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Can Reading Make You Happier?
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Through 'Pocket' I found this interesting article in The New Yorker by Ceridwen Dovey. There he explains how he several years ago, received a gift from friends. The gift was a remote session with a bibliotherapist. Personally, I have never heard of such therapists, but obviously they exist. This specific therapist works at the London headquarters of the School of Life, “which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.” He was rather doubtful about the good of it all, but since it was a gift he tried it out.
Monastery library in Valldemossa, Mallorca
He received a questionnaire about his reading habits, from bibliotherapist, Ella Berthoud. Never before had anyone asked him about his reading habits and he was quite happy to fill in the form. One question was “What is preoccupying you at the moment?”. His answer was that he did not know how to cope with grief if he was losing somebody. This started an exchange of e-mail to find out more of his wishes, and in the end, Ella Berthoud came up with a list that she suggested he read.
“Among the recommendations was “The Guide,” by R. K. Narayan. Berthoud wrote that it was “a lovely story about a man who starts his working life as a tourist guide at a train station in Malgudi, India, but then goes through many other occupations before finding his unexpected destiny as a spiritual guide.” She had picked it because she hoped it might leave me feeling “strangely enlightened.” Another was “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ,” by José Saramago: “Saramago doesn’t reveal his own spiritual stance here but portrays a vivid and compelling version of the story we know so well.” “Henderson the Rain King,” by Saul Bellow, and “Siddhartha,” by Hermann Hesse, were among other prescribed works of fiction, and she included some nonfiction, too, such as “The Case for God,” by Karen Armstrong, and “Sum,” by the neuroscientist David Eagleman, a “short and wonderful book about possible afterlives.””
Over the years he read the books on the list and reflected on the messages. Although he was lucky not yet to face the grief of losing someone close, the insight he had picked up from the books helped him, when at a time, he endured physical pain. His conclusion is that:
“The insights themselves are still nebulous, as learning gained through reading fiction often is—but therein lies its power. In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks. Reading fiction makes me lose all sense of self, but at the same time makes me feel most uniquely myself. As Woolf, the most fervent of readers, wrote, a book “splits us into two parts as we read,” for “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego,” while promising “perpetual union” with another mind.”
Very interesting article which you can read in full on the link to The New Yorker above. I think books can be very inspiring, and I have read many books that is a comfort in times of trouble. Not only non-fiction book about a certain ‘matters’, but also reading fiction can sometimes be very encouraging I find. I would not mind enrolling a bibliotherapist myself.
Check up the website of School of Life. I found interesting courses and books and this video explains why we need books. It’s great.
What do you think? Do you agree that reading makes you happier? Is this something that you would like to do?
I am sure you are! I find librarians are very skilled when it comes to recommend books that you want to read. They seem to have a never ending knowledge of a lot of different literature. Keep up the good work. It is even more important for a school librarian considering the reluctance of young people to read good books.
This is one of those popular help yourself books that seems to overflow these days. However, it defies all the good advices we have been given during the last years, that is; stay positive. Manson says: "Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it." Right! That is life after all. "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." Sigmund Freud With this quote in mind Manson argues that values such as "pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive", are poor guidelines for a persons life. After all, some of the greatest moments in our lives are " not pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive". Which leads him to the belief, and I am bound to agree with him, that it is the individual who is responsible for everything in his/her life. We just have to act due to external circumstances. We are not always in control of all aspects of our
I am not a professor in literature, but I would like to be. Unfortunately, this will never happen, so, I have to go along trying to read novels and literature like a professor. Thomas C. Foster's book is therefor a very useful tool. He has also written How To Read Literature Like A Professor , which sounds like another useful read. It is not only a book for readers. I would say it is also useful for aspring writers. How do you make a novel interesting? What does it have to contain? Who should be the narrator and what should he/she do? The content gives a hint on what makes up a good book. Pickup Lines and Open(ing) Seductions, or Why Novels Have First Pages - are we not fascinated by how certain writers manage to hook you on the first sentence? This seems to be one of the most important sentences in a book and Foster mentions a few excellent openings. I love good openings and cannot help but quote them here, although I am sure you are already familiar with them (I only knew 2,4 a
I am a little bit late with this March read for the Anne Tyler project (hosted by Liz Dexter at Adventures in reading, running and working from home ), which I finished just the other day. Family can be a trying thing, and that is what some of the members of the Peck family feels. They solve the problem by going away. If the other members are lucky, they will know where they are going, if not, like with Caleb, he disappears without a trace. "Duncan Peck has a fascination for randomness and is always taking his family on the move. His wife, Justine, is a fortune teller who can't remember the past. Her grandfather, Daniel, longs to find the brother who walked out of his life in 1912, with nothing more than a fiddle in his hand. All three are taking journeys that lead back to the family's deepest roots...to a place where rebellion and acceptance have the haunting power to merge into one..." Anne Tyler is, once again, looking into the webs of family life. We meet the Pe
Interesting. I wonder if I am almost a bibliotherapist? I'm a school librarian and I do a lot of recommending.
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I am sure you are! I find librarians are very skilled when it comes to recommend books that you want to read. They seem to have a never ending knowledge of a lot of different literature. Keep up the good work. It is even more important for a school librarian considering the reluctance of young people to read good books.
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