In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Anne Kreamer writes convincingly about the business case for reading fiction:
"I've been a devoted, even fanatical reader of fiction my whole life, but sometimes I feel like I'm wasting time if I spend an evening immersed in Lee Child's newest thriller, or re-reading The Great Gatsby. Shouldn't I be plowing through my in-box? Or getting the hang of some new productivity app? Or catching up on my back issues of The Economist? That slight feeling of self-indulgence that haunts me when I'm reading fake stories about fake people is what made me so grateful to stumble on a piece in Scientific American Mind by cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley extolling the practical benefits to be derived particularly from consuming fiction."
I encourage you to read the entire article. If you already read fiction with gusto, it may remove some of the guilt that occasional creeps in about "wasting time." If you are not a fiction reader, it may give you a bit of a push to try it out. It could add to your bottom line!
(Click on the title above to engage the link)
I concur with her comments about Dickens' "Bleak House":
"Charles Dickens, Bleak House — Dickens' tenth novel explores the human cost of prolonged litigation through the eyes of Esther Summerson, who is caught up in a multi-generational dispute over the disposition over an inheritance. Anyone who has ever been entangled in a lawsuit will revel in the characterization of the process. At the time of publication, 1852–1853, public outrage over injustice in the English legal system helped the novel to spark legal reform that culminated in the 1870s."
Enjoy!
Al
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