Reading affected not only my career but my entire life.

Reading helped make me calm, rational, reasonably imaginative, able to consider different viewpoints. Reading, both academic works and fiction, made me the human being I am. Peering in the thoughts of countless people before me who cared enough to transfer on paper (or clay tablet, or sheep skin) what they had in mind made me passionate about writing, more helpful to the ones I love, knowleageable, toughtful and a (modest) writer and sociologist. Reading SF led me to physics, reading the bible led me to atheism, reading about videogames complemented my passion for them. Reading is literally living more lives than non readers, or a fuller one. Without my love for English literature I wouldn't know the english language well enough to have been a professional translator and that came to me through finding wonderful books to read.

So yes, it helped my career because sociology does not pay well in my country and I'd be living in the streets if I wasn't a sysadmin, if I didn't have this love for computers derived - you guessed - by my readings and my fumbling when I was a kid.

But to say that is, really, saying nothing.