Take Me to Your Reader
So, I’ve gotten to an age where I’ve become an anomaly, something irregular or abnormal. I’m ignoring the fact, admittedly, that anyone who knows me would say I’ve been an anomaly since birth, or as I would call it, a geneberration [genesis aberration]. And as for irregularity, the less said about that the better.
The anomalous behavior is that I read books, at least one or two a month and sometimes more. It seems we, meaning Americans at least, have less and less time for the written word, even in digital and online formats. According to www.inc.com writer Christina Desmarais, “twenty-six percent of adults in the United States have not read even a portion of a book within the last year.”
Notice has been taken. You may have discovered that many web articles now tell you how long it will take you to read them. Most are three minutes, four minutes. I don’t remember seeing one over ten minutes. In doing this, they appear to be saying, somewhat pleadingly, “See. We won’t take up too much of your time. Really. Don’t leave us!” And that amount is even less for those who skim looking for choice bits and ignoring the rest.
This is unhealthy behavior. At least, that’s what Desmarais tells us in “Why a Daily Habit of Reading Books Should Be Your Priority, According to Science.” Here’s why “consuming the written word is exceptionally good for people”:
- It helps you be more open-minded.
- It protects against cognitive decline.
- It’s good for your memory (paper books more so than e-books).
- It is a habit held by successful people.
I’ll just deal with the first point today and come back to the others. In “Your Brain on Fiction,” NY Times author Anne Murphy Paul tells us that research has shown that stories “stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” In reading this piece (and getting healthier by the word), I learned that we have two areas in our brain that interpret written words: Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. This panicked me at first. Who are these guys and what are they doing in my head?! I immediately put on my tinfoil hat, however, and covered my mouth with a paper lunch bag and the anxiety subsided enough for me to realize that Broca and Wernicke aren’t really nefaringering [nefariously malingering] inside my skull.
The stimulation of reading spreads beyond the Broca and Wernicke domains. Read the word “lavender” for example, or “cinnamon” or “soap” and the nerve cells in your primary olfactory cortex will light up. Read a sentence like “John grasped the object” and those in your motor cortex do the same thing. “The brain,” Paul writes, “does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life.” Fiction is great for our brains because it acts as a sort of fabricatorial Whack-a-Neuron.
But we were talking about being more open-minded, weren’t we? Paul cites another study that found “individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.”
This all sounds great. The problem for me is I read mostly science fiction. This means I am well-equipped to understand and empathize with the atevi, the Tyrenni, the Oankali, and others of their ilk should they ever deign to grace us with their extraterrestrial presence. Humans, however, may remain utterly alien and unknowable to me. I guess I should start reading novels about us. Would Fifty Shades of Grey be a good place to start, do you think?
Image: Extraterrestrials in Arthur Leo Zagat’s novel Drink We Deep depicted as little green men on the cover of the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Novels. Public Domain.
