Dear reader. Writers are messing with your mind. And that’s a good thing. There’s always been a view that reading literature – especially great literature – makes you a better person. Now science backs this view. Various studies of brain scans have shown that stories stimulate the brain and can change how we act in real life.report identifies parts of the brain affected by reading. Metaphors can set off real sensations of sight, hearing, touch or taste.
But only some of us have easy access to such good fiction, she says. “In an Australia where suicide is fast becoming a national male sport, and where 16 per cent of adults aged 24 to 44 tell researchers that they ‘often feel lonely’, we need a lot more stories of inclusion, big stories that we can all own and relish and find ourselves within.” Meanwhile, there is plenty of not-so-good fiction, and she compares reading it to surviving on a diet of McDonald’s.
Academic Beth Driscoll has also been looking into the power of reading books, and she includes non-fiction in her survey. (You can read more about her discoveries on reading in her book, she recounts how she was trying to follow the events in Gaza through social media and was left both shocked and unable to understand what was happening.by Atef Abu Saif, the Palestinian Authority’s minister for culture, who was visiting Gaza when the bombing started.
She highlights the aesthetic and moral benefits of reading books; asserts that they can be the source of sensory, even erotic pleasure; can give us training in sustained attention; and that reading can be a form of mindfulness. And perhaps most of all, “reading can be a practice that helps us make sense of the world and our place in it”.Jane Sullivan’s latest novel, Murder in Punch Lane, is published by Echo at $32.99.