One-minute lecture: Why is it important to read fiction?
There's a good expression: armchair travel, because literature knows no boundaries. Why it is important to read fiction will be answered by Joosep Susi, Visiting Lecturer in Literature and Estonian Literature at Tallinn University.
Do you want a time machine or free plane ticket to anywhere in the world? Easy, grab a good piece of literature and start reading. Fiction is an art form whose main tool is language. Figurative language is used to express complex abstract ideas. This is why reading fiction is time-consuming and requires effort. On top of that, a work of fiction doesn't usually tell us how to behave in one situation or another, or how to live.
Above all, good literature offers emotional and intellectual pleasure. It expands our view of the world, shakes us, changes our perceptions, reveals the shades of various phenomena and, above all, of human nature.
Deep reading is an effective brain exercise. Regular reading exercises our brains just as exercise shapes our bodies. In fact, a light and enjoyable read is like a healthy walk in the woods, while reading more complex texts, such as novels or poems, is a much more serious effort, and also changes our thinking capability considerably.
Studies show that reading is an effective way to train empathy. Readers can live through other people's lives, immerse themselves in other spaces and times, and thus better understand others and themselves. So if you're already able to parse literary works, there's no need to worry about other texts. You'll know better when you're being manipulated or when someone starts to love you.
And reading, like diet or exercise, should be varied, because different texts change the way we think in different ways and offer various experiences. Reading improves our memory, concentration and imagination. Reading can also help us stay alert into old age and prevent a number of minor mental health disorders, not to mention that reading improves our ability to make connections, to reason and to write.
No matter how difficult life gets, no matter how messed up the state of world affairs, there is a safe haven for all of us to escape to if we need it. When we start to read a work of fiction, we start to visualise it immediately. And our brains don't make a direct distinction between being physically in Verona, for example, and reading Shakespeare. So technically, you don't need a time machine or free plane tickets, you just need to start reading. Or, as my good friend likes to say, enjoying fiction takes so much time, dedication and immersion that if people read a little more, there would be a lot of evil left undone in the world.