BROUGHT TO BOOK: Fiction isnt just enjoyable; it enhances your ability to empathise with others and understand life. PICTURE: PA
CAN reading fiction make you a better person? The answer appears to be yes, as Sheena Hastings reports.
BOOKWORM is a word we often associate with quiet, unsociable individuals who seem to prefer the company of fictitious strangers to those around them in the real world. The word is too often used in a slightly disparaging way to imply a discomfort with and avoidance of interaction with others.
Well, counter-intuitive though it might sound at first, people who spend every spare moment with their nose stuck in a novel are actually better at both relationships with others and understanding of the world in general than those who don’t read much or whose reading is exclusively factual.
So we who spend our lives feeling a little inferior to those who tuck into a history tome or choose a work of political biography or science to improve their mind should hold our heads high. Basically, the more fiction you read the better you are operating at a social level and getting to grips with what life may throw at you.
It’s been suspected for thousands of years that fiction does more to develop the mind than, say, history. The Ancient Greeks believed poetry, from the epic tales of Homer to the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, were more serious and important because they were about how the world could be, not how it had been already. Fiction – in all its many forms including novels, poetry, drama and film – stretches our imagination and ethical beliefs and gives us insights into other people and situations we might not ordinarily meet or experience.
Full piece at Yorkshire Post.
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