Why read a novel?
If you are going to do one thing today to improve your health – read a novel
The opening sentence of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka has become one of the most famous in Western literature:
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Now that is a good line. These are ways reading a novel for 15-30 mins a day can improve your health. Reading a novel:
- Improves your social and conversation skills – your current book can become part of your normal chat. Reading novels especially improves empathy, so you listen more to the perspective of friends, colleagues and family. These are examples of questions you might use:
“Hi, what book are you reading?’
“What are your three favourite books?” - Improves your ‘mental fitness’ – by improving mental health, memory and perhaps preventing dementia. Reading increases brain blood flow and leads to new neural pathways
- Increases your vocabulary – in a way that social media does not. That tends to echo your own words
- Helps you sleep
- (May) extend your life by 23 months – as shown by this study of 3635 people, which used a Cox proportional hazards model to allow for other variables. The effect was not seen for reading newspapers.
Going back to health. One of benefits of reading fiction, is that you can ‘enter’ another world, country or season. So it can take you ‘out of yourself’ and your current worries and concerns. Why not try reading a novel for 15-30 mins every day for a week.
These are myHSN’s favourite five novels of all time:
- Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
- To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
- Animal Farm (George Orwell)
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll).
What are yours? Go on .. tell us.
This page is based on a this programme by Michael Moseley on BBC Radio 4
It is part of a very good series
