Getting Lost in a Good Book Can Help Keep You Healthy

I’m a novelist and it’s obviously in my interest to encourage people to read. But reading isn’t just for pleasure, or only a way of improving literacy skills and factual knowledge. 【小题1】

Firstly, reading helps to lengthen attention spans(持续时间) in children and improves their ability to think clearly. Stories have a structure that encourages their brains to think in sequence, to link cause, effect and significance. 【小题2】 The more they do it, the better they get at it.

Also, reading can help people learn to empathize (产生共鸣). A recent study at the University of Michigan found that there had been a 48% decrease in empathy among college students.【小题3】 In a computer game, you might have rescued a princess, but you don’t care about her, you just want to win. But a princess in a book has a past, present and future, she has connections and motivations. We can relate to her. We see the world through her eyes.

【小题4】 Reading exercises the whole brain. When we read and imagine the landscapes, sounds, smells and tastes described on the page, the various areas of the brain that are used to process these experiences in real life are activated, creating new neural pathways. In other words, our brains model real experiences as if we were living them ourselves. This doesn’t happen when we’re watching TV or playing a computer game.

Reading a good novel appears to be beneficial to our mental health too.【小题5】Reading not only avoids feelings of loneliness, it helps us to reduce the stress and forget our own problems for a while.

There was once a famous doctor in a university hospital in Japan who was known for being very strict with his students. When this doctor scolded his students for “slow movement of hands” or “weak concentration,“ the students easily felt down. But one student was different. All the time, this student only repeated “yes,” and seemed not to care about what was being said. Instead, the student concentrated on strengthening his talent. Later, this student became the only one to inherit the know-how of surgery from the doctor. Watanabe Junishi, a Japanese doctor and writer,   praised such “wise dullness” in his new book, The Power of Insensitivity.

The message of this book is that while being sensitive is preferred in general, in everyday life being insensitive is more useful. I argues that insensitivity, or the dullness of emotions or senses, is not a shortcoming but a talent. Those who do not find any inconvenience in a strange place to sleep, those who immediately forget anything bad that has happened, and those who are not affected when scolded or criticized by others are the types of people with the talent to be insensitive.

This is not the same as being lazy. The author advises readers to concentrate their abilities inward and to maximize them rather than using up abilities outward on other people or surroundings. insulting words have expanded blood vessels (血管) and thus better circulation. People with insensitivity become less sick after eating bad food. There are also theories that argue that those with sensitive sight or hearing age earlier than others. Cancer is more likely to be cured when the patient takes things easy.

In human relationships, such as marriage or companionship, seeking perfection only increases pressure and tends to break down relationships easily. The author’s advice to avoid responding to each and every piece of criticism and to stay firm at one’s own center has already provided me with strength.

How do you keep a library when you've got no room for your books? With rising rents and record numbers of young people having to move with their parents, it's clear that we are a moving generation.

As a student in Leeds I moved three times in four years, in London it was seven times in three years. Regularly having to load our possessions into laundry bags and boxes takes a lot of our finance and energy, but the effect on our book collections is rarely considered. Keeping a collection of beloved books in a damp flat with no shelves, which you'll probably have to move out in six months' time, is a challenge. Deciding which books to keep and which to reject becomes increasingly difficult. Do you hold on to the books you know you'll reread or do you keep the to-be-read pile intact ?

Donating books to a charity shop or local school may be virtuous, but when you haven't had time to read them since your last move, it becomes depressing. There's a copy of Much Ado About Nothing I've been moving around with for nearly a decade because it is the only piece of Shakespeare in the marketplace.

“Just buy a Kindle!” you might argue - but for many people, books are more than just books. They offer us an emotional connection to the past, to the person who gave them to us. They are a way to brighten up a dark flat; they are a link to home; they are the hardest thing to move and the most enjoyable thing to unpack. They can't be removed.

So what if you are already lacing your second move this year and can't bear the thought of pensioning off more of your beloved books? You start reading more. Read all the books in your current bedroom and work out if they're worth the trip; give away as many books as you can; leave books with trusted friends to be reclaimed at a later point. Start looking at your books creatively.