lacks, or expresses more clumsily perhaps. I love those little nuances.

Reading a book in another language is also a great way to understand the world. Literature is a huge part of any culture, as far as I know; not only in the writing style, but in the topics written about. There is definitely a different feel between literature written in my native language and literature written in my second language by native speakers of that language. The literature of a people really reflects a lot of their identity, the things that matter, their history, their values. And not just non-fiction. Fictional works show a lot about how people think and feel and see the world around them. 

So, there is a lot of value to being a bi- or multilingual reader. It really does broaden your horizons, and I also firmly believe it has added value for society as a whole. And if you can, you should try it sometime.