3 Reasons to Read Novels

Why do we read?

Some people think we read only for entertainment (and usually complain about it). Others think we read (or should read) for education, or edification.

I’ve always believed that we read primarily to become better human beings. We read for entertainment, education and edification, sure, but above all that, and the reason we return to storytelling again and again, is to practice empathy.

Now a study has confirmed it. Reading makes us nicer people. People who were “transported” into a story were more likely to be sensitive to the facial expressions of others and more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. This was true of both those who were more prosocial and empathic to begin with and those who were less so.

And this makes sense. The brain, like a muscle, needs exercise. The more you practice certain kinds of thoughts, the easier those thoughts become. This is why there are whole self-help industries devoted to convincing you to try positive thoughts, compassionate thoughts, empowering thoughts. The problem is that positive self-talk can seem pretty vapid, especially when one is faced with extremely difficult circumstances. As for compassion, it is hard to practice in the abstract. Or perhaps it is easy in the abstract, but falls apart in the face of actual flesh and blood people.

Reading allows us to run complex simulations in our heads. These “What If…?” simulations allow us to address two crucial aspects of our survival: how to overcome problems and how to understand other people. Since most of our problems are caused by other people

There’s a beautiful story in Robin Black’s anthology of the same name, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This: Fiction about two neighbors fighting over where a wall between their property should go. One neighbor finds out that his property actually extends one foot further, and he wants to build his wall there. What he doesn’t realize is how this will impact the elderly couple next door, as the woman has just been diagnosed with cancer. The story heartrendingly reveals suffering caused the dying woman and her husband and leaves open the question of whether that extra few inches of grass on the other side was worth it. The reader instinctively realizes it was not, and if the neighbor who insisted on building his fence right there had any empathy, he would have changed his mind.

If the point of the story were to just make us mad at the selfish neighbor, the story wouldn’t have such power. I think