Give Thanks: Talk Books With Your Family and Friends
In this short work week of the Thanksgiving Holiday, I’m going to give you a shorter than usual post about a BIG IMPORTANT topic I’m personally thankful to keep learning more about:
The Benefits of Reading Books — Especially Fiction — for Work and Pleasure
I was prompted to write this post by a discussion over on LinkedIn about the stress-reducing benefits of reading. I commented that adding fiction to their reading should be a priority for those who’ve limited themselves to nonfiction, believing they’re too busy and have too much to learn to spend time with the characters and action in novels. After pointing to the science showing the general mental health and happiness benefits of reading fiction, I added:
“And because you ‘learn’ a lot about soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence, and courage from those fictional characters you inhabit as you read.”
Of course, I covered a lot of the science in my book, Read ‘Em & Reap, but (gasp) that was back in 2019!
I’ve made noises about updating the book and bringing out a 5th Anniversary edition, so I’ve been collecting new research. Since I’m in the middle of writing another book right now (sneak peek of I Am Perfectly Flawsome research here) and have clients to take care of, we may wonder if it’ll turn out to be a 10th Anniversary edition by the time I get Read ‘Em & Reap updated.
So for now, I’m going to give you a Thanksgiving feast of tasty nuggets from a few articles with a side of quotations to inspire your weekend reading choices.
Intergenerational Book Clubs
The title of this post was inspired by a study reported earlier this year: How an Intergenerational Book Club Can Prevent Cognitive Decline in Older Adults: A Pilot Study, by Plummer, J., et al. The researchers found that participants in a book club with a mixture of senior adults and college students all showed some improvement in cognition tests, with the senior adults showing statistically significant improvement.
Another study since my book was published, Reading activity prevents long-term decline in cognitive function in older people: evidence from a 14-year longitudinal study, by Chang, Y., et al. (2021), though not focused on fiction, concluded:
“Reading was protective of cognitive function in later life. Frequent reading activities were associated with a reduced risk of cognitive decline for older adults at all levels of education in the long term.”
Similar results were reported, The Effects of Sustained Literacy Engagement on Cognition and Sentence Processing Among Older Adults, by Stine-Morrow, E., et al. (2022), where they compared 8 weeks of “leisure reading” versus an “active puzzle control” group in participants aged 60-79. The readers showed better improvement in working memory, episodic memory, and conceptual integration in sentence processing.
I spent more time in my book talking about the value to children of having adults read with them and model reading habits to them. As I explained there, learning to read is a relatively new skill in the history of our species and not yet genetically wired into our brains at birth. Each new human must develop their brain circuit “wiring” for reading as they grow.
And the main message of the book was focused on the many benefits of reading across our adult lives.
But these new studies show that the benefits extend to our later years and emphasize that the benefits of sharing the joys of reading books across generations runs both ways.
I’m thankful for that.
Why Focus on Fiction?
This is a topic I did cover extensively in Read ‘Em & Reap, but again thankfully, the support for adding or keeping fiction in your required reading list just keeps rolling in.
In Do scientists read enough fiction? (2021), molecular biologist David Smith, argues that reading fiction can be even more important for creativity and productivity than papers and reviews. He quotes Darwin on the consequences of omitting fiction:
“If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
In Reading fiction: the benefits are numerous (2020), physician Rosemary Marshall reminds us that, unlike our reading circuits, our brains are hard-wired for telling and consuming stories. She then takes us through the science-backed and common sense ways that reading fiction benefits our brains, our bodies, and our social skills, tracing back to an inscription on the library of Egyptian Pharoah Ramses II, labeling it a,
“House of Healing for the Soul.”
She also touches on how reading fiction helps us enhance and apply our storytelling instincts. Since we no longer spend much time around campfires sharing our wisdom orally, she quotes author Anne Bogel on how reading provides the skills and raw material for writing:
“I can tell you why I inhale books like oxygen: I’m grateful for my one life, but I’d prefer to live a thousand …”
And in case you’re wondering if all this applies to the hard-nosed world of business and work, the Harvard Business Review offers The Case for Reading Fiction (2020), in which Christine Seifert argues for adding guided literature study to workplace training and development programs, i.e., intergenerational book clubs!
Reading Fiction to Write Nonfiction
Let’s circle back to Marshall’s quote of Bogel on the value of reading fiction to help with your writing. And add Stephen King:
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Our nonfiction author clients will confirm that we — Yvonne, especially — advise (badger? hound?) them to incorporate stories into their books. Stories about a specific individual, often the author herself, have been shown to have greater power to change minds and be remembered longer than arguments based on evidence and statistics about the population at large.
Reaching back to an older study, in How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation, by Bal, P., et al. (2013), the researchers set the table for their experiment by reviewing the evidence for fictional stories having greater impact on readers than “persuasive” writing this way:
“Specifically, it is easier to experience affect if a message presents information about a single, identifiable individual, than when information is presented about entire groups or using statistics (i.e., you can place yourself in the shoes of one other, but not of thousands). As a result … stories about large groups of people or objectified or statistically presented facts [have less impact, while] narratives, which are characteristically about individuals and their personal stories, may influence people to a much stronger degree.”
So, if you want to gain all those soft skills you need in the work world AND become a more effective nonfiction writer, read fiction.
Okay, maybe this post wasn’t that much shorter than usual, but hopefully you’ll enjoy one last quote, from novelist John Green:
“Great books help you understand, and they help you to feel understood.”
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