In October I made a sort of New-academic Year’s resolution; I’m really going to make the effort to make time for fiction. One great thing about summer is that there’s so much free time to just get lost in a good book. But once uni gets going again whichever novel you’re in the middle of has to take a back seat as chapter after chapter of course reading piles up and up until it buries you.
Last year whenever I opened any book that wasn’t course related (which wasn’t very often!) I couldn’t shake off the lingering feeling of guilt that I wasn’t being productive. How could I justify reading ‘Brave New World’ when my Poli100 text book was eyeing me from across the room, judging me for not reading yet another passage of J.S. Mill’s ‘On Liberty’?
In order to help shake that feeling off, I’ve done a bit of research on reasons why rereading Harry Potter for the 12th time might not be just a form of procrastination after all…
It actually makes you a nicer person!
According to a study done in 2013, reading literary fiction improved peoples’ results when they were tested for their social perception and empathy.
The theory behind this is that when we read about characters in stories, unlike with people in real life, we are free from other peoples’ judgement about how we respond to them. So, when we read about fictional people our emotional responses could actually be classed as being more real! This tendency towards showing more genuine emotions then works its way into your real lives and makes us more empathetic.
Your attention span will improve
Research suggests that we are collectively getting worse and worse at paying attention to things. In 2000 the average attention span was 12 seconds but recent findings say that has decreased to only 8 seconds.
Reading a novel helps you improve your focus. Having to follow the narrative forces you to practice staying focused for longer periods of time. Your superior attention span could make it easier to stay on task when you’re trying to work so in the long run reading fiction could make you more productive!
It can reduce stress
It makes sense that taking an hour out to just sit and read would be relaxing. It turns out that science backs this up; a study from 2009 from the University of Sussex actually showed that reading could reduce stress by up to 68%. They also found that reading was a better method of destressing than listening to music.
I’m always reluctant to start complaining about ‘oh this terrible modern world where people never look up from their phones!’ But I will admit that there’s something peaceful about, after a long day, putting aside my various electronics and immersing myself in a good paperback. Especially given that, as students, most of our work consists of having to constantly stare at one screen or another.
Happiness
And finally, reading just makes you happier. In a survey of 1,500 UK adults, 76% of them said reading for pleasure improved their lives and made them feel good. What better reason could there be for doing something than that?
With any luck this will help get rid of the feeling that reading novels isn’t productive. Now all I need is a way to justify my habit of writing articles instead of coursework essays…